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The West Memphis Three, part 2
84 Plays1 year ago
On May 6, 1993, three eight-year old boys were found murdered in a water-filled ditch in Robin Hood Hill in West Memphis, Arkansas. The town of West Memphis is terrified that someone who could do this is on the loose. As they begin their investigation, police get hung up on one possibility: a satanic cult was responsible.
In part two of this three part series, Kayley introduces the third member of the three, the police's newest and most unexpected (and unqualified) detective, and walks through how a seemingly coerced confession ends in a three way conviction.
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
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, I'm
Introduction and Case Overview
00:00:02
Speaker
Kaylee. And I'm Sierra. And this is True Crime and Punishment. Episode 9. Today, Kaylee will be giving us part 2 of the West Memphis 3 case. That's right. And
Delays and Technical Challenges
00:00:14
Speaker
as well as part 2, I'm also going to extend a heartfelt apology for us going completely AWOL after posting a part 1 of a really tense case. We did not do that to you intentionally. Absolutely not.
00:00:30
Speaker
I don't know what to even say about that. It was finals week for our resident master's student, and then it was without giving you too many details about what I do for a job. It was a busy, busy week. Yes. Just given what we had going on. And so I was working overtime, Sierra had finals, and then it just got to the point where
00:00:49
Speaker
No, we recorded the episode on time. We did record. We had technical difficulties. So we recorded
Trial Focus and Initial Events
00:00:56
Speaker
the whole thing and the recording did not save. And then we had finals and work so we couldn't rerecord it. Right. And it was just, well, we had like half the audio. It was Sierra's audio specifically. But when I'm the one presenting the case, all you heard was Sierra going,
00:01:15
Speaker
and then asking very good and well-timed questions. So we had to rerecord it and it just didn't work out. So we do apologize for that. But without further ado, let's get into part two of the West Memphis three case. I did want to initially get this into two parts, but that absolutely is not going to happen. We're going to have a part three, but there will only be three parts. So part two is going to be about the trial and what led up to the trial.
Vicki Hutchison's Involvement
00:01:41
Speaker
This week we're going to go a little bit back in time to around when these murders first took place, and we're going to add in a new person to the scene. A woman working at a local truck stop was suspected of overcharging a customer $200. She was a new hire and the owners were a little bit wary, so they called the police to have them look into the matter. Don Bray, who we mentioned in part one, set up an interview with the employee, then 30-year-old Vicki Hutchison.
00:02:08
Speaker
Vicky showed up to this police interview with her eight-year-old son Aaron in tow. If the name Aaron sounds familiar, this is the same Aaron Hutchison who told police that he had seen one of the victims getting into a car with a random man that day, but then the police also had completely discarded that information as the overactive imagination of an eight-year-old. This is where we get that information.
00:02:33
Speaker
Because Vicky shows up to this interview with her son, Vicky told the officer that Aram was best friends with one of the victims. Per Devil's Knot, he thought maybe he should contact the West Memphis Police Department with this information. But when he did, he was told that the bodies of the three boys had just been found.
00:02:49
Speaker
Bray assumed that the boy would know something so he kind of questioned the boy a little bit to ask him what he knew. So he questioned Aaron and that's when we got that information about Michael Moore being allegedly seen getting into a car with a straight man that Aaron had not recognized.
00:03:04
Speaker
Coincidentally, after this interview had been concluded, Bray did tell the owners of this truck stop that he thought it was just an accident. It wasn't really meant to be a theft. It was just an accidental overcharge. I believe Devil's Knot, the book said that it was a problem with their books. It wasn't that money had actually gone missing. Owners did not agree with this assessment and Vicky was in fact fired. But that wouldn't be a problem. She would end up getting another lucrative job playing detective for the police department as a citizen. But we'll get into that a bit later.
00:03:34
Speaker
Now, at this time, we said last week that the West Memphis Police Department, they were taking tips from so many people. That's how we ended up hearing that they'd taken a tip from an eight-year-old boy. Another person, an anonymous person, would call the West Memphis Police Department and they said that a local pastor was concerned that a group of teenagers in the Lakeshore Trailer Park that they were worshipping the devil. Remember
Satanic Cult Suspicions
00:03:56
Speaker
Lakeshore Trailer Park is where Damien Eccles lived with his stepfather and mother.
00:04:02
Speaker
When they contacted the pastor, the pastor said that some kid named Damien was the teen's cult leader, and that he'd heard they were holding meetings near the Mississippi River. At this point, Jerry Driver, who was that juvenile parole officer that we discussed last week who really just seemed to have it out for Damien Eccles, he had a piece of paper with eight names on it. He gave this piece of paper to Don Bray, the man who interviewed Vicky Hutchison. This all seems like a tangled web of a million people, and it truly is, but try and bear with me.
00:04:30
Speaker
but Driver gave Bray this piece of paper with eight names. He believed these people could be involved with the murders. On this paper, Damien, Damien's girlfriend, Dominie, and Jason's names, they were all on this paper. On May 7th, two people, Lieutenant Sudbury, who usually worked on drug cases, and Jones, who was not a police officer, remember he was involved in the search last week, he was assistant juvenile parole officer, decided to investigate the murders from a satanic angle.
00:05:00
Speaker
They went to the trailer park to interview Damian. His mom Pam was there and this was after he'd moved to Oregon and come back. She'd moved back to the trailer park with Damian and her children's biological father Joe. They come from Oregon and they moved back to Arkansas. The two interviewed Damian, but they took no notes. We really don't know exactly what he was questioned about. We just know that they went to go question him in relation to the satanic angle of these murders.
00:05:28
Speaker
Are they allowed to do that? Like to question someone without taking notes? I don't know about without taking notes. I'm assuming that it was approached from an angle of this is just casual questioning. Okay, so informal, not official necessarily. And remember Sudbury was usually on drugs cases and Jones wasn't even really a cop. So I don't know exactly what their angle was and why they chose to do this other than they felt that he was responsible.
00:05:57
Speaker
Would anything he said be admissible? I don't believe so at that point. And this interview does not come up again. It's just that we know that they went to speak to him. Okay. Because remember, at this point, we know Driver has that list, he gave it to Don Bray and then gave that list to Sudbury and Jones. So this sounds like a middle school rumor passing hands. It's just it's everywhere.
00:06:20
Speaker
But it is a bit odd, there's no notes from that and we don't know exactly what was discussed with any official capacity. So driver gave the list to Don Bray, he gave the list to Sudbury and Jones. Sudbury then gave the list to an officer by the name of Shane Griffin, who was another narcotics detective. So he's
Questionable Investigation Methods
00:06:36
Speaker
not in the homicide unit, he works with narcotics. Griffin and another officer went to Marion to interview Jason about the murders. However, at the time, Damien and Dominique were there and so they ended up kind of interviewing all of them.
