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The West Memphis Three, part 1
112 Plays1 year ago
On May 6, 1993, three eight-year old boys were found murdered in Robin Hood Hill in West Memphis, Arkansas. The town of West Memphis was terrified that a vicious murderer was on the loose. As they began their investigation, police got hung up on one possibility: a satanic cult was responsible.
In part one of this series, Kayley walks us through the beginning investigation and how detectives land on their lead suspects, as well as how the case is bungled from the very start. Now, just days after the 30 year anniversary of the murders, we still can't be sure if justice was served for the three young boys who lost their lives.
Sources:
Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three—Book by Mara Leveritt
https://www.gq.com/story/west-memphis-three-trial-story-sean-flynn-gq-december-2011
https://www.eonline.com/news/1135012/inside-the-unknown-story-of-the-forgotten-west-memphis-three
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/us/west-memphis-three-dna-court-hearing/index.html
https://www.britannica.com/event/West-Memphis-Three
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/west-memphis-three-3039/
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 8
00:00:02
Speaker
Hey, I'm Kayleigh. And I'm Sierra. And this is True Crime and Punishment. Episode 8.
Research and Planning the Case
00:00:09
Speaker
Today, Kaylee will be walking us through part one of the West Memphis Three case. That's right. I think this case is going to end up being probably three parts just because there are so many details and it's important not to misrepresent any of the facts. And so I didn't want to basically I went a bit ham on the research. So that's good. We love Hammy research.
00:00:33
Speaker
Not me, I'm a vegetarian. So yeah, there's a lot of information to this case and I just didn't want to miss anything important or misrepresent something.
Primary Source: 'Devil's Knot'
00:00:45
Speaker
So without further ado, this is part one of the West Memphis Three case. One of my main sources for this episode has been Devil's Knot, the true story of the West Memphis Three, the book by Mara Leverett that she wrote about this crime. And it's been a wealth of knowledge.
00:01:01
Speaker
Leverett is an American investigative reporter based in Arkansas or at the very least she's focused on Arkansas and that's where our case takes place today so I highly recommend you give her book a read.
The Crime Scene and Initial Police Response
00:01:11
Speaker
But without further ado, as we said before this case takes place in West Memphis, Arkansas on May 5th, 1993.
00:01:20
Speaker
We're going to start this case by following the path of one officer on May 5th that evening. An officer responded to a call from John Mark Byers on May 5th, 1993. At 8 p.m., he had contacted police because he hadn't seen his stepson, Chris Byers, since 5.30 that evening.
00:01:37
Speaker
The officer took his statement and went about her route. The next call she responded to was around 8 30, where she responded to a call from a local Bojangles restaurant. Employees reported that a bleeding black man had gone into the woman's restroom. He had had blood on his face, but had left Bojangles minutes before, according to Devil's Knot. The officer had not gone into the restaurant, but she took a statement and did not investigate the incident any further.
00:02:01
Speaker
At 9.24, she responded to another call from a concerned parent on Barton Street. Now Barton Street was where John Mark Byers had called from. Dana Moore reported that her son had not been seen since 6 o'clock when he had been seen with Chris Byers and another little boy in the neighborhood, Stevie Branch. You said, little boy, how old were these kids?
00:02:21
Speaker
All three boys were eight years old. They all were friends. And Chris and Michael lived on the same street really close to each other. And they had all been seen riding bikes together, I believe. Chris did not have a bike. I believe he was on a skateboard. But Stevie and Michael Moore both had bicycles. Dana Moore reported that she had last seen all three boys at six o'clock, but that was nearly three and a half hours before. And she was growing concerned as she could not find her son. She had at one point sent her daughter out to go looking for the boys, but her daughter had not been able to find them.
Discovery of the Victims
00:02:51
Speaker
At the same time across town, another officer had been sent to a catfish restaurant. He was speaking to Pamela Hobbs, who was reporting that her eight-year-old son Stevie Branch was missing. He hadn't been seen since the end of school, but she noted that he'd been out riding his bike. And again, Dana Moore had seen him with her son and Chris Byers.
00:03:14
Speaker
Reports from neighbors show that three or four boys, the reports differ based on who the police spoke to, that they were seen riding towards Robin Hood Hills, which was a forested area in the town.
00:03:24
Speaker
It was like a little forest with like a park and a big field to the adults in the neighborhood. It was known as Robin Hood Hills, but the kids just called it Robin Hood. It was a place for them to go play. It was like four acres of woods and it was dividing a subdivision, which is where all three boys lived, from two major highways. So on one side you had these major highways and on the other you had the little subdivision where all three of these boys lived. The officer who took the reports from both Moore and Byers said that she'd entered the woods to try and find the boys.
00:03:53
Speaker
she had left soon after because the mosquitoes were plentiful. It was a, I guess, plentiful mosquito season in that area. It was early May, so she had left the woods shortly thereafter. The officer who took the report for Pamela Hobbs
00:04:10
Speaker
said that he'd enter the woods and search for the flashlight for half an hour, but he had found nothing. So it was also around 9.30, 10 o'clock at night. It was getting very dark. This was the only search made of the woods that night. Those reports from the people who saw the kids riding the bikes reported that they were going towards the woods. It was a popular hangout for children, but that was the only search of the woods that would be performed that night by police.
