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In 1993 an Arkansas town in the heart of the Bible Belt was stunned when three eight-year-old boys were murdered. Were three local teenagers wrongfully convicted of the crime? True Crime with Aphrodite Jones s2e6: West Memphis 3, ID 2011
After a month-long investigation police arrested three teenagers [and] charged them with capital murder. ibid.
A gross miscarriage of justice. ibid.
A media preoccupied with stories about satanism and cults didn’t help. ibid.
Damien was Goth before Goth was cool. ibid.
Jessie’s statement was leaked to the press. ibid.
Police had no physical evidence linking any of them to the crime. ibid.
The resulting documentaries: Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills I and II aired on HBO in 1996 and 2000. The films were followed in 2002 by Arkansas reporter Mara Leveritt’s book Devil’s Knot. ibid.
There is new DNA evidence linking ... Terry Wayne Hobbs, the step-father of Stevie Branch. ibid.
Nothing short of a new trial can hope to change the fate of the West Memphis 3. ibid.
Four new possible suspects in the brutal killings of three boy scouts in Arkansas in 1993 have been named by attorneys in the case – and the stepfather of one of the boys is among them.
Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of eight-year-old victim Stevie Branch, has been named in documents released in Marian, Arkansas by the attorneys for Pam Hobbs, Stevie’s mother.
The new documents claim that Hobbs and three other men killed Stevie and two of his friends after they caught the boys spying on them while they were taking drugs.
The bodies of Stevie, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers, all eight years old, were found naked, tied with their shoelaces and mutilated in a ditch in West Memphis, Arkansas in May 1993. Mail online article 28th March 2013
Three young boys were brutally murdered … discovered in an area called Robin Hood Hills. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills I, HBO 1996
‘It appears satanic worship may have played a role in the murders.’ ibid. news report
Damien and Jason are tried together. They both claim to have been at home with their families on the night of the murders. Jessie Misskelley’s confession can’t be used in this trial unless he agrees to testify in person. Jessie would receive a reduced sentence in exchange for his testimony. ibid. caption
This film [Paradise Lost I] tells the tale of three teens who wear black, listen to Metallica and perhaps as a result were convicted in the 1993 killing of three young boys. Paradise Lost II: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills II: Revelations, HBO 2000
Between May 5 1998 and March 19 1999 a series of post-conviction appeal hearings take place. ibid.
Misskelley, whose IQ is 72, was questioned for over 12 hours without legal representation or access to his family. Only the last 45 minutes of his interrogation were actually recorded. ibid.
‘This is a classic case of how police can produce a false confession.’ ibid. defence expert
Mark Byers [father] asks to take a lie detector test. ibid. caption
‘They didn’t have the resources to fight the case.’ ibid. television commentator
‘Burn, you son of a bitch!’ ibid. Mark Byers sets ditch alight
According to dental records supplied by Mark Byers, his teeth were extracted by an oral surgeon on April 4 1997, almost four years after the murders. ibid.
‘This kid was bitten by someone, and this someone was not any of the three defendants.’ ibid.
For nearly two decades, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelly jr – the young men convicted of the murders – have maintained their innocence. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills III: Purgatory
In 2007 defense attorneys for Damien Echols held a press conference to review new evidence recently filed in court. ibid.
The defense maintains that the jury foreman, Kent Arnold, illegally discussed Jessie Misskelley junior’s confession during the jury deliberations at the Echols/Baldwin trial. ibid.
‘Terry Hobbs could be the source of that hair on the ligature. Approximately 1.5% of the population at large could be the source of that hair. None of the defendants could be the source of that hair, I believe.’ ibid. Thomas Fedor, forensic evidence
‘The local politicians tried to execute me. Even when DNA testing came out that excluded me and the other two men that they had convicted from the scene of the crime they still kept trying to kill me.’ Damien Echols, cited Life and Death Row: The Mass Execution II, BBC 2018
On May 5th 1993, three eight-year-old boys – Stevie Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers – were all brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas. The boys’ bodies were discovered in a shallow muddy creek. All three boys were nude with their ankles bound to their wrists … The mutilation led the original investigators to believe this was a satanic ritual. The Forgotten West Memphis 3: The Victims, Sky Crime 2020
They wanted to believe the killers had been caught despite any physical evidence linking them to the murders … A proper investigation in this case was never done. ibid.
West Memphis 3 Freed From Prison After Nearly 20 Years. ibid. Fox News headline
We may never know without a double who killed 3 little boys in 1993. Why not? Because all the evidence in the West Memphis 3 case was mysteriously destroyed. True Crime Recaps: West Memphis 3, Youtube 39.15, 2021
The state of Arkansas imprisoned 3 teenagers for the murders … The case against the 3 of them relied mainly on a false confession, unreliable witnesses and circumstantial evidence. No forensic evidence linked them to the crime – that didn’t mean forensic evidence didn’t exist. ibid.
The 3 teenagers spent 17 years in prison for these killings. ibid.
In the ’80s and early ’90s satanic panic was at an all-time high. ibid.
There are multiple explanations for everything in this case. ibid.
It seems that some people lied about how much they knew about the case to get on the jury. ibid.
There was no generic material on the victims’ bodies or on the scene linking them to the killings. And it would be pretty hard not to leave any DNA behind if they were doing the things Jesse claimed they did. ibid.