00:06:49
Speaker
they were asked where they were the night of the murders the three said that they three said that on Wednesday May 5th 1993 they had gone to Jason's uncle's house where Jason had mowed the lawn and then Damien had called his father to pick them up from a laundromat that was nearby. They were picked up at six and then they were taken Jason and Dominique were taken home and Damien went home with his family. So again all three were they were questioned right there on Jason's front lawn.
00:07:16
Speaker
According to Devil's Knot, they were not told they were suspects. They were not read their Miranda rights and they were not told they could have a lawyer present for this questioning. It was not labeled as official questioning. Hmm. That's a little shady. Mm-hmm.
00:07:31
Speaker
Damien actually ended up giving them the names of his therapists and psychiatrists. He told them that he'd been in a mental hospital previously, that he'd been in several mental hospitals previously. He was on antidepressants and that he was a diagnosed manic depressive and schizophrenic. Griffin, because they took notes this time, Griffin noted that Damien said he was a previous practicing Wiccan of the covenant of the divine light and that he used to practice white witchcraft and that Dominie was four months pregnant with Damien's child. Damien really doesn't have a filter.
00:08:01
Speaker
No, he really doesn't. And it seems like he's giving a lot of trust to these people. And again, they're not saying we're here to question you about the murders. They're just police officers showing up. And even when you're a punky, rebellious teenager who's into darker things or things that are considered abnormal, especially in 93, I feel like there's an ingrained trust, which maybe it's just ingrained trust in adults, ingrained trust in authority. And I don't know if he just felt comfortable talking about it or what.
00:08:29
Speaker
Or if you don't have anything to hide, why would you? That's true. If you're not, if you're innocent, why worry about it? But Sudbury had a list of questions to ask. When he asked Damien if he knew the three victims, Damien denied that. He knew any of the boys and said that anyone who would commit a crime like this was sick. When asked if he knew how they'd been killed, he said that he'd heard they'd been cut up.
00:08:55
Speaker
He was then asked, do you believe in God? And Damien said, yes, but a female God. He doesn't believe in the devil. He believes in an evil force. When asked if he would take a polygraph, he said, no reason I would fail, and agreed that he would take a polygraph if needed. And then Subberry also asked, why would your prince be in the area or at the crime scene? And Damien said, they won't be. So again, he's coming across as he doesn't believe
00:09:22
Speaker
You know, as you said, he was very open and honest with his answers. He does not seem concerned that he will be considered a suspect. Jason Damien's friend was also questioned so that he did not know the three boys. And when he was asked, how do you think they died and how do you think the killer felt? He said he did not know. He also said that he agreed that the killer should get the death penalty. When he was asked if he believed in God, Jason said, yes, I do believe in God.
00:09:48
Speaker
Both boys were also asked how they felt about being questioned. And Damien said he felt scared. And Jason said it made him feel like a suspect. Yeah. At this point, they're being questioned. It's becoming more and more obvious that this is in relation to these murders and that they think that they had something to do with it. But at that point, Jason's mother, Gail Grennel, showed up and she was very angry. Now, remember, Jason is 16 years old. He is a minor and he's being questioned on the spot without his parents.
00:10:16
Speaker
Dominique is also a minor. I believe she was 17 at this time. Damien was 18 years old, but she just comes home and there are police officers questioning her son on her front lawn without her present. She was very angry and she made the officers leave. Good. As she should. On Monday, May 10th, Sudbury requested that Damien come into the station for an interview. Lieutenant Sudbury and Brian Ridge questioned him.
00:10:41
Speaker
They noted that Damien was cold and they also asked him several questions about his thoughts about the case, which is a little bit interesting to me. They found out during this interview that Damien knew a piece of information that had been held pretty close to the chest. I didn't mention this in part one because I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to because I try not to get into gory details if it's unnecessary. But on the scene of the crime, for some reason it was believed that the boys had been forced to swallow urine. Oh. Because remember it was believed
00:11:10
Speaker
that they had potentially been sexually assaulted. And so when the lead detective for this case, remember when he wrote that letter and he was getting desperate because he wasn't getting any answers about any of the forensic testing done to the bodies. One of the things he questioned was what about the urine in the mouth was a urine in their stomach.
00:11:29
Speaker
They found out that Damien knew about this. However, this piece of information had not been released to the press. It was something they'd held close to the chest, which was not something that happened with a lot of the information for this case. As we'd spoke for earlier, facts were flying like, again, middle school rumors. It was very open when everyone thought about this case. When they asked him how he knew about that, he said that Jones had told him two days earlier when he'd stopped by and randomly questioned him.
00:11:57
Speaker
Oh, when there were no notes. When there were no notes. There was no report that Jones was ever questioned about this or that he had given Damien this information. They'd never asked him about that. What? I would want to know if my officers were releasing important information. Right. And remember, Jones is not a cop.
00:12:18
Speaker
Oh, that's right. He's a assistant parole officer, juvenile parole officer. So while he might have had this information, he definitely did not have clients to be sharing it. So at this point, Damien agreed to give both hair and blood samples and said that he would take a polygraph. There are many polygraphs given throughout this entire piece. One detective is behind them all, a man by the name of Detective Durham. So he gave Damien his polygraph, but there are no results, like no notes of his results.
00:12:47
Speaker
The only notes they have are from Detective Ridge that Durham had come to Ridge after and said that Damien had been untruthful and that the polygraph had proven that he was involved in the murders. Can polygraphs actually prove? No. They can show signs of deception. They can show markers, like biometric markers that show that your breathing pattern has changed,
Satanic Panic Motive
00:13:09
Speaker
your fidgety, your heart rate has ticked up. It's not a true serum. It's not like going to flash a red light that says,
00:13:16
Speaker
He's lying, or he's telling the truth. They're a good, I always consider them a good kickoff point, like a good starting point. You can have someone take a polygraph, and if they show signs of deception, you can press on that weak spot. And you can say, we know you're lying, or this shows us that you're lying, or that you have more information, but they are not often admissible in court because they are not reliable. They're not 100% foolproof. You can fail a polygraph and be telling the truth. You can pass a polygraph and be lying through your teeth.
00:13:46
Speaker
So to say that it showed that he was not that he had been involved in the murders. It's odd. You can also think of a polygraph as a yes or no question. So it's not like it would show yes or no deception. It wouldn't show when we talked about the murders that he was involved button lit up. It just doesn't make sense to me. And it might just be that this was in 1993 and perhaps polygraphs were given more credence back then. And I mean, this this was 30 years ago at this point.
00:14:15
Speaker
Like we just had the 30 year anniversary of these murders. So it could just be outdated information at this point. But I do think that the way these polygraphs were used were a little bit deceptive. We'll get more into why I think that later. So within four days, Damien and Jason were officially considered suspects. New reports were focused on the Satanism aspect of the investigation.