00:04:33
Speaker
I, sorry, that seems crazy to me. Like you have three eight year olds that are missing and you just search for like a half hour.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah, and call it quits. It definitely, unfortunately, a theme, a famous theme of this case is improper investigation. And you would think that through little boys who are missing, you would try and comb those woods, but I can't speak for the West Memphis Police Department. So this was the only search made by those two officers of the woods that night. One of the boy's stepfathers did say that he went and searched those woods himself, but we'll get into that a bit later.
00:05:06
Speaker
But either way, nothing was found that night. The police would form an organized search the morning of Thursday, May 6th. So both police and volunteers would try and find the boys the next morning. They searched the town as well, but the bulk of the search was of Robin Hood Hill. At one point, it was reported that they started on the one side of the subdivision, like shoulder to shoulder, and just walked through the entire length of those woods.
00:05:28
Speaker
to they reached that divided highway and they found nothing. So by noon, many had abandoned the search of the woods because nothing had turned up. They hadn't found any sign of the boys at all, not their bikes, not them, not anything that would show that they were there.
00:05:43
Speaker
People abandoned that search and then they went to search in town and other places the boys possibly could be. Not everyone, though. At 1.30 in the afternoon, Steve Jones, a county juvenile officer, spotted something in a drain pipe that ran along the highway side of Robin Hood Hill. This was to stop runoff from rivers. There was these massive gullies and ditches throughout where water would kind of go into.
00:06:06
Speaker
He saw something floating in the drain pipe and he radioed for backup soon after because what he saw was a laceless children's tennis shoe floating in the water.
00:06:17
Speaker
Sergeant Mike Allen from West Memphis PD joined him and he entered the water at about 145 and stirred up some of the mud. The water was not clear at all. It was it was dirty the entire bottom. It was said that your shoes would stick to the mud. And from what I saw, he walked in the water a little ways. His shoe got stuck. He this man got into the water and, you know, dress pants, dress shoes, a white button up and was just looking around and he looked up his foot. And when he did, he disturbed something on the bottom.
00:06:45
Speaker
And the child's body rose out of the water. Oh no. This is at 1.45 in the afternoon. Later, Brian Ridge, another West Memphis officer, volunteered to search the water for the other two boys. He crawled along the dirty water on all fours using his hands. He eventually found a stick poked into the ground. And he pulled it up because it was odd. It was definitely like it had been stabbed into the ground. And he found under that stick was a child's white shirt.
00:07:15
Speaker
At this point, he felt that that should not be left in the water. He got out of the water, carried it out, and on his way out, he picked up the body that was floating in the water because he felt that it was not necessary to leave it in the water. Upon taking the body out of the water, they discovered that this was the body of eight-year-old Michael Moore. According to police reports, Moore was found completely naked. His left ankle was tied to his left wrist, and his right ankle was tied to his right wrist. He was tied with shoelaces.
00:07:46
Speaker
As they continued to search the water, his clothing was found. So were two more pairs of children's shoes. Were they also Lisa's?
00:07:55
Speaker
Yes. Oh man. All of the clothing the boys were reported to be wearing when they disappeared was found, with the exception of two pairs of underwear and I believe a sock was also missing. My word. Oh no. Next, as Mike Allen was dredging the water with his hands, he eventually found the body of Stevie Branch and then found the body of Chris Byers.
00:08:19
Speaker
All three boys were found naked, beaten, and tied with their own shoelaces with their left hand being tied to the left ankle and their right hand being tied to their right ankle.
Investigation Challenges and Public Reaction
00:08:27
Speaker
Their backs were arched unnaturally and just the nudity as well as the way they were positioned. It was believed to have been a sexual crime. Oh my goodness. All three boys had been beaten in the head. It looked like Stevie Branch had possibly been bitten on the face, but the child that was mutilated the most was Christopher Byers. He had been castrated and his genitalia had been mutilated.
00:08:50
Speaker
The area around had been stabbed several times and it looked like all three boys had at some point, they'd all been beaten, but Christopher Byers was definitely mutilated in the worst ways.
00:09:04
Speaker
those poor babies oh my goodness okay i'm sorry i need to stop you right now don't tell me who but did they catch who did this three men were charged for the crime however that is unfortunately the next part of the case while they are they were charged all three are out of prison and what well
00:09:23
Speaker
the west with his three can when you hear the case it sounds like it refers to steve branch chris byers and michael moore in fact it refers to the three people who were eventually arrested and charged with this crime however charged but not convicted
00:09:36
Speaker
Well, they were convicted and they were sentenced to prison, but there's good reason for them to be out. Okay. Okay. Let's trust you. Yes. I'm going to tell you right now, this entire case is rife with tragedy and not, especially what happened to these three eight-year-old boys, but the people who were convicted, it's a gross miscarriage of justice. I will say that right now. This is a case. If there's ever been a case to make you angry, it should be this one.
00:09:57
Speaker
I'm already angry, as you should be. The crime was extremely
Suspects and Theories
00:10:01
Speaker
brutal. However, there was very little evidence left behind. The boys were found in the water, which is already bad for evidence preservation. It looked like the sand bank where this drain pipe was had been swept, like everything had been brushed away. Then they were removed from the water and laid on
00:10:19
Speaker
the bank. They were left there for multiple hours. At one point they were covered by a sheet of plastic but the coroner was not called until about 3pm. Did they give you a reason for why the coroner wasn't called until then? I mean how big is West Memphis? Is it like a small town?
