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- [00:02]
Sarah James McLaughlin
From the waters of Lake Erie.
- [00:04]
Bret
It was raising flags. He said there's no way that that fish should weigh 7.9 pounds. It's just not big enough.
- [00:12]
Sarah James McLaughlin
To a nondescript office building in Richmond, Virginia, home to a 700 million dollar fund for children with special needs.
- [00:19]
Bret
If there was a cliche list of how to blow money that you just stole very quickly, this guy did all of them.
- [00:27]
Sarah James McLaughlin
To the ski slopes of Salt Lake City, where a former Olympic snowboarder landed on the FBI's most wanted list.
- [00:34]
Bret
Ryan Jim's wedding is one of those interesting Norcos who have had two very successful careers, one legal and one illegal.
- [00:42]
Sarah James McLaughlin
We're pulling back the curtain on a fresh lineup of opportunists who stopped at nothing to get ahead. These are the stories of people who saw a loophole, a moment of weakness, a chance to get ahead and took it. I'm Host Sarah James McLaughlin. Join me for a new season of the opportunist on May 19. Follow now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:22]
Bret
I'm Bret.
- [01:24]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Alice.
- [01:25]
Bret
And we are the Prosecutors. Today on the Prosecutors, we dive deeper into the background of the West Memphis Three. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my buzzworthy co host, Alice.
- [02:25]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Hey, Brett. Way to turn a negative into a positive. So, guys, we've recorded so much that I'm slowly breaking all of my podcast equipment. I hear a buzz. So if you guys hear a buzz today, don't leave a one star review. I know, I'm sorry. We're trying to buy new equipment. Life is hard right now. Just kidding.
- [02:44]
Bret
Yeah, I'm gonna need all you to up your patreon so we can get brand new equipment. We've been using the same stuff for five years, so I guess it's time. Time to invest. So we'll do that. Hopefully you guys are not bothered by it. I can't actually hear it. Maybe it's all in Alice's head, but we'll see.
- [03:01]
Sarah James McLaughlin
The buzzing could be in my head. The buzzing could be in my head. Wouldn't be the first time.
- [03:05]
Bret
There you go. She's got bees in her brain anyway. Okay, guys. Well, this is episode 16, by my count of our cover 16, Memphis 3, Sweet SP16. And what we thought we'd do today is we're sort of marching through the 300 level classes in the West Memphis 3 on the way to graduation, which is around the corner. I mean, we're getting close. Is to talk a little bit more about the West Memphis three. Some of their background, some of the things that have happened. We thought we would start with Damien Echols, in particular, some of his testimony at trial that became important, as well as things he said after he was released during sort of the pendency of the case. Just because, as we've said before, number one, a lot of people are curious, how'd these guys ever get convicted? You know, they've seen the evidence. They don't think it's that extensive, and so they're curious about that. But also, just how much can you trust various things Damien tells you. I mean, he has a lot of information about where he was, what he was doing, etc. And so his credibility is important. And I think it's worth looking at some of this stuff. And then we want to get into maybe in this episode, maybe the next episode, depending how quickly this goes, into the backgrounds of all three of these individuals and see whether or not their backgrounds lend themselves to the kind of profile you might expect for someone who would commit these crimes, or if they are not the kind of people that, say, your FBI behavioral analysts might think is the kind of person who would be involved in a case like this. And, you know, we're all very fortunate on the behavioral analysis thing. We have Julia Cowley, which we love to talk to, but John Douglas, who is one of the founders of behavioral analysis, also took a look at this case, and he had an opinion, and we're going to get into that as well. So we'll see how far we get with all that. We'll try and be economical. I mean, we are on episode 16, so. So if you've been with us this long, you probably don't care.
- [05:02]
Sarah James McLaughlin
I was gonna say there gets to be a point where, like, oh, well, might as well. What's 16? What's 26? Was 36.