00:14:43
Speaker
Um, churches in the area spoke openly about the murders and the satanic cultists who were responsible. This is in a really religious area. It's during the middle of satanic panic. We talked about that last week. The public is very scared and they're openly discussing what they believed to be the truth that satanic cultists had killed these children. Now back to more polygraphs. Dominie's 17 year old cousin, LG Hollingsworth Jr. was also questioned.
00:15:10
Speaker
following an anonymous tip that was called in saying that they thought LG was responsible and that his mother, Narlene, was covering for him. So they called him in, detected Durham gave him a polygraph, and they told him that his polygraph showed that he was involved in the murders. And when they told him that, LG said that he thought Damien was responsible. Narlene Hollingsworth was questioned and she said that she'd seen her niece, Dominique, and Damien walking on May 5th
00:15:39
Speaker
along the west side of the highway between 9 30 and 10 p.m. She also stated that both teens were wearing muddy pants. Though this would have been along the embankment where the boys bodies were eventually found. No one else could confirm this. We have so many reports from that night between those times because that's when they thought those boys were in the woods. And I believe this is one of the only people who said that they saw them. And this is directly after her son had been accused of being involved in the murders.
00:16:07
Speaker
Oh yeah, mom's going to say, well, I shouldn't. Most likely a mother would be willing to lie for her son. And just think about what your mind can do to convince yourself that, oh yeah, I definitely saw them there. Yeah. I don't know. But after this, the detectives contact Jerry Driver and receive more information. Deanna Holcomb, 16 year old Damien's ex-girlfriend.
00:16:33
Speaker
was also polygraphed, and Durham reported that Deanna was also lying about her involvement. Specifically, Durham said that Deanna had lied when she said she didn't know who killed the boys. She then told police that she believed Damien was involved. Well, she could have been hiding who she believed had killed the boys. Right. But that doesn't mean that she knew for sure. She could have just believed it.
00:16:58
Speaker
Also, we'll get into the rumors later. Rumors were flying that Damien Echols was involved. So if you heard on the street and maybe you feel in
Jesse's Implication and Background
00:17:09
Speaker
your heart that you believe this could have happened, I could show deception or maybe you're just scared. You're 16 years old and you're taking a polygraph test. And they're asking you about your ex-boyfriend. And now they think that he's a child murderer. I'd be terrified. Yeah.
00:17:29
Speaker
So Pam Eccles, Damien's mother, was also questioned. She said that on May 5th, the family went around three o'clock to visit a family friend and the friend was not home. So they left a note with the friend's daughter. They then went to the pharmacy to pick up Damien's medication and then they went home and stayed home. Damien reportedly spoke on the phone with two girls from Memphis and this was all able to be confirmed.
00:17:53
Speaker
They went back to the house. They were able to get the note from the friend's daughter. They were able to go to the pharmacy, and while the pharmacy did not have time stamps of when things were picked up, they do report that medication for Damien Eccles was picked up that day. The two girls that Damien was talking to till about, I believe it was around 11 p.m. that night, they both confirmed that they'd been on the phone with Damien that night. Well, okay.
00:18:17
Speaker
So now we're going to go back to Vicky Hutchison. Oh, Vicky. Now on May 13, 1993, Bray interviewed Vicky again. And he asked her if she knew anything about the occult. She said no. But later that day, she would call back and say that she'd heard that there was a local teenage cult and that she would try and find more information for Bray. Can I ask a question real quick? Does anybody know who the members of this cult are? Well, Damien Eccles, of course.
00:18:47
Speaker
But in order to have a cult, you need to have more than one person. Well, throughout the stories of the occult, which Vicky will give us more information, you'll find that she knows of a couple members very specifically, but everyone else is always reported to either be wearing face paint or she can't see them because it's dark. So the others are always vague background people. Hmm.
00:19:11
Speaker
Excellent question though. Proceed. But Vicky said she'd heard about this local teenage cult and that she would try and get some more information for Bray. This is where we're going to hear about the third member of the West Memphis Three, Jesse Miss Kelly Jr. Jesse lived near Vicky and would babysit for her on occasion. She never really explained how she landed on him as an end to the occult, but I will mention that Jesse's name was on driver's list of eight.
00:19:41
Speaker
Okay. Did Driver ever explain what inspired his list of eight? These were just eight teenagers that he had worked with that he believed to have ties to the occult that he thought could be violent enough to commit these murders. I believe Dominique Tear was on that list because she was with Damien Eccles and she was expecting his child. And there's a rumor that comes out later about their child specifically. Oh no. Yeah.
00:20:06
Speaker
And so it's just that he thinks these teenagers are dangerous or these people are dangerous and that he just believed that they would end up in a situation where they would murder someone. So he really didn't have much proof beyond that he just thought that they would do this. Okay. Jesse lived with his father. His father was a mechanic and he lived in a trailer park. Jesse, Ms. Kelly, Sr. was known as Big Jesse and Jesse, Ms. Kelly, Jr. was known as Little Jesse.
00:20:35
Speaker
Jason Baldwin knew Jesse since grade school. He did not appear to be close with him, but Vicky planned on using little Jesse to get in with Damien, despite the fact that Damien and Jesse were not friends. Damien was best friends with Jason and Jason knew of Jesse and Jesse knew of Jason. They were always civil to each other, but they weren't friends in the sense that they were people who hung out regularly. Jesse was known as a fighter. He was a short guy. He was barely over five feet.
Vicki's Dubious Involvement
00:21:05
Speaker
And Jesse himself would say that he stuck up for others because he knew what it was like to be picked on.
00:21:11
Speaker
He had a self-admitted quick temper and was known to have been a fighter since K-5. He had also been labeled as someone with a learning disability and as someone with behavior problems. In fact, the social workers and school officials would become involved multiple times throughout his childhood. As a child, he would rage and destroy things. He was taken to multiple psychologists, both who would all recommend hospitalization and treatment to assist him to be able to do better personally
00:21:42
Speaker
more stability. They were ignored by his parents and Jesse would be kept in school. Jesse was also very attached to his father despite it being reported by Big Jesse himself to a psychologist that Big Jesse also had a quick temper and played rough with Little Jesse, roughing him up and quote, play punching him across the room. This is something his father is openly admitting to a psychologist. Jesse was given an IQ score of 75 at age 10.
00:22:11
Speaker
and had a delayed vocabulary and was only in the third grade at the age of 10. And if we remember back to our desert killer episode that Sierra did, we know that for IQ testing to be considered accurate, you would need something to be displayed in childhood. And the 75, if I'm remembering that's like the borderline of what's considered intellectual, isn't like 70 and below is considered. Right. But the 70 to 75 range, that's where you have to give it some consideration. Gotcha.