00:10:36
Speaker
It's a smaller town. It's a very poor town, but that almost seemed like an oversight. Like they'd kind of forgotten that they hadn't called or that they needed to be called. They were sweeping for other evidence. They were trying to find the two pairs of missing underwear and the children's bicycles and things like that. So it was more of a search for evidence.
00:10:56
Speaker
But you'll see that things for this case were bungled from the very beginning. Oh my goodness. But either way, there was a lack of blood evidence. There was no fiber evidence. On the scene, the stepfather of Chris Byers was told what had happened to his son. It was announced quickly that the three boys had been found and that they had been found murdered. The information swept through town.
00:11:14
Speaker
Did they tell Chris's dad what else happened to him or did they leave that out? That was left out for the time being. The details would eventually be sent out into the public. That was against the better judgment of the lead investigator, Gary Gitchell. But information, this is a salacious crime, right?
00:11:34
Speaker
misinformation was released to the media. At one point they said that the wrong boy had been castrated. They said that all three boys had been sexually assaulted. However, that was not proven. I believe the coroner made initial remarks that it was possible that two of the boys had been, but it could not be confirmed. It was a lot of just speculation in theory because it's a horrific crime. Everything was so just just brutal and terrible. So after this, that's that's the crime right there was
00:12:04
Speaker
three boys were murdered, and there was very little evidence. So off of this, there were three primary theories that police would follow.
00:12:14
Speaker
The three essential theories were that the boys were, one, killed by strangers, two, they were killed by someone close to them, or three, they were killed by members of the gang or cult, which was implied by a press statement by lead investigator Gary Gitchell. Right at the bat, we already know things were mishandled. The bodies had been moved out of the water and left on the banks and covered in plastic for at least part of the time. Because of the way the boys were tied, those ligatures, the extent of rigor mortis was hard to determine, which meant that their time of death was hard to determine how long they'd been in the water.
00:12:44
Speaker
when they've been pulled out of the water. One thing coroners and medical investigators can use to determine time of death is the presence of insect activity. And so by the time that the coroner got there a couple hours later, flies had already begun to lay eggs in the boys' nostrils and around their eyes, which it was really warm in West Memphis at that time, which also means that the bodies were starting to show signs of decomposition.
00:13:13
Speaker
I believe I had read somewhere that the water was around 60 degrees, but it was 80 or 90 degrees outside of the water. But it was just, it was difficult to determine. And that's all on scene. And they didn't cover their bodies right away, right? That's what you said. They got it parked later. Right. Thank goodness. They had just been laying on sand. And again, the coroner made reports specifically that he believed Michael and Christopher may have been sexually assaulted. That was not a conclusive ruling.
00:13:37
Speaker
The lead investigator had all the sand that was under the boys' bodies be bagged to be tested. On the scene, they found one fingerprint and a partial footprint. However, people had been in and out of these woods for hours looking for these three boys, so they really couldn't do much with that. And even though casts were rain of the prints, no match could be made. They, as I said, they bagged up that sand under where the bodies had been set to lay for over two and a half hours, but nothing was found. They dragged the water
00:14:05
Speaker
and mud and found nothing. Two of the boys' bikes were found in the water 50 yards away. Like I said, it was believed that Christopher was on a skateboard. Police were shocked by the complete lack of blood at the crime scene. There was none recovered. It was a triple homicide without gun violence and the boys had been beat in the head with something. They all had head injuries and it looked again remember Stevie Branch looked like he'd been bitten in the face. Oh my goodness.
00:14:32
Speaker
All the victims, especially Chris Byers who had been castrated, would have lost a lot of blood. According to the book Devil's Knot, records kept by the West Memphis police were confusing and disorganized. So right off the bat, things are not being preserved well, evidence is not abundant, and just even records were not kept well.
00:14:53
Speaker
A summary made within the first day or so of this investigation was found on department letterhead, but it was unsigned and undated so we don't know who wrote it or when it was specifically written.
00:15:04
Speaker
It said that PD believed a hammer or rounded object was used to strike the boys in the head and was the cause of the head trauma. And there was apparently a possibility that buyers had been injected with a hypodermic needle. All three victims had been struck by a studded belt or some sort of race, something with a, maybe not studs, but something on like a raised surface on a belt.
00:15:27
Speaker
The summary also stated incorrectly that more, not buyers, have been castrated. It also stated that, again, incorrectly, a knife with a serrated edge was used to castrate more, which the incorrect part of that is the child that they named, but it also could be, like, is the knife? Was it a serrated knife? Is that correct? That comes into play later about what exactly happened to Christopher Byers. And then if we go back to the victims being struck by a stud adult or something along those lines,
00:15:54
Speaker
John Mark Byers, Chris Byers stepfather, told police that he had, quote, given the boy a few licks with a leather belt a few hours before he had disappeared. This is because what I saw reported was he'd been seen playing in the street on a skateboard, like lying on his stomach. And John Mark Byers said that he, of course, he'd regretted doing it later after the fact, but he'd been trying to keep him safe.
00:16:19
Speaker
There was no notes that a child abuse investigation query had been posed to see if there had been any suspecting child abuse in the buyer's home, which is odd. Typically when things like this happen, the first person they're going to look at is the family. And we'll get into this in another part, but the buyer's family had some skeletons in their closet that definitely should have been addressed in the investigation.