- [05:08]
Bret
Okay, so let's start with Damien Echols and his testimony. And we've said this before, and this is something, I think, that's worth remembering when you think about the trial. If a defendant chooses to testify, in some ways that trumps everything else. If the jury chooses to disbelieve that defendant, they can convict on that basis alone. You see this a lot in appellate review. Appeals courts will often say that on appeal, the defendant will be challenging various things. But the fact is, he testified. The jury could have decided not to leave his testimony, and that is a really difficult bar to overcome. You saw that in the Bone Valley case with Leo Schofield. He also testified in his case. There is a Reason that defense attorneys often tell their clients, do not testify, particularly if there are some really good appeal issues, because it really blows everything outside the water. I always think back to Murdoch, you know, the prosecution in that case. It was almost like the prosecution had built such a good case, he might as well testify and roll the dice and see what happened, right? And the fact is he may get a new trial anyway because of the potential misconduct in that case. But it's really important. So let's talk a little bit about Damien's testimony. So this made the case even more dramatic. You have a defendant testifying. He is the only one of the three who did testify. Now, during his direct, he sort of discussed his general interest in different kinds of religion. He talked about how he got his name. He talked about his interest in Catholicism. If you've seen this on Paradise Lost, I thought he actually comes across pretty well. I mean, he comes across in his testimony much more of this sort of naive kid than he does in his face to camera stuff. When he's talking to the camera, I don't think he comes off well at all. But when he's talking to the jury, you know, he's got his nice clothes on and he's very. He's sort of just explaining, oh, you know, I was interested in this stuff. It was Wicca, not really interested in Satanism, much more about this sort of natural religion. And he denied any involvement in Satanism, as a matter of fact. Now, he talked about some of his tattoos. Some of them aren't great for him. He had evil written across his hand. He had a pentagram on his chest. These are not great, but he had reasonable explanations for them. And the purpose of this testimony really was to humanize Damian. So he had been presented as sort of this monster. And in some ways his reputation was far bigger than him. So you can understand why testifying could have been a good idea. And he makes things like his interest in Metallica, alternative religions, wearing black, all that stuff seem less strange. And you can watch most of this on Paradise Lost, unfortunately, and I don't know why this is, if you go on Callahan, most of the testimony is you can both read and listen to, but with Damian's testimony, you can't. I don't know why that is. I don't know if that's tied to Paradise Lost in some way. But really you have to watch Paradise Lost if you want to see Damien in action. So on direct, he's pretty good. And I think on direct he scores some points. But the problem as we often say there's always cross examination. This is a problem. Anytime the defense calls a witness, they're going to be crossed and Damian was crossed. And they talk about a lot of different things. They talk about the Hollingsworth family in the sighting of him and how they had no reason to lie. And really all he can do is just deny it, that he was present in that location. And when we get into the alibis, the various defendants, we'll talk about that more. They also talked about they're trying to get into this Satanism thing now, not so much to prove he's a Satanist, but to prove he's lying, to prove he's a liar, to make you doubt his credibility so that you doubt what he says. He said, I'm not a Satanist. And he's asked about Aleister Crowley. Now, Aleister Crowley is sort of an infamous person who was involved in all sorts of esoteric things, and he denied that he had any interest in Aleister Crowley. At this point, the prosecution produces a paper in Damien's handwriting where he had written some names, including his son's name and the name of Alastair Crowley. So not great for him. Right? The prosecution asked about the girls who saw Damien at the softball field and said he'd bragged about killing the boys and said he intended to kill some more. And Damien just said, they're lying. You know, he's softened a bit in his post conviction interviews as we talked about last time. Now he's like, well, if I said that, I was joking, but at the time they were lying. He did admit to being at the softball field, but he denied saying he killed anyone. He discussed how often he walked around West Memphis, which contradicted his prior testimony that he was never in the area. So initially, when asked by the prosecutor, in the year prior to your arrest, had you and Jason or you and anyone else on more than one occasion walked in that neighborhood near Robin Hood Hills? He said no, but this very quickly fell apart. The prosecution put up an air map of the area and Damien admitted that yes, indeed, he had spent time there. We're going to discuss this in more detail in a minute because it actually is pretty significant how often he was there.