00:22:41
Speaker
Jesse would actually drop out of high school at age 16. He had tried to drop out earlier, but had been told he had to stay in until he was 16 by a judge. He hated school. He was behind. He just did not like it. But again, he lived in that trailer park. He was out of high school, working odd jobs, and he babysat for Vicky occasionally. So when Vicky asked if he knew Damien, Jesse said he didn't know him well. When Vicky asked if Damien was into witchcraft, Jesse said he didn't know. He just knew that Damien was a weird person.
00:23:09
Speaker
When asked about Jason, Jesse said that he had known him since the sixth grade and that Jason was, quote, a nice person. Vicki told Jesse that she wanted to go out with Damien and Jay. How old is Vicki? I saw it reported between like 30 and 33 at varying times of the case. She's also a mother of, I believe, two. So it's a little creepy. Jesse didn't find it weird? No, not really.
00:23:39
Speaker
Damien was also 18, so maybe he just didn't care. Jesse agreed to help set it up. So Vicky told Bray, who told Driver, and both men agreed that Vicky should go undercover and try to get as much info as possible from Damien. Okay. She would pretend to be interested in witchcraft. And then one day, Jesse brought both Jason and Damien to Vicky's house. The next time they were in town, he was like, hey, come over here and brought him over to Vicky's house. Jesse then left.
00:24:09
Speaker
and then later saw Damien's mother drive to pick them up about 15 minutes later because it was well known fact Damien didn't drive. Hutchison said she'd started an eight day relationship with Damien. Said that he'd spoke at length about being questioned about the boys murders. She also said that this relationship was not in fact sexual. It was just a deeper relationship in which she was learning about witchcraft and that she had to pull information out of Damien that was hard to get him to talk but at the same time he spoke at length about being questioned about the boys murders.
00:24:40
Speaker
Well, I can assume that would be one of the big things in his life right now causing a lot of stress, but that it was hard. He didn't really talk much, but she was also able to get him to talk about that. So conflicting information there. Vicki also said that Damien had invited her to an spot, which is a gathering of witches on May 19th. She said that Damien had driven her and Jesse.
00:25:02
Speaker
in a Red Fort escort to a field where 10 young people were gathered with their faces and arms painted black. They were taking off their clothes and, quote, touching each other. Could we back up just a moment? Damien drove them to this event? Yep. The one who had his mother pick him up from her house? Yep, in a Red Fort escort. Did he own or anyone in his family owned a Red Fort escort?
00:25:29
Speaker
Actually reports show that no one in his family owned a Red Ford Escort, and he himself did not own a Red Ford Escort. He also did not have a driver's license. But I'm going to guess if you're willing to have an S-POT, which was really just a cover for some sort of massive group activity, and you're okay with murder, you really don't care if you're driving illegally? That's fair. But at the same time, you are right. It was reported that he didn't drive. It's already an odd situation. I'll say that.
00:25:59
Speaker
Vicky said she'd been offended and had asked Damien to take her back home and he left Jesse at the field and took her home. She said that she couldn't identify anyone because of the paint and because they'd all use fake names like Spider and Snake. Did she get- Satan. That one's a little obvious. Did she get out of the car to learn her names or were they like coming up to the window? I guess they were all just coming up to the window and saying, hey, I'm Spider.
00:26:27
Speaker
all while dancing in this field covered in black paint so she couldn't identify them and also getting naked. Let's not forget that part. I'm not quite sure how she saw how many people were there, what was going on, because as you mentioned earlier, some things already aren't adding up. That night was pitch black, no moonlight at all. She didn't say there was any moonlight, so it was very, very dark. She never mentioned any sort of elaborate witchy light system they had going on. I'm not sure that they had like twinkle lights on sticks in the field,
00:26:57
Speaker
or flashlights. She didn't say anything about that. Did they have like a bonfire? She didn't say that. They do talk multiple times about Satanists dancing around bonfires in this case, but there did not appear to be one that night. There just appeared to be lewd activity in a field in the dark. Man, these guys don't know how to throw in a spot. Is that what you call it? Yes. But yeah, there was no moon. There was no lighting system that she reported. Damien was known to not have a license and not only not having a license, he was known to not drive.
00:27:27
Speaker
and no one in his family had a Red Ford Escort. Or Red Ford in general. Anyway, more allegations would soon follow. On May 27th, Detective Ridge interviewed a man who said that Damien had told him that he raped the boys and used an 8-10 inch knife blade to stab them.
00:27:46
Speaker
not to get into too much detail. They could not prove that the boys were sexually assaulted. They only thought that maybe two of them were. Okay. They also were not stabbed to death. One of them did have some stab wounds. But that was not the way that they've been killed. So that's already kind of like
00:28:10
Speaker
not adding up, but anyway. But that was it, something that someone reported. So our three driving... Oh, sorry. Do we know who this person was? No, it was an anonymous allegation or someone who was kept anonymous. Oh, interesting. Our three driving forces for this satanic cult angle were a narcotics detective, a juvenile probation officer, and a waitress turned detective.
00:28:39
Speaker
I don't think she's a very good detective, but that's just me. However, lead investigator Gitchell was growing desperate. He'd had no information from the crime lab and there was growing pressure from the public, a public who believed that Satanists were at fault. So, Gitchell decided to speak to Vicki Hutchison and her eight-year-old son Aaron to see what they knew. Gitchell, Ridge, and Allen all drove to Marion to speak to Vicki.
00:29:06
Speaker
Vicky told officers that she'd already told Bray, and Bray told officers what information he'd gleaned from interviewing Aaron over several days over several different interviews. Aaron told Bray that the three boys and he would often sit in the woods and spy on five men who would gather in the woods, sing and chant about the devil around a fire, and do quote what men and ladies do.
00:29:31
Speaker
At another interview, Vicky would give police an earring, a pewter earring of a skull with a snake coming out of one of the eye sockets. She said it belonged to Damien and was proof that he had been in her house like she had said and that he'd left it there. Furthermore, Aaron would say that the earring matched what he'd seen one of the men in the woods wearing. How was he close enough to see their earrings? Not sure. They were hiding in the trees. Also,
00:29:57
Speaker
If they didn't believe his story about Michael getting into the car, how in the world is his story about the woods true? And if it is, why are they not questioning his mother for letting him be out in the woods? It was the 90s. Well, it was the, it was the 90s first of all. So the children were, it was knowing that kids would hang out there, but I, you're right. Why are they, they wouldn't trust him that he caught into a car with a random man they'd never seen.
00:30:26
Speaker
but now they're willing to let him say five men were having intercourse in the woods and chanting her out of fire. And all four of us had watched that and seen it happen. And Aaron actually has much more to say later on. We'll get into that here in a sec. Officers asked Vicki if they could hide a recording device in her room so the next time Damien came over, they could record him and try and trap him that way. Vicki agreed and per police reports a recording was made but was of such poor quality
00:30:54
Speaker
Damien's voice could not be clearly heard, or it could not be determined to be him. The tape has since been lost. Of course, like everything in this case, and my sanity. Mm-hmm. Hodgeson would be given a polygraph, and Durham would say that Vicky was telling the truth.