00:16:44
Speaker
Another thing that went wrong was Gitchell had vowed to keep information close throughout this investigation, but information was leaked throughout the investigation and it was widely reported on. Incorrect information was also reported on. It was reported that all three boys had been sodomized. That was not proven by the medical that performed the children's autopsies. That was just salacious. It was also reported that all three boys had had their genitalia mutilated. That is also incorrect. It was only the one child. Hundreds.
00:17:12
Speaker
hundreds of tips were called in from a concerned public. Of course, everyone was horrified as three very young children had been brutally murdered. Every tip was given credence. In fact, on Friday, May 7th, the day after the bodies had been discovered, Aaron Hutchinson, an eight-year-old boy and classmate of the three told police that he'd seen Michael Moore talking to a black man in a maroon car after school the day he disappeared.
00:17:39
Speaker
He reported that the man was tall, had yellow teeth, and wore a white shirt with writing on it. According to Aaron, the man told Moore that his mother had sent him to pick him up, and Moore got into the car with the man. Now, I'd like to remind you earlier about the man who was seen going into the Bojangles covered in blood. Did he have a white shirt with writing on it?
00:17:57
Speaker
That was not reported from what I could see, just that he had gone in and he had blood on his face. And when he left the bathroom, there was blood in the bathroom. And again, remember the officer did not go inside to investigate. Nevermind. Continue, continue. There does not appear from what I've seen to be any connection that there was no connection made between a man covered in blood.
00:18:19
Speaker
man seen apparently talking to this young boy. And that's because the police did not give this report any credence. There are reasons that they didn't. Aaron was a friend of Moore and he had to reason to lie. However, Dana Moore had not sent anyone to pick Michael up. In fact, she told officers that he comes straight home from school and the family lived right next to the school. So it didn't make sense that he would even need a ride home when he lived so close so that he would accept that his mother had sent someone to come get him from school.
00:18:47
Speaker
So police just kind of chalked it up to a scared child who had an active imagination who had just lost a friend. Which again, that's understandable. You can't really take every tip from an eight-year-old boy, but they didn't seem to take a lot of tips. They were looking into veterans because there had been an abduction where the soldiers had been tied with similar ligature marks, and so they were wondering if this was some sort of trauma response from someone who had gone through that. So they looked into
00:19:15
Speaker
you know, veterans, men in hospitals who had injured genitalia, perhaps a child had fought back because they did believe this to be a sexual crime. They looked into child molesters, homeless people, drug dealers, drug addicts, animal abusers, just anyone who'd been reported for being odd. I remember saying that they looked into a man because he'd been reported for making loon commons to two women. So that's how far out their net was cast.
00:19:39
Speaker
A woman actually reported that she'd seen all three boys riding on two bikes, like the three of them between two bikes, because remember, Chris Byers did not have a bicycle, it doesn't seem. On the opposite side of where they've been widely reported to be seen, so that one wasn't really credible because they were said to be closer to the highway side instead of the development side.
00:19:59
Speaker
There was also a lead that Byers' mother and stepfather were drug informants in Shelby County. Byers was the child who had been most brutalized of the three. There is no evidence of any leads surrounding this tip that was given by a narcotics detective in Shelby County. It never seemed to have been followed up on.
00:20:18
Speaker
So it just seems like a lot of little things were investigated and other things that might have been more credible were kind of swept on the wayside. So a narcotic detective gave that tip like another police officer. Yes. And they didn't follow up on it.
00:20:33
Speaker
It also would probably be good information to give you that John Mark Byers was also a narcotics informant in the county, in the West Memphis County area. So small detail. He also was well known to several police officers and was friends with several officers as well.
00:20:51
Speaker
It also seemed like he gave conflicting stories of him and his son, Ryan. Also, the night they went missing, Byers reported that he went and searched and that him and Ryan went and parked behind. There was a car wash station.
00:21:08
Speaker
By the highway side where near actually really close to where the boys are found and then he said that he went over there and he parked and he had his son Ryan kind of drive around and Honked the horn of the car and he was like bellowing into the woods calling for the boys to come out and come home but Ryan said around the time that his dad said that they were out there doing that that his dad had told him to go to bed and
00:21:30
Speaker
So that could be as simple as something that it's just a timeline. It's a very stressful evening. Your eight-year-old son is missing. Maybe you just got your times messed up. But that was not seemingly investigated as thoroughly as it could have been. Another tip, a week and a half after the murders the West Memphis Police Department received were that two men had fled from West Memphis four days after the boys were found. Chris Morgan and Brian Holland left West Memphis suddenly and moved to Oceanside, California.
00:21:57
Speaker
Wow, that's a big move. It really is. The West Memphis Police Department got in contact with Oceanside Police and the two men were brought in. They were given polygraphs, which so the polygraph showed signs of deception when they were questioned about the murders. Now a polygraph is not admissible in court. It's not, you know, the difference between
00:22:18
Speaker
It's not a great difference between like, oh, they're definitely guilty if they feel a polygraph, but there were signs of deception I've said before. It's a good standing point to kind of further investigation. Um, actually at one point Morgan became so upset during the interrogation that he announced that he was in a hospital treatment program for alcohol and drug abuse and that he may have committed the murders. However, quickly after saying that he recanted this confession. Hmm.
00:22:44
Speaker
Nevertheless, Oceanside Police sent blood in urine samples to West Memphis, but the West Memphis Police did not appear to do anything with them.
Focus on Damien Echols
00:22:54
Speaker
Whether this was because there was not solid DNA evidence found on the boys or at the crime scene, and there was nothing to test against, or because the case was disorganized and mishandled, I cannot say. However, there was no info in the file to say why the sleeve was dropped.