- [10:00]
Sarah James McLaughlin
So as we said, the prosecution did note that Damien had several tattoos, including this evil that was tattooed across his knuckles. And Damien, he had, like, explanations for, you know, the pentagram, the evil on his knuckles. I mean, he is a teenager, you know, at this point, and teenagers do do things like this, but it's not a great look, especially when obviously there's this kind of Satanism background to all of this, that this is some sort of satanic killing. Damien confirmed that he almost always had a knife on him on his walks. And then they discussed Damien's interviews with police, and the conversation went as follows. Isn't it true that you're the one who told the officers that the children were mutilated? Damien says, yeah, I said that. That was on May 10th of 1993. The autopsy was done on May 7th. So we're talking about four days after the bodies were recovered. Huh. So they were. You said they were probably cut up one more than the others. Those are your words, aren't they? Damian said, he asked me, was one cut up more than the other? I said, yes, they were probably. Now, this is a strange question. If Ridge asked it, and it's unclear why Ridge would put that out there, given how sensitive this information was, especially just four days after the bodies were found. So it's not exactly clear, but they're putting Damien's own words back in front of him. He's not denying that he said any of these things.
- [11:25]
Bret
Yeah, actually, I think he's lying about this. Just to put it out there. I don't think the police officer would have said, oh, yeah, but one of them was mutilated more than others, because there was a reason they didn't put that out there. The ace in the hole was everybody thought all three of them were mutilated and they were looking for somebody to say one of them was more mutilated than others. Now, I think it's possible Damien heard that just in the ether, because I think there's at least some evidence we're going to talk about eventually that there were more people who knew that. But I don't think the police officer said that. And I think when Damien does things like this, I think it really hurts his credibility because I think the jury, who's already seen reason to doubt what he's saying, probably thinks, yeah, the police officer didn't do that. And this is Damien's discussions with the police officers are really coming back to bite him now because the prosecution is able to basically present to the jury, hey, you knew all this information because you're the one who did it. He goes on to say, you indicated that you heard they were drowned. He denies this. It says, no, I indicated I heard they were mutilated. Which is interesting because this actually confirms what I was saying, that he heard it from somebody else. But it contradicts what he literally said. Two sentences ago, which is that it was Ridge who indicated that. Not. He just heard it in the ethereum, he says. So when he put down, in his response to that question, heard that they had drowned, he made that up. That just isn't true. Damien says they made up a lot of stuff so far. Answer my question. No, it's not true. You never said that the officer just put that in on his own. Yes, he did. Which, I mean, once again, why would he be doing that in an unofficial report at this early date? Right. I mean, maybe he did, but it. I don't think this endears Damien to.
- [13:06]
Sarah James McLaughlin
The jury because it's not like that crucial of a point. But you can imagine the jury's listening to this. Like, of course he didn't put that in there, especially four days later. What we do know is Ridge was trying to get information about how the boys died. Right. And so this is kind of one of those small points where Damien's fighting on cross examination, which is just hurting his credibility.
- [13:24]
Bret
I'll say this, this prosecutor is pretty good at cross examination because he keeps turning this stuff against him, which he's going to do with this next question. When he put in there regarding whoever committed these crimes probably thinks it is funny and that he won't get caught, it won't care one way or the other if he did. Did you say that? Yes. The officer didn't make that up, did he? No, I said that. Now he's going to go on to continue asking him questions about this, which was probably a mistake by the prosecutor because Damon's going to get to explain this a little bit. And I think Damien's explanation makes sense. You know, if he's putting himself in the shoes of the person who did it, he's just saying how that person would feel. It is somebody who just killed three kids. So maybe that's what he's doing. Obviously, the police saw it as any normal person who was involved would say, oh, they're probably sick about it. They're horrified. You know, they can't believe they do something like that. And Damien's being much more analytical in his analysis of these murders.