Coerced Confessions
00:31:12
Speaker
Of course she was. This gave detectives hope. From here on out, Damien Eccles would become their prime suspect. He already was. However, when Jesse was questioned later about going to this field for this spot,
00:31:24
Speaker
with the other cult members and with Vicky, he would not go into the field. He would say that Damien did not drive. And Jesse throughout all of this was unaware that Vicky was discussing him with the police at all.
00:31:40
Speaker
In early June, Jesse actually stayed on Vicky's couch overnight as Vicky's boyfriend was at work and she was scared of reports of a prowler being on the loose. So according to both Vicky and Jesse, Jesse slept on the couch and the next morning, Jesse's father arrived and told Jesse that there was a Detective Sergeant Mike Allen wanting to speak with him. Because the detective was with his father, Jesse was not concerned and agreed to speak with the detective.
00:32:05
Speaker
Around 9.45, Jesse left and would go to the police station with Allen. Allen told Jesse that he wanted to ask him some questions about the murders, but first Jesse's father would need to sign some paperwork. Remember, Jesse is a minor. Jesse said his father would be fine with that, and the two went to go find Big Jesse. However, on the way, Detective Allen told Jesse that there was a $35,000 reward out for anyone who knew anything. That if they knew anything,
00:32:34
Speaker
and would tell police, they would get that money. Now remember, this is a very poor area. These are very poor individuals. When they found Big Jesse, Big Jesse told his son that if he knew anything, well, Little Jesse needed to tell the police, and then his father would be able to buy himself a new truck if Jesse knew anything. Big Jesse signed the paperwork to let Little Jesse receive a polygraph exam.
00:33:03
Speaker
Per police records, they did read Jesse's rights twice, and Jesse was given a polygraph by Durham, who repeated questions, told him he was lying, and told him that he knew that he sold drugs. So this polygraph, it's very aggressive. He said that Jesse showed deception when he'd been asked if he was in Robin Hood Woods, if he'd been involved with devil worship, attended a devil worship ceremony. He asked him, are you involved in this murder? Do you know who murdered those three boys?
00:33:31
Speaker
Jesse denied involvement with the murders and also denied knowing who committed these murders at all. He also denied being involved with devil worship.
00:33:41
Speaker
I also saw in Devil's Knot that he reported that he was upset about this polygraph because he told him that he was lying. And at first they said, we know you've done drugs. And he said, no, I haven't. And then we know you're lying. And he said, well, yeah, I am. I have done drugs. And then I said, we know you're selling drugs. And then he said that he got upset because they were getting onto him for lying when they were lying because he had never sold drugs.
00:34:05
Speaker
Jesse was actually on driver's radar because he had stolen flags from a local high school because he was going to start a business and needed the flags for that. That put him on driver's list of eight? That put him on driver's list of parolees. Oh, parolees. Just different experiences added him to that list of, oh, I think he could kill somebody. With a flag.
00:34:32
Speaker
I'm sorry. I, I'm clearly not being very unbiased, but I'm just the listener. So I want to say what I want. I'm not being terribly unbiased either. And as we said before, we are not unbiased. We don't just, we just don't present opinions as facts. Um, but anywho,
00:34:50
Speaker
These interrogations were not recorded, but we do know that Jesse said that after his polygraph, he was taken into another room and questioned. He said officers were yelling at him, asking him questions about the murder. Who did it? What did he know? And then after insisting that he didn't know who did it, he just knew of it. Jesse says he finally just started going along with detectives. At one point, he was asked if he knew what the boys were tied up with. Remember, boys were tied up with the shoelaces from their own shoes.
00:35:21
Speaker
And when he was asked that question, Jesse said yes. And then asked, well, what were they tied up with? He said rope. Gitchell said, Jesse, don't mess with me. They were tied up with shoestrings. It sounds to me like Jesse doesn't know what happened. And again, these are interrogations, not recorded. All we know is what Ridge wrote in his reports and what Jesse has said happened. So if we want to acknowledge a bias, it is someone who is being accused of this crime like they said happened. But there's also the notes from the detectives.
00:35:51
Speaker
So according to Ridge, after the polygraph, Jesse said he'd received a call from Jason Baldwin. Jason said they were going to go out and murder some boys and hurt them. Jesse would also say that he'd seen a picture of the murdered children at a cult meeting. He also said the cult meetings were held on Wednesdays and that they were held in Robin Hood Woods. He also mentioned that there will be animal sacrifices at this meeting, but that there was no meeting the Wednesday the children were killed and no sacrifices were made of animals that day.
00:36:19
Speaker
He also said that Jason and Damien were sleeping together, that Jason has a folding knife. Damien watched the boys in the woods. He'd gotten a call from Jason where Damien could be heard shouting, we did it in the background. Jesse would also be shown a photo of one of the victims in the morgue. He would say it was one of the boys in the photo shown at the meeting. Jesse would originally say that Jason and Damien had killed the kids and that he was not there. This would change, however, and Jesse would eventually say that he was present and that he had witnessed the murders.
00:36:50
Speaker
This is when police would decide to start videotaping the interrogation. Throughout the interrogation, Jesse seems to almost be led by police. He doesn't really offer information, but the information is constantly changing. At one point, he says that Damien hit Michael Moore, but he points to a picture of Chris Byers.
00:37:15
Speaker
police confirm that he means Byers and then reiterates that Damien hit, then the police would reiterate Damien hit Chris Byers in the head. Despite having never specified where the boy had been hit, Jesse would say yeah. So throughout this interview, they would kind of add an information to get him to agree.
00:37:31
Speaker
So throughout there were several issues with Jesse's confession. For one, he places Damien, Jason, and himself all in Robin Hood Hills with the three boys in the morning despite the fact that all three boys were in school from the morning until 2.45 pm. This is proven by school records and it's also proven by everyone who saw these three boys on their bikes and on that skateboard after 2.45 into the evening.
00:37:55
Speaker
Throughout, Jesse would say he left the scene before seeing the murders, but police would place him back on the scene. And he would say things like, I left. And then police would say, but when you came back, they were tied up. And Jesse would say yes.
00:38:09
Speaker
So he would leave the scene and then they'd bring him back and then they'd ask him a question and he'd say yes. So throughout his interrogation, many, many times he says, I left. I went home. I don't know. I left. I went home. But then they'd be like, right, right, right, you left. But when you came back and it was just, it's placing him back on the scene. Jesse also says they were there at noon. Jesse says that the three boys had skipped school, which is not true.