00:23:11
Speaker
Another thing that happened, there was a very slow report back from official coroner's reports. The crime analyst found skin and possible cuticles in the shoelaces that was found tying one of the boys. A hair that was believed to belong to a black individual was found on the sheet that was wrapped around Chris's body. But again, was that contamination? Does this tie back to the guy from Bojangles? We don't know. They don't appear to have investigated that angle.
00:23:39
Speaker
Oh, okay. Another thing that crime analysts found. This is before the official report came back because that was at a month out from each crimes having been committed. The lead investigator at that point, Gitchill was getting antsy. He'd written a couple letters trying to get that report and he hadn't heard back.
00:23:55
Speaker
But the analyst told him that Chris and Michael were tied with the same knots, you know, they're the same knots wrist to ankle wrist to ankle But then Stevie the knots tying him even on just him those knots were different So he did not have the same knots on either of his ligatures But the knots on Chris and Michael were the same for both boys interesting
00:24:19
Speaker
So I've seen it posited that could potentially mean there was multiple people or what, but there was not much information about that. That is an overview of the crime and where we're at in the investigation. The next step into the investigation will eventually lead us into the three
00:24:37
Speaker
teenagers who were eventually arrested and convicted of this crime. Teenagers? Teenagers. But before we can get into that, and I do think we're going to have to get into that next week, I'm going to lead us into our primary suspect and how we kind of landed on him. First, we're going to go to Jerry Driver. Jerry Driver was the county's chief juvenile probation officer.
00:25:02
Speaker
I saw it reported in one source that the following was said by a juvenile parole officer who actually is Jerry Driver's assistant, that one officer said on scene, it looks like Damien Eccles finally killed someone. Who is Damien Eccles? That was my question. We're gonna go back a year.
00:25:23
Speaker
When Jerry Driver, the county's chief juvenile probation officer, first encountered Damien, he was a 17-year-old high school dropout who lived in West Memphis, specifically Lakeshore State Trailer Park. It's a very, very poor area. A lot of places in West Memphis, they were not filled with very well-to-do people, but this trailer park in particular was known as being very, very rundown. Driver first took notice of him because police had been contacted when Damien's ex-girlfriend Deanna reported him for harassing her and a male friend following their breakup.
00:25:52
Speaker
She reported that Damien had threatened to kill her friend and leave his body in her front yard. Her parents told police that Damien had been trying to get their daughter involved in black magic and that they were afraid for their daughter's safety. The officer then drove to the trailer that Damien shared with his sister, mother, stepfather, and grandpa and told Damien to stay away from Deanna and her family. Damien would tell him the couple broke up because of pressure from Deanna's parents. However,
00:26:22
Speaker
A month after the first call, Deanna's mother would call again and report that Damian and Deanna were seeing each other. Deanna's mom called them because Eccles had blocked Deanna home that day and she told him to get off her property. When officers arrived on the scene to tell Damian to stay away from Deanna, Deanna would shout out officers that she wanted to be with Damian.
00:26:43
Speaker
Damien would say he was only walking her home because she'd become ill at school. And that was kind of the end of that. He was told again to stay away from Deanna, but Deanna said that she wanted to see him. A week after that, Deanna's mother would again call the police, this time to report that her daughter had run away. And she suspected that she was with Damien Echols.
00:27:02
Speaker
police would find Damien and Niana in an uninhabited mobile home on Lake Sherry States, partially nude from the waist down. This was during a terrible thunderstorm. Damien's friend, 16-year-old Jason Baldwin, was with a couple. The couple confirmed that they were going to run away and were waiting on the storm to kind of fizzle out and that they'd taken shelter in this mobile home because of the storm. The police arrested the couple and charged them with burglary despite the fact that nothing had been stolen. I don't know why it wasn't
00:27:31
Speaker
That's what I would think. They charged him with burglary. I don't know if that meant that they could hold them for longer or something, but it was uninhabited as well, so I don't know if that leads into it. After the arrest, juvenile officers would go to the Eccles' home and they would be given permission from Damien's mother to search Damien's room.
00:27:50
Speaker
With them, they took a bunch of Damien's notebooks. Let me describe Damien Echols to you first. He was a teenager, obviously. He liked to wear all black. He had long black stringy hair, and he was known for being into darker topics. In these notebooks, they held drawings and writings from Echols. Echols wrote some darker poetry, but it was poetry.
00:28:14
Speaker
There were some writings and a couple of drawings. Jerry Driver considered these writings to mean that Eccles was deeply entrenched and interested in the occult. We'll get into that a bit later. This takes place in the early 90s and in the early, in the 80s and the early 90s especially. That's the time of the Satanic Panic movement and we'll get into that and what that means a bit later. Meanwhile, Deanna was released to her parents but charges were filed against Damien and he was held in a juvenile detention center.
00:28:41
Speaker
Records show while at the center he was respectful and followed the center's rules. However, word circulated that Deanna and Damian intended to conceive a child and then they would murder the baby as part of a satanic ritual. This was a rumor that both Deanna and Damian would deny, but you'll notice that in this town rumors fly very freely.
00:29:03
Speaker
Yeah. Who did they find out who was the source of that rumor? Just a lot of people. Damien Eccles had a lot of rumors spread about him, that he was into the occult, that he was a Satanist based on his appearance and what he was interested in. And he was interested in Wicca paganism and a couple of different, he was really interested in religion in general. And we'll get into some more about that later. But he was definitely known as that kind of creepy goth kid who. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of rumors.
