Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (45 page)

148. Shettles learned from her research that Damien had, in fact, attended nine schools in five states before the age of ten. Damien entered kindergarten in West Memphis in 1980. He attended first grade in schools in Tupelo, Mississippi; Walker, Louisiana; and back in West Memphis. Second grade was divided between Wichita Falls, Texas; and a school in West Memphis. He attended third grade in West Memphis; in Columbus, Mississippi; and in Frederick, Maryland.

149. Shettles wrote: “Michael stated he had ideas the world was to be destroyed as if in a nuclear war due to his mother talking about the world being destroyed as in the Book of Revelations. Michael told me he liked very scary movies and was a fan of Stephen King books. He described his favorite Stephen King book as being ‘The Children of the Corn.’…Michael states he became involved in Wicca, which is white witchcraft, through his relationship with Deanna…. Michael stated his main source of information regarding Wicca was ‘Buckland’s Complete Book on Witchcraft.’ He stated Wicca does not practice animal sacrifices or blood rituals in any way. He further stated participants do not engage in orgies and said he has never practiced bestiality or homosexuality. Michael described his talents as being a poet and a skateboarder.”

150. Driver and Jones had questioned Damien and Jason several times: when an abandoned school burned and dead cats and birds were found inside; when graves in a Marion cemetery were desecrated; and when Driver had found some dead animals at the abandoned cotton gin. Damien said he’d had nothing to do with the incidents but that, in light of the police attention, he had not been surprised when officers showed up at his door the day after the murders.

151. The autopsy reports on each of the boys specifically stated, “No adhesions or abnormal collections of fluid were present in any of the body cavities.”

152. After an interview with Damien’s mother, Shettles wrote: “Pam stated Michael and Jason would talk on the phone after they had been questioned by the police and would jokingly say, as an example, ‘This is Suspect Number One calling Suspect Number Two.’”

153. As information on the case was slowly being released to the defense attorneys, other information continued to be leaked to the media. Despite Gitchell’s stout refusal to speak with reporters, and the judges’ seal on the records, a reporter for the
Commercial Appeal
learned about a burglary in the neighborhood where the victims lived that had occurred a year before the murders. Word reached the paper that reports of the burglary had been included in the murder case file, and someone had even provided details. The burglar had reportedly stomped the family’s Yorkshire terrier to death and left it dead in the master bedroom. But when reporters asked to see police records on the incident, they were told that since the records were now part of the murder investigation, they fell under Judge Rainey’s seal. “This whole case is just so huge,” Gitchell told the paper. “Anything to do with it, be it significant or insignificant, we followed up on.” While defense lawyers worried about leaks they could not combat, neither the judges nor Fogleman complained. When asked about the murdered dog, Fogleman replied obliquely, “I’m not saying any crime is related. I’m saying it’s part of the investigative file.” In its report on the incident, the
Commercial Appeal
pointed out that Driver had noted “an increase in Satanic-related graffiti and reports of animal sacrifice.” In July, elements of Aaron Hutcheson’s statements to police were leaked. A Memphis television station reported that, at times before the murders, the victims and “a fourth eight-year-old child” had visited a tree house of sorts, which they had called “the clubhouse.” The boys had reportedly witnessed “wild, ritualistic orgies, possibly cult-related,” while hiding in the tree house. Gitchell would not comment.

154. Lax described one report, for example, dated a week before the arrests, as “a handwritten investigative report by Bill Durham regarding a search of the crime scene area for a tree with a tree house, as had been described by ‘a witness interviewed on May 27, 1993.’” Lax noted that “the correct tree was found, but there was no indication there had ever been a tree house in that particular tree.” Since the interviews with Vicki Hutcheson and her son Aaron had not yet been released, Lax and the lawyers were left to wonder why, so late in the investigation, police had returned to the woods to look for a tree house they might have missed. The media were also trying to piece together the puzzle of what had led to the arrests, but with even fewer clues.