00:38:39
Speaker
He says that one boy only had his hands tied and that the boys could have run away, but didn't. This overlooked the fact that the boys had their hands tied to their feet. Remember it was wrist to ankle, wrist to ankle. Right. He also repeated multiple times that the boys had been raped despite the fact that evidence did not show that sexual assault had occurred. After repeatedly saying that he did not see any of the boys murdered, he eventually said that Chris Byers had been strangled. It's important to note, Chris Byers had no major injuries reported around his neck.
00:39:11
Speaker
Ridge finally asked how long after he'd gone home had he received that phone call from Jason? 30 minutes or an hour. This helped close that timeline problem where Jesse said that he'd been in the woods from 9am and left at noon. He said he'd gotten the phone call at 9pm.
00:39:29
Speaker
Jesse thought about it and said he'd gotten the call an hour after he'd left the woods. So now instead of Jesse being in the woods from 9am to noon, and then getting a call at 9pm, hours later, now detectives have made it so, when did you get that call? Half an hour or an hour after you left? So now they're having him leave at the earliest 8pm, which fits the timeline of when the boys went missing. Are they allowed to lead the questions like that? Legally? Not really.
00:39:58
Speaker
No, definitely not. I don't know legally what the repercussions of this would be, other than just terrible, terrible interview technique. I'm just leading the witness. But it's not right.
00:40:13
Speaker
Yeah, and you need to and we need to remember that Jesse is he's like mild intellectual disability or like right on the cusp of that and he knows if he provides information like he's going to get that nice truck for his dad like his dad who he's very attached to. Yeah.
00:40:30
Speaker
And again, it's not like it comes out later. He doesn't quite understand the scope of what he's saying. Let's actually get back into this. So police concluded the interview. It was past 3 p.m. Remember, he'd gone into custody at 9 45. Jesse had been at the station since 10 a.m. And out of the nearly six hours that he'd been there, only 34 minutes of his interviews had been recorded.
00:40:55
Speaker
They then took a 27 minute break. They interviewed Jesse again, and now Jesse was saying that they've been in the woods at 5 or 6 pm. Hmm. Mitchell says, earlier you said 7 or 8, so they do acknowledge the fact that his story has changed. Jesse then says it was 7 or 8.
00:41:13
Speaker
Then he says it was getting dark. He then asks about, then that line of questioning is somewhat abandoned, and then Gitchell asks what they used to tie up the boys. Jesse says Jason and Damian tied them up. And when he was asked what they'd used, he again said a rope. The boys have been tied with black and white shoestrings. And when asked what color the rope was, Jesse says it was brown. Brown rope.
00:41:40
Speaker
They move on to ask what if or any sexual assault had been perpetrated. Jesse says incorrectly, Myers and Branch have been assaulted by both Jason and Damien. He meant Byers, not Myers. More specifics were given, but I will not be discussing them here. I will simply say that Jesse said one thing happened during the sexual assault. Gitchell left the room, came back, recounted the same action using slightly different terminology.
00:42:04
Speaker
but not terminology, that would be confusing. It was clearly the same action. And Jesse then denied that it had happened at all. So if you want more information, the book, Devil's Not, does have that explicitly listed, but I don't, I'm not going to say that. And I don't really need to apologize for not saying that. So after this, the interview was concluded and Jesse was taken to a holding cell. He was not told he was being arrested, however, and later said that he thought he was being taken there to wait for his father to come pick him up.
00:42:31
Speaker
However, throughout his ever-changing confession, he had at one point said he held on to one of the boys who had tried to run, thus implicating himself in a triple homicide. At
Arrests and Trials Begin
00:42:44
Speaker
this point, detectives are sprinting to arrest Damian Eccles and Jason Baldwin.
00:42:50
Speaker
Detectives would file an affidavit saying they had a probable cause to arrest 16-year-old Jason Bolbin and 18-year-old Damien Echols for murder. At this point, they would get a search warrant approved for Jason, Damien, and Dominie's homes, and they would be searched. On June 14th, the police would announce to the public that the killers had been arrested. Oh, they're not supposed to do that yet.
00:43:12
Speaker
Not quite. It's not uncommon to hear someone say we got our man, but you don't want to. I guess I'm thinking from a newspaper's perspective. If the newspaper is reporting what the cops said, that's fine. But if a newspaper were to just say they were killers, yeah.
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah, so it's not illegal, but it's probably not the wisest decision to make. Gitchell announced that all three boys had been suspect since early on in the investigation. For most of these questions though, Gitchell would answer no comment to questions about the case. But when asked on a scale of one to 10, how confident he was that they had the killers in custody, Gitchell would smile and say, in 11. It's pretty confident, Gitchell.
00:43:55
Speaker
Now we're going to move on to the trial. They really had no evidence beyond statements from Vicky and Jesse and mostly from minors around town. There was no evidence to hold Jason specifically. Police would need more information if they wanted to nail this case down and they'd get it in the form of eight-year-old Aaron Hutchison.
00:44:17
Speaker
Oh, okay, now we listen to Aaron. I'm sure he has not inherited his mother's vivid imagination. Aaron would reportedly tell police that he had seen the three accused and two others kill his friends in the woods that day. Bray would question Aaron, and Aaron's account seemed disjointed, at one point saying that Jesse had told Aaron to bring his friends to the woods, and even saying that he himself had been grabbed and held before being able to kick away from his captor.
00:44:44
Speaker
Now, Aaron's confession involves five people. There is never an effort that I can see to find these other two. All three boys were given court-appointed lawyers, and they were all too poor to hire personal legal counsel. Jesse would write a letter to his parents saying that he hadn't committed the crime that he had confessed to.
00:45:04
Speaker
Actually, Jesse's lawyer, he had two, Greg Crow and Dan Sidon. His lawyer said he was annoyed with his client since he could not imagine someone confessing to a crime that he hadn't committed. He assumed Jesse's attempt to recant his confession was a lie and that his original confession had been the truth. Actually,
00:45:23
Speaker
he would tell his father, Jesse would tell his father that he didn't do it. But then when he was talking to his lawyers, he would sometimes deny, but then he'd also just get like a regurgitated confession from his initial police confession. His lawyer would discover that he had no idea that his legal counsel was there to represent him and his interests. He thought they were just like another set of police officers and that they were just going along. He was just going along with what these lawyers thought.
00:45:54
Speaker
Actually at one point Jesse asked his lawyer if he knew who Satin was. His lawyer was confused and asked him to reiterate what he had said and Jesse showed him a pamphlet that he received from a preacher with the word Satan on it. The accused occultist murderer couldn't even read the name of the being he served.
00:46:17
Speaker
According to police. Look, they don't have much time for reading when they're out in the middle of the night dancing around a bonfire, Kaylee. Well, he also would report that he knew of the devil, but Satan wasn't familiar to him. Oh. Damien would work with his two lawyers, Val Price and Scott Davidson, as well as a volunteer private investigator, Ron Lacks, who had offered his services. It was actually Ron Lacks who found out that the urine thing that we mentioned earlier, no records indicate that urine was found.