00:29:30
Speaker
While these were only rumors, Jerry Driver would move Damien to a mental hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, about like those over 100 miles away from West Memphis.
00:29:40
Speaker
Driver would also report that Damien had told him that he was a Wiccan and he worshipped goddesses. He also wore mostly black and according to Jerry Driver, quote, looked like one of those slasher guys with long stringy black hair. Driver believed that Satanism was taking over his city. Apparently around this time, pentagrams were found painted under bridges and in graffiti about town.
00:30:01
Speaker
And now we can't discuss this case any further without mentioning the satanic panic movement of the 80s and 90s. Are you familiar with that at all, Sierra? I've heard you mention it before, but I don't know anything about it personally. Okay. During this time, there was a reported 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of what they would call satanic ritual abuse, or SRA, reported in the US.
00:30:24
Speaker
Around this time, the game Dungeons and Dragons and Metal music were seen as gateways to ritual abuse. There was also a belief that teens were being drawn in with Ouija boards and fantasy magic into these deep spirals of paganism and the occult. And one thing you'll see is a lot of these terms like occult and paganism and witchcraft, they were all being used as like a blanket term.
00:30:47
Speaker
And while it might seem pedantic, those are all different things. Like someone who is practicing, who's a practicing pagan, quote unquote, is not the same as someone who was interested in the occult. Those are very different things.
00:31:00
Speaker
And this sounds insane, but the literal FBI started to look into this satanic ritual abuse. However, it was found that those wrapped up in the occult or not committing heinous crimes, like this was people thinking that they were in the woods, sacrificing animals and children and doing, you know, verdant sacrifice and blood rituals. And these people were out here doing insane things, all in the name of Satan. But it was found that those wrapped up in this occult type Satanist arc that they were
00:31:28
Speaker
not really committing crimes and if they were they were minor crimes so like graffiti or well if you can call it a minor crime but like animal abuse or like something along those lines not good things to be doing especially animal abuse but they weren't out here trying to kill people like most of these people were just i don't know it's it's
00:31:50
Speaker
I don't know. It wasn't really people out here committing blood sacrifice and having these big satanic cults who are out trying to kill non-believers or sacrifice virgins and babies to Satan. It was just mostly from what I saw a lot of teenagers who wanted to be edgy.
00:32:05
Speaker
But it's more panic inducing to talk about spells and child and virgin sacrifices and, you know, people trying to control people with magic and mind control and the power of Satan and blood rituals. And it is talk about, you know, gothy witchy type teenagers who are traipsing around the woods and vandalizing things probably with incorrectly drawn pentagrams. Like, not to get too off topic, but I've seen a lot of kids try to out pentagrams and it's always like a star of David. And that's just
00:32:29
Speaker
It's kind of like that. It's ironic a bit. A lot of times a teenager is trying to be edgy and push up against what they've either been raised with or what's seen as the norm. That's unfortunate because I definitely believe the occult is nothing to mess around with at all, but it's also important that we don't
00:32:49
Speaker
chalk everything up to things like that because I know sometimes, at least from my experience in Christian circles, we can oversimplify things and then that cheapens the darker reality of things like the occult and witchcraft.
00:33:01
Speaker
paint everything with a broad brush and not understand it because you might fail to understand the truly serious things about it, if that makes sense. Right. Right. And this is a very, very religious town. You got a lot of Southern Baptist people who believe in demonic possession and things like that. So some people, they hear Satanism and they don't really believe in Satan, so it doesn't bother them. But for when you have a really religious town that believes in demons and Satan and the power of things like that, it can be really tricky to navigate around.
00:33:28
Speaker
Driver was very invested in rooting out this devil worship that he saw taking over his town. He spoke to specialists, he attended and led seminars. He believed that there was some sort of event, some sort of evil satanic event coming down this pipeline that he for some reason decided that Damien Eccles would be at the forefront of.
00:33:48
Speaker
Damien psychiatrists at the mental hospital were not as worried. They found him to be majorly depressed. He had suicidal ideation, which is where you feel that death is the best option, that you kind of like glorify the idea of committing suicide and just being dead. He was aggressive towards others. And while he wrote strange poems and was self-admittedly into witchcraft, he was not a danger to himself or others. It's more self-directed than directed toward others.
00:34:13
Speaker
And you'll see Damien Eccles, he searched through a lot of religious things. He was very depressed. He had a very rough home life. Like at one point, I didn't mention this earlier, but a mental health professional, like a social worker came in and said that the Eccles household was not good. And that both Damien Eccles and his sister were at serious risk because of the way they lived and how their parents, like not their parents, but just the situation they were living in. It was it was not good. And they wanted some sort of intervention.
00:34:39
Speaker
So he already was he was searching for something and witchcraft was just what he was using at that moment Damien and his mother and sister after he was released from this mental hospital He they moved to Aloha, Oregon, which is 2,000 miles away where Pam Eccles Would reunite with Damien and his sister's biological father Joe Hutchinson
00:35:02
Speaker
However, this did not stop Driver's seeming obsession, forgive the term, witch hunt for Damien Echols. He actually wrote to the Oregon juvenile authorities to ask that they keep an eye on Damien while he was still on probation. Because of this crime, he was released to his parents, but he was on probation until he turned 18 and was no longer considered a juvenile, at which point his record would be closed and things like that. He was four months away from being 18, but Driver was really concerned about him.
