West Memphis Three

Gonna check that out. Thanks.

The story fascinates me because, well, that could have been me. I grew up in a small town that went through a similar "devil worshiping kids" phase. I was friends with two of the guys who were accused of being in a satanic cult.

Never mind the fact that two of us were altar boys at church. They were branded devil worshipers because we all listened to heavy metal, we wore t-shirts of heavy metal bands and we had long hair. My two friends were actually investigated by the local police department. The cops never found anything other than drawings of snakes and dragons (which the cops did say were satanic signs LOL). Eventually, it all blew over, but I had to go an entire summer without contact with my two best friends because my mom bought into the whole propaganda.

Two of us remained best friends throughout high school, and after, until he was killed two years ago in Iraq. The other friend actually moved away our senior year (his mom got all religious and freaked out and moved the family to Utah). Last I heard, he was a software developer in Arizona with a wife and three kids.

The West Memphis Three is just a reminder that the justice system can be a complete farce at times.

 

Finally finished watching Part 3 today. The evidence seems to point toward Terry Hobbs, though it doesn't seem the state of Arkansas has a lot of zeal to re-open the case.

I was also impressed by how articulate and introspective Jason Baldwin was at the end, though I guess he had plenty of time to read during his time in prison. Then again, it's possible that closing monologue could have been written for him by any number of people.

 

Just watched the HBO documentary last night. I am blown away. I didn't know anything about this case until now, and I'm usually a fairly voracious defender of the accused in general.

There is no way in hell that those three kids did it. No way. None of it adds up, and it is completely antithetical to what common sense now tells us about motive and so forth. I recall the "devil worship" hysteria in the 1990s, and a lot of the same kind of stuff was used in the Willingham case.

Echols and Baldwin are more articulate than I am. Just normal, educated guys. Misskelley is, well, "mildly retarded," as they said in the film. It's almost shocking to see the three men today and imagine that the former two hung out with him. It just doesn't fit. But that's teen-agers for you.

Echols spent the last 18 years on death row. That's chilling. Hell, even if he had actually done it when he was 16, and turned into the man I watched in that documentary last night, I can't think of any way to justify putting him to death.

 

Damien Echols talks about his experience:

http://themoth.org/posts/storytellers/damien-echols