00:46:46
Speaker
on or in the boy's bodies. They use that against Damien at one point that he knew about it, how would he know about it, and then there's also no record of it. Damien said he was sure nothing would happen as he was innocent. At one point, he told police that he'd tell them everything he knew if they would let him speak to his mother. Police were ecstatic. They thought they finally were going to get a confession. They called Pam Eccles in. He spoke to his mom. Police set up a camera finally ready to tape this confession.
00:47:14
Speaker
Damien told them all he knew was nothing because he was not involved. Despite this cockiness, this surety in his innocence, it was recorded that Damien did attempt suicide during this time and that he reported that he was growing scared, telling a social worker that he was sure a jury wouldn't believe him and that he felt like a walking razor blade.
00:47:36
Speaker
Damien's journal entries during this time were dire, but his letters to his family and his girlfriend were surprisingly upbeat. He wrote to Domini to tell her that he told his mom to buy Domini an engagement ring with her next check. So Domini was pregnant at the time, and he'd written that he'd hoped he'd be out in time to see their baby being born.
00:47:58
Speaker
Throughout this time, records were slowly released, but they were disorganized and difficult to untangle. Damien's lawyers
Convictions and Public Influence
00:48:05
Speaker
would ask about Vicky Hutchison, and Damien told his lawyer that he'd stayed at her house for like an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and then left, which is different than Vicky's eight-day relationship that she had described to police. When Vicky was tracked down and asked about her info, she would say that she did not remember exactly what happened.
00:48:28
Speaker
Like every trial on August 4th, 1993, they were charged with three counts of capital felony murder and asked the three were asked how they would plead and all three answered not guilty. Judge Burnett was selected to officiate this trial. Jesse would be tried separately from the other two because Miss Kelly's his confession could not be admitted against his co-defendants.
00:48:49
Speaker
So if they wanted it to go against them, he could not be a codefendant in this trial. He had to have his own trial. Thus, he was tried separately. None of the three would plead not guilty by reason of insanity. All three would choose to try and plead actual innocence, meaning that they did not do the crime at all, not that they were not culpable for the crime. Before the trial,
00:49:09
Speaker
Jesse and Jason both tried to be tried as juveniles because they're both minors. Jason tried to be tried as a juvenile by merit based on his lack of previous records. I think he had a minor record, something that would have been sealed when he turned 18. His school history, just merit in general, that he was not known as a violent individual. Jesse tried to get a juvenile trial based on his intellect and just general learning and education disabilities.
00:49:38
Speaker
However, both were refused and they would be tried as adults. There was very, very thin evidence, honestly. They really had no reason to be holding Jason at all. They had nothing to prove that he was involved. And his mom at one point went to go speak with somebody about that and was basically given the run around and told that she would have to get a lawyer in order to get him released. But remember, they don't have money.
00:50:08
Speaker
So when we go to trial, I'm going to kind of, there's a lot of information on the trial and this is kind of where I decided to take some, not shortcuts, but to mash the information back down because a lot of this will be rediscussed next week when we go into their retrial because there's a retrial obviously. I have a quick question while you're finding your... Go for it. Was the trial, did it happen in that area or did they have to move it because of the press coverage?
00:50:34
Speaker
I believe they tried to move Jesse's trial and they successfully moved Jesse's, but Jason and Damien's when they were in that county. Okay. Let me see here. So just reiterate, June 3rd, they were all arrested. And then on June 9th, that's when the police would interview Aaron Hutchinson, who then tells them that
00:51:01
Speaker
they he witnessed that murder. Their pre-trial is August 4th and this is also when Judge Burnett allowed Jesse's confession to be admitted as evidence despite the fact there was overwhelming evidence that it had been coerced and this is also when he said the defendants would be tried as adults rather than juveniles. And then in November we go to actual trial and on November 10th Burnett ruled that Miss Kelly's trial would open in
00:51:29
Speaker
Corning, Arkansas in January and that Baldwin and Eccles trial would take place in Jonesboro in February. So Jesse would be tried first. In December of 1993, the defense attorney Ron Lacks, that private investigator, he actually found evidence that Aaron Hutchinson, the day the boys were murdered, he could be seen by neighbors playing in the trailer park, that he was not at the murders.
00:51:53
Speaker
watching his friends be slaughtered like he said he had been. But I was so convinced. He saw the earring. Not the earring. There's some knife evidence that gets ignored by police, specifically police questioned John Mark Byers about a knife that was given to a film crew. This evidence, this interview is very damning, and we'll get into that in part three, but it is ignored by police and not used throughout trial. And then on February 5th, 1994,
00:52:20
Speaker
Jesse Miskelli Jr. is convicted on one count of first degree murder and two counts of second degree murder and is sentenced to 40 years in prison and he is sent to a facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Now he got one count of first degree murder because he remember said that he had held on to one of the boys and then two counts of second degree because he had watched, quote unquote, Jason and Damien murder to others. In February of 1994,
00:52:50
Speaker
After being pressured by prosecutors, Jesse agreed to testify against Echol's involvement in their trial that was upcoming. So under oath, Jesse then testified saying that he saw the murder of the boys and that they were directly involved. However, he was also again coerced saying that being told by investigators that if he testified, his girlfriend would be allowed to visit him in prison.
00:53:14
Speaker
So that statement was made under oath. However, in February, later February, he decides that he will not testify in the upcoming trial. So they just had that statement under oath. They just don't have him saying it at trial.
00:53:26
Speaker
So on February 19th, 1994, Jason and Damien's trial opens in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Throughout this, they offer Jason Baldwin many opportunities to testify against Damien. At one point, I believe they basically gave him a get out of jail free card and said, if you just testify against Damien, you can walk. Which is exactly what I would want to do for, you know, a child murderer that I think was involved. Just give him the freedom to walk away. If he testifies against his cult leader.
00:53:56
Speaker
This entire, I just want to get to the convictions. I have things to say. Okay. Sorry. This is very, I feel like I've been very detailed up until this point, but I really can't get into too much detail because we're going to get into it again next week. And I don't want to bog you down with details in this episode. Sorry, now we're long. Jury deliberation starts on March 17th and they reach a verdict by March 18th. So that was very fast. They find Damien Eccles and Jason Baldwin guilty of capital murder and the deaths of the three children.
00:54:26
Speaker
They then move on to sentencing, and then on March 21, Jason Baldwin is sentenced to life in prison, and Damien Eccles is sentenced to death. He received a death penalty. Yes, and his execution date is set from May 5th. That's a fast turnaround time. Extremely, but it's also right around the anniversary of the one year mark past these boys. Oh goodness. So Jason is also incarcerated at Pine Bluff, that's where they send Jesse, and Damien is sent to death row and the state's maximum security prison to await his execution.