00:35:31
Speaker
So he wrote a letter to these authorities and he included that Damien and his associates in West Memphis were involved in a satanic cult, that Damien had been in a psychiatric hospital, that he threatened to kill his girlfriend's parents, Damien claimed to be a witch, Damien and his girlfriend had intended to have a child so that they could sacrifice it to Satan, and that authorities in Arkansas believed that Damien's parents were also Satanists.
00:35:58
Speaker
Now this caused concern for the Oregon Juvenile Authorities. So they visited Pam and Joe, who said they had no problems with their son. In fact, Damien was working full time. He was 17 and he was a high school dropout, but he worked full time at his dad Joe's gas station. So when the Juvenile Authority talked to Damien, he found that Damien's birth name was actually Michael Wayne Hutchinson.
00:36:21
Speaker
But when he'd been adopted by his mom's ex, which was a man by the name of Jack Eccles, he'd taken Eccles' last name and he changed his name to Damien. In fact, he had changed his name to Damien Eccles because when he'd been adopted, he was really interested in converting to Catholicism. Interesting. And Damien was the name of a saint that he respected greatly. So at the time, he was in the process of changing his name to Michael Damien Wayne Hutchinson, and at work went by the name of Michael.
00:36:52
Speaker
Damien also denied any involvement with occult or beliefs in Satanism and quote, express considerable displeasure with Mr. Driver for such assertions. Yeah. Well, I could see why. If those are all unfounded, I would be very upset if someone were calling me a Satanist. And you'll see throughout that Damien never claims to be a Satanist. They research his bedroom and they find like a satanic Bible, books on the occult.
00:37:18
Speaker
Um, but they also never seem to mention that there was a, there was multiple translations of the Bible, just the Christian Bible. He was very interested in religion as a whole. He was very into organized religion, whether that be, you know, Wicca or paganism or Christianity in some way, shape or form. But he was not a Satanist. He never claimed to be a Satanist.
00:37:39
Speaker
He denied, Damien denied that he threatened to kill his girlfriend's parents, but he did acknowledge that he and Deanna had a suicide pact that they had decided they would commit suicide if her parents tried to keep them apart. Oh. But after he was hospitalized, he had told this juvenile officer in Oregon, he had no desire to hurt himself or others. He says that he is a witch, but he is not a Satanist. He worshiped gods and goddesses, but he did not worship the devil.
00:38:04
Speaker
The officer recommended minimal supervision until he would turn 18 in four months. He did not think there was a problem. He did not find that his parents were in Satanists either. The Oregon juvenile authorities wrote to Driver and informed him of this. However, Driver was displeased and he wrote another letter insisting that Damian was trying to get in touch with Deanna, which Driver claimed was a violation of his probation.
00:38:28
Speaker
This was not able to be confirmed that it was even a violation of his probation or that he had done that he'd been trying to get in touch with Deanna. So it definitely seemed like Driver had something personally against Damien Eccles. Yeah. Oregon authorities declined to respond to Driver's second letter. Good. Unfortunately, within two months, Damien's parents had to call the local police in Oregon because they were afraid he would hurt himself or others.
00:38:56
Speaker
Damien denied accusations that he threatened to harm his parents. There were accusations that he had threatened to kill his parents, and he was taken away and then moved to a mental health facility. The following morning after he had been placed in the facility, he told medical professionals that he wasn't planning on killing himself, but he did miss his girlfriend and his best friend Jason Baldwin, who was the 16-year-old found with them in that mobile home.
00:39:21
Speaker
He was held for two days, then released. His family did not want him to live with them. Um, they, they were the ones who said that he had threatened his parents' lives and that he'd become angry and violent. However, organ officials, I don't want to like kind of sugarcoat and say he didn't do this. It sounds like he was a very troubled young man. He had some problems with depression and it sounded like he would kind of lash out and then receive help and do better.
00:39:41
Speaker
Oregon officials signed off on a plan for him that they came up together with his psychiatrist. The plan would be for him to be emancipated. He would move back to West Memphis where he would live with Jack Eccles, his stepfather as it was, and he would contact Jerry Driver upon his return to finish out his probation. So again, another mental health worker, a social worker went, found that the home of Pam and Joe's home was not
00:40:12
Speaker
a good place for their children. It was still not a wonderful situation for them to be in. It was a rough situation all around. It was not found to be conducive, and I'm not trying to say they were bad parents or something, but it's widely reported that his living situation was never good.
00:40:27
Speaker
That's not helping him get over his issues. Right, so him moving out was agreed upon to be a good thing for him. Because these people are, and Oregon especially, they're trying to help him do better because no one wants to see him fail in life. So Oregon officials signed off on this plan and sent him on his way. However, Jerry Driver did not agree with this plan. He filed an affidavit that Damien had violated his probation because he threatened the life of his mother and father.
00:40:56
Speaker
He also filed a petition to revoke his probation and said that it was a violation because he was moving back to Arkansas. He failed to mention that Oregon authorities had approved his plan to move and that Driver had been formally notified by Oregon authorities that they had approved this plan and that this is what would be happening. Damien Eccles was arrested and sent back to juvenile prison where he was very, very angry. Yeah, I would be too.