155. Author interview, May 2001.

156. Emotions surrounding the case were inflamed in early August when the owner of a book store in Jonesboro, the city where Jason was being held, announced plans to lead a march on behalf of witches and pagans, in support of religious freedom. The event drew loud opposition. Steve Branch, Stevie’s biological father, condemned it in the press. “I’m telling everybody, if they believe in God and Christianity—even if they don’t go to church—to be out there,” he told the Memphis paper. Stevie’s grandmother Marie Hicks said she would not attend the march, because if she did, “I’d take a bunch of grenades with me.” The local chief of police said he was “preparing for the worst.” In August 1993, the high priestess for a Memphis group of Wiccans told the
Commercial Appeal
that “Wiccan do not acknowledge the existence of Satan, so it is hardly likely that we could worship this entity.” She added, “We look forward to the day when Christians, Wiccan, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and all other practitioners of loving faiths can coexist in harmony.” But the march of about seventy Wiccan was not harmonious. The
Commercial Appeal
reported: “With rows of pedestrians and dozens of police looking on, the two groups passed within inches in a bizarre Main Street meeting as Christian hymns and bellowed prayers competed with pagan songs and chants in a loud, confusing cacophony.” One man reportedly shouted, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you people. Don’t you care about the youngsters in this community? You know this is wrong!” A woman told the paper, “I just wanted to let my kids see there are bad people in this world…. There are evil people who do evil things.” On the other hand, one man told a reporter that he had driven to Jonesboro from Little Rock because he supported freedom of religion. He said, “I believe in speaking out against religious persecution of any type.” But his was the minority view. After the march a group of local ministers, led by Bob Wirtmiller, pastor of the Woodsprings Church of the Nazarene, vowed to see that the bookstore whose owner had organized the march was closed. Referring to the West Memphis murders, they issued a statement saying, “We want our children protected against any possible recurrence due to occult activity of any kind.”

157. “Initially, I thought Michael was voluntarily participating in church services,” Shettles wrote; “however, I was somewhat shocked to learn these ministers come into their cells with or without the inmates’ permission. Michael stated these ministers were preaching directly at him and telling him he needed to turn his soul over to Jesus or he would not be allowed into heaven.” Shettles wrote that when she mentioned the trial ahead, Damien “laughed and stated he definitely did not want any priests on the jury. He also kidded and stated, if he had a choice, he would not have any males, females, whites or blacks on the jury, either.”

158. Berlinger and Sinofsky had gained prominence in the world of documentary filmmaking in 1992, with release of
Brother’s Keeper,
their look into the life of a dairy farmer who was accused of suffocating his brother. The following June, when the
New York Times
carried a brief report about the arrests in the West Memphis case, a producer at Home Box Office called it to Berlinger and Sinofsky’s attention. “By all accounts,” they later explained, “it seemed to be an open and shut case: three blood-drinking, Satan-worshiping teens had committed a horrifying act of violence. We were intrigued, so we went down to Arkansas to do some initial research.” The more the pair looked into the case, the more intrigued they became. They decided to film the unfolding events as their next documentary project, to be pursued in conjunction with Home Box Office, a division of Time Warner Entertainment Co. Inc. When Lax learned of the filmmakers’ interest, he called to speak with them. Lax noted afterward that Sinofsky “continually assured me he wanted to present an objective film, based on the human element and not so much on the guilt/innocence issues…. Bruce said he is interested in portraying the defendants’ families and their pain, as well as that of the victims’ families…. I expressed my concerns regarding this as being two-fold. First, we have no way of knowing what the family members will say…. Second, even if the state does not subpoena the interviews and film (and I cannot believe they would not do so), and the production company does not release the film until six months after the trial, which Bruce indicated they would do, we are faced with the potential harm the film could do to our defense during the appeals and post-conviction stages.” Lax concluded his memo with the note: “I have spoken with Scott Davidson [who, with Price, was representing Damien], and he and I agree it would be better to politely decline to allow this filming and interviewing of family members until an indefinite time in the future.”