00:54:55
Speaker
Now next week we will go into the appeals process and what goes on from there. But at the end of this trial with very little evidence and very much a coerced confession and just a lot of rumor and ridiculous testimony from an eight-year-old, they are able to convict three young men for the murder of these three boys. And as it stands right now in where we're at in this case,
00:55:19
Speaker
Jesse has been given 40 years in prison, Jason is sentenced to life in prison, and Damien has been sentenced to be executed in about six weeks from his trial date. And this entire trial was a mess throughout. There's so many quotes from this case that you hear. They bring in satanic experts that I didn't get into because it was really just a reiteration of everything else we've heard. But they talk about these satanists who paint their nails and hair black and
00:55:49
Speaker
they worship the devil and they will tattoo themselves and how this proves that they're part of the Satanic cult. There is a,
Bias and Alternative Lifestyles
00:55:56
Speaker
my mom's not gonna like that I know this, but there is a band called Black Veil Brides and they have a song called Knives and Pens. And if you listen to it, if you're not into like screamo metal music, don't listen to it. But metal, I guess, I don't know. I probably just finished metal hits. If you're not into screamo music, don't listen to it. But in the beginning, there is a clip from a documentary that's gonna be vital in the next part.
00:56:19
Speaker
or it's from the trial and I believe it's Jerry Driver talking about how they paint their fingernails black, they paint their hair black, and sometimes they will tattoo themselves and how this is all proof that they are involved in the occult. They had occult experts who knew nothing they would do. I have so many. Okay, unless you're just going to throw a curve ball at me next week and completely floor me, at this point, I don't believe that these three young men did it.
00:56:45
Speaker
So I am very angry because we have one of them sentenced to the death penalty much faster than, again, going back to Desert Serial Killer case. David Leonard was way faster. So little evidence. Clearly two of your prime, like, witnesses, your undercover detective and her eight-year-old are not very reliable.
00:57:06
Speaker
and i don't think the occult is anything to play around with i think it is something that's not good but i feel like for someone to be genuinely involved in the occult you'll see more signs than just like nail polish and weird like weird appearance like that's not enough to go off right and
00:57:28
Speaker
That's one thing that kind of gets a lot of people who are quote-unquote obsessed with this case. It's a lot of people who they themselves lead alternative lifestyles or they have an alternative appearance, which I'm not going to say. I was a massive emo teenager. I was also a devout Christian. But to this day, a lot of my tastes are alternative. The music I listen to, a lot of the things that I'm interested in, they're considered alternative. I don't have an interest in Satanism, but I have an interest in a lot of things that are considered darker or macabre.
00:57:57
Speaker
But just because of that, you can't really look at me and say, oh yeah, she's interested in terrible things. But yeah, it's crazy. One of the reasons this sticks out to a lot of people is it hits really close to home of that immediate judgment for something that is not like it's not two plus two equals four. This is random accusation, random grudge or faulty belief, random misconception and then prejudice meets incorrect assessment.
00:58:23
Speaker
And then you have people who believe that people are terrible people. They have this like, they have a prejudice, they have a bias. And they think that just because you are doing one thing that it means you're doing something else when really these things aren't involved. Like painting your fingernails black does not mean you're a Satanist. My fingernails are currently coffin shaped black acrylic nails. And I'm a devout Christian.
00:58:46
Speaker
So that's completely opposite. My hair is dyed an unnatural color. I had black hair throughout high school and I went to church with that black hair and worshiped God. Like you can't make that comparison. And I've heard so many people get so hung up on this just because they're very offended by the fact that he would assume that that
00:59:07
Speaker
just because he was into alternative stuff. Now Damien Echols was into a lot of alternative or just different religions. He was into, he had the satanic bible, but he also had the Christian bible. He had a bunch of religious texts and things like that. He was very interested in religion as a whole. But instead of looking at, oh, this kid, he has a bible, he literally named himself Damien after a Catholic saint. It was, oh, he writes dark poetry and he looks alternative. Therefore he must worship the devil.
00:59:37
Speaker
And it was this witch hunt pun not intended by one man to go after him because he disliked him. And that's what makes me really sad because like you can tell that Damien is searching for truth and then the people
00:59:49
Speaker
were supposed to point him to truth are kind of, you know, they're clouding it. And it's really sad. Another thing about this case that bothers me is the fact that it seems like, especially when you mentioned the one year date, it seems like by the end of it, especially, they were just eager to find someone who killed these boys. But at the same time, I think they just needed one scapegoat because like you said, they were willing to let Jason walk, even though they claimed to believe that he had done it.
01:00:17
Speaker
Right. And there are some quotes from the parents that I'll get into next week. And I think given what police are telling them, what this trial is showing them, it's completely valid to feel this way. But you have the high emotions of parents who have lost their children and what they're dealing with. But the public was mad. There was an outcry. They believed it was a Satanist. And so they wanted someone who fit the bill. And Damien Eccles unfortunately fit that bill perfectly.
01:00:42
Speaker
Like a kid with a history of mental, severe mental health crises. He had a girlfriend who got pregnant at a wedlock in a very conservative area. It was, he had long black hair. He was into alternative things. He was into alternative music. It was essentially a perfect storm. And I, I don't know, it really drives me crazy that this kind of judgment
01:01:09
Speaker
and bias was put on someone who didn't deserve it. And we'll have to discuss it when we have the full scope of this case, which that'll be out next week. Come, hello, high water.
01:01:22
Speaker
But yeah, that's where we're leaving right now. We just have the official consensus from this trial is that the three of them are guilty and that Damien Eccles is definitely the ringleader and that he is going to be sentenced to death. Do you have any specific questions about what we went over this week? No, I don't think so. I wish that someone else had been in charge of that police department because the record keeping is ridiculous.
01:01:48
Speaker
Yep. This is where I would like to remind everyone that while the case ends on a better note, well, I don't know. I don't believe in spoilers when it comes to true crime. While this may seem bad for Damien and Jesse and Jason, the Michael Moore, Chris Byers and Stevie Branch are the true victims and all this. They're all victims, but these are the victims who are going to, no matter what, they're being denied justice.
01:02:19
Speaker
And it's important to remember that the West Memphis Three, it always conjures up pictures of three teenage boys who were waylaid by their local police department and by the public, but it also should bring up pictures of these children who were failed completely. I really think we should start calling it the West Memphis Six. Honestly, because six people's lives were completely, like three lives were taken away and then three more lives are going to be forever changed. And if you know anything about the appeals process, it is not fast.
01:02:49
Speaker
and not sure to give you anything in the end. But we'll get into that next week. And thank you for sticking with us if you're out there still listening after we kind of went ghost for two weeks. We really appreciate you. And until next week. Be aware. Take care. And we'll see you next week. Bye. Goodbye.