00:41:22
Speaker
Because again, he was working this plan and he'd been approved to do this. So of course he was angry and we've already established he has some mental health struggles. However, there is reported that he was in holding with these other teenagers and there's no easy way to say this. But at one point, one of the other boys had had a cut on his arm and Damien reached over, grabbed his arm and sucked the blood out of his arm.
00:41:45
Speaker
So he went back to the mental hospital. Same as before, he was held for two weeks. There he said that he didn't know why he did it. He just did. And again, he seemed to do better under the mental care, like the help from the psychiatrist. He was held for two weeks and then he was able to move back to Marion, Arkansas. He had to agree to a plan by driver.
00:42:04
Speaker
He had to have regular check-ins with the mental health facility, which as we know he does have some issues He was prescribed medication and he had to take it for an antidepressant and driver required Damien to come to his office once a week he had to follow a strict curfew and he had a Had to go to a local tech school to earn his GED Damien agreed and he followed protocol. He stopped by his office every week He earned his GED 10 days after his 18th birthday. He followed that curfew
00:42:36
Speaker
He worked the program, he did what was told, he took his medication and he was doing well. Driver still believed that Damien, there was something wrong with him and that he had some sort of innate desire for power. Yeah, was driver projecting a little bit or? I don't know, but. I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't say that without more information.
00:42:59
Speaker
However, Dayman, he got his GED, a part-time job, and he got a girlfriend, 16-year-old Dominique Tier. He also was taking a therapist regularly. At one point, he apparently had a thing for drinking blood. I don't... He said it made him feel powerful, but it was always from a willing partner, and I don't want to speculate, but it sounded like it was from
00:43:22
Speaker
a sexual partner. So I don't know if that's like, yeah. Yeah. Um, from what I heard, it wasn't like he was going around trying to drink blood for satanic ritual reasons. It was just something he was into. Again, he was into witchcraft. He wasn't into satanism, but he wasn't a witchcraft. So, so there are some weird influences, like none of these are things to play with. Yeah. Right. So that's still something that he was into something that he was interested in. I think he also kind of was operating under
00:43:47
Speaker
The assumption that anything he said of this therapist would not ever come out and he was very concerned with his privacy. However, the fact that I was able to get information about his therapy sessions just kind of shows you that it wasn't quite true. He did tell his therapist at one point that he had problems with authorities and that they thought he was a satanic leader.
00:44:06
Speaker
Well, I mean, I could see the problems with, with authority because he has been from what, from his own, at least from what he has said, he has been unjustly accused of different things and tricked around like the whole thing with the Oregon police. That wasn't respected when he did move back. So I could see him having some authority issues. Oh yeah, definitely. I think there's only valid reasons for this. However, Damien was unfortunately very right. Even though he had aged out of driver's authority, driver had not forgotten him.
00:44:34
Speaker
Now, this is all. Most of this was happening before the murder of the three boys. However, when the three boys were found murdered, Driver began to look once again at Damien Eccles, only this time he would not stop at just Damien Eccles. He began to investigate his friends. Despite being touted as a Satanic leader, Eccles appeared to only have one close friend, 16-year-old Jason Baldwin.
00:44:57
Speaker
They'd known each other since Damien was in eighth grade and Jason had been in seventh. They had both lived in Lake Shore estates. Both were extremely poor and had been social outcasts. Jason didn't dress them all black, preferring blue jeans and band shirts, and could be quoted as saying, even though Damien and I dressed different from each other, we was also different from everyone else. Both boys were into alternative music like Metallica and Pink Floyd.
00:45:21
Speaker
James believed in God and right and wrong, but was uninterested in religion. Damien, on the other hand, was very interested in historical religions like Catholicism and Wicca. Jason also had run-ins with driver and juvenile authorities and was associated with Satanism in the town based on vicious rumor.
00:45:38
Speaker
despite these only being rumors and Jason not being a Satanist. Soon, Damian and Jason and one other teenage boy would be arrested and charged with the murders of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Chris Byers.
Shift to the Trial
00:45:51
Speaker
Oh.
00:45:53
Speaker
Next week we will get into the trial and we'll introduce that third boy who is deeply involved. His confession is actually the focus of next week. And that is where I'm going to leave it because we're already getting close to an hour. And to get into anything else would just be another hour. Oh my goodness.
00:46:10
Speaker
That is the introduction of our main player, Ding and Eccles is touted as the ringleader of this murderous satanic plot. Next week we will dive into how satanism affected this case, how this case affected this nation, and how the three boys who were murdered never received justice, and how the three boys who were charged. Well, we'll see. Did they escape justice or were they victimized as well?
00:46:34
Speaker
That is the very beginning of the West Memphis Three. And the West Memphis Three is in reference to the three convicted, not the three murdered, which is just an unfortunate tagline of this case that the three who were murdered ended up being the forgotten three almost because it was so heavily on the other three. Oh, I'm sorry. It's like they're almost forgotten from the beginning, leaving the one body in the water until they're finally like, oh, maybe we should take him out, finally covering the three little boys.
00:47:03
Speaker
Yeah, they were kind of forgotten from the beginning almost. Yeah, and it's a tragic case. And next week we will definitely get into this trial and consider this that we've gone through the perpetration and we're going to start leading into the investigation next week. But do you have any questions about anything we've gone over today?
Teaser for Next Episode
00:47:19
Speaker
No, I'm just sad. All right. Well, I'm sorry we're leaving you on such a heavy note, but next week we'll have a little bit more resolution for you. Until then, be aware. Take care. And we'll see you next week. Goodbye. Bye.