159. The girls were Holly George and Jennifer Bearden, both of Bartlett, Tennessee.

160. Lax wanted to examine the photographs that one of the police reports indicated detectives had shown to little Aaron. If one of the photos shown to Aaron had been of Damien, and if Aaron had not identified him as one of the killers, that information might be important, particularly if Fogleman were to call Aaron to testify. Gitchell and Ridge “initially attempted to inform me they had not shown any photographs to Aaron,” Lax wrote in his notes. “However, when I provided them a copy of the statement, they conferred and stated they did recall pulling photographs from various files and showing them on a board to Aaron…. Both Inspector Gitchell and Detective Ridge informed me Aaron Hutcheson did not identify any of the individuals in any of the photographs they provided. When I asked if they had those photographs available, they stated they did not and they had not made a record of which photographs were shown to Aaron.” The officers then put forth the names of several people, including Damien Echols (but not Jason or Jessie), whose photos, they acknowledged, might have been on the board.

161. Less than a year and a half before this hearing, Burnett had issued the order expunging John Mark Byers’s conviction for having threatened to kill his ex-wife.

162. Not long after Burnett became a judge, Burnett presided at the trial of fifteen-year-old Ronald Ward, who was convicted of another triple murder, this one also in West Memphis. For a time, Ward was the youngest person on death row anywhere in the United States, but then the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that Burnett had erred in allowing Ward, who was black, to be tried by an all-white jury. When Ward was tried a second time, again in Burnett’s court, before a jury that was racially mixed, he was sentenced to life in prison.

163. Mike Trimble in the
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,
February 22, 1994.

164. As reported by Bartholomew Sullivan, January 16, 1994.

165. The decision was based on a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court ruling based on the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court ruled that if a confessing defendant is tried jointly with defendants he has implicated and does not testify, the nonconfessing defendants are denied their constitutional rights to confront and cross-examine their accuser. Since Misskelley had retracted his confession and, presumably, would not be testifying against his codefendants, his trial had to be severed from theirs.

166. In Arkansas, the actual legal term is “not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.”

167. Until just a few months before the murders, fees for Arkansas lawyers who represented indigent clients, even in cases where the clients faced death, were capped at $1,000. That policy had been challenged in Judge Burnett’s own court by a lawyer who’d refused to represent an indigent woman for the state-mandated fee. Burnett had ordered the lawyer to accept the assignment. But the lawyer had appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court. There, the justices—citing the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids involuntary servitude—ruled that the lawyer had a right to refuse. In early 1993, the legislature had been forced to amend the state’s law regarding payment of court-appointed lawyers, and at the time of these pretrial hearings, the new law had just taken effect. But how it would be implemented was still uncertain. Crittenden County officials wanted the bill for the boys’ defense to go to the state, which was the responsible party when the lawyers were appointed. The Arkansas attorney general’s office, on the other hand, contended that the state was responsible for the legal bill only from the time of the lawyers’ appointment in early June until July 1, when the new law took effect.

168. According to Stidham, Burnett promised that the lawyers would receive $60 an hour for in-court time and $40 an hour for their work on the case out of court.

169. From Shettles’s interview notes, October 25, 1993.

170. The samples collected on the night of the arrests had been obtained illegally. Though Ford had fought a state’s motion seeking to obtain new samples, Burnett had approved the state’s request.

171. Lax, who by now had worked more capital cases than any of the lawyers, told them he’d never seen anything like it. By August, they’d received some thirteen thousand documents from the monthlong police investigation, but they had no indication which of those pertained to the arrests and which had been discounted.

172. Ford argued, “I feel that he’s going to know within reasonable certainty which of those pages he’s going to use, and he’s going to know that the great majority of it he has no intention to introduce. If that is the case, then we shouldn’t have to be spending all our time and effort reviewing all those documents for the conceivable possibility they may be introduced into evidence.”