- [14:16]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Prosecution goes on in the cross examination, you told the officer was that you told him you thought the person who did it would think it was funny. Damien said yes and would not care one way or the other if he got caught. Probably not. So that's where Brett said, like those two extra questions, I think helps explain it away just a little. And they're kind of feeding it to him. I Think they should have just stopped because those words were terrible. None of this is funny, but you're beginning to see, okay, well if he's just putting himself in like a psychopath's shoes, if they're able to kill three kids, they probably don't really care that they killed three kids. Not Damien specifically, but whoever did this. Now the prosecution at this point hits Damien with some of his behavior during the trial because it's not just his words during the police interviews, but he has not exactly been doing himself any favors during trial as we've talked about a little before. So the prosecutor asks, Mr. Price has asked you about your feelings about being arrested. You said you had good days and bad days. Was it a bad day the day after you were arrested when you blew a kiss to the victim's families? Was that a bad day when you did that? That was one of the times I lost my temper. Oh, you lost your temper is why you blew a kiss to the victims families?
- [15:24]
Bret
Yes, walked right into that one. I mean, oh, when I lose my temper I do things like, you know, antisocial things. It's, you can obviously see how that's very problematic.
- [15:34]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Very problematic for him. And also this is really interesting. I mean Damien obviously has to defend himself because everyone saw him blow the kiss. Like he can't deny this and he hasn't denied the things he told the police before. So the problem with this also is if you saw him blow this kiss, it was maniacal, right? Like it, it was like joking. It was very, not joking. It was very light hearted on his part. There was, it was sinister. You can imagine that kind of person is able to, when if that's you losing your temper, not screaming or yelling or throwing things, but you're able to have such control of yourself in your own words, this is you losing your temper. You're so cool headed that you can do something that looks so cool. Imagine what you can do to three boys. Something that the prosecution's own witnesses have said it takes time to horrifically beat these three boys, do all the things that were done to them, tying them up, staking their clothes into the mud, all of those things. We're not talking about someone who loses their cool when they're angry. You're talking about someone who is so scarily even keeled. That's the kind of killer I think you can imagine who had to be that way. They didn't lose their mind once they killed the boys. They carried out a lot of a cover up. And he himself is saying this Is me losing my temper not a good look for Damien. Now, Damien said that reports he was in a witch cult for five years. Now, that was lies. The prosecution tried to bring in the incident where Damien tried to claw someone's eyes out, but the court actually restricted it. You can imagine why. So we've always talked about prejudicial versus probative. Sure, it could be probative of his violence, but trying to claw someone's eyes out when you haven't shown that they have something to do with the boys or it's any similarity there, that's just really prejudicial. So I think think it was right to leave it out here, but we know it in terms of us understanding the timeline of his violent tendencies. So at one point, when the prosecution is discussing Damien's violent encounter with his father, he mentions that he'd been drinking that night as a reason for his violence. This is interesting because Jesse says they'd all been drinking the day of the murder. So if you're looking for another trigger, whether it's losing your temper, maybe because your dad left the day before, or because you've been drinking too much, well, now all of a sudden you have one of those factors, at least the drinking that Jesse mentioned that they were doing all day, maybe that's what made him do something that he normally wouldn't do.
- [17:53]
Bret
So Damien's. He's on the stand for a little while on cross. It's not great. We're going to see when we get into the alibis, a few other moments that are bad for him, but he's not on the stand for maybe as long as you would think, particularly if you've been watching trials lately, and it seems like witnesses are on the stand for forever. He's only on for a little while. He discusses this, and then he's off. I do think this harmed him because as we're going to see, the jury really took a lot from Damien's statements, including believing that he was lying to them. But I want to talk about sort of his inconsistencies over the years and how they're important. And this is not meant to pile on to Damien, but some of these are directed at officers and investigators in the case. Some of them are directed at Jason Baldwin. I just think it's worth clearing some of this up so that you out there have a better conception of reality than maybe the way it's been presented to you in sort of the mythos that has grown up around this case. And I want to start with the pentagram that was on Damien's chest. Now, as we've said, we don't think this is any kind of satanic murder or anything, but I think it is worth asking, is Damien telling us the truth about various things? And one of the police reports, it's noted that Damian had a pentagram tattooed on his chest. And Damian has disputed this. At least it appears he has. Bob Ruff, who did season five of his podcast on the West Memphis Three, interviewed Damian several times for that and asked him about this. And I just want to read you this exchange because I was. I thought this was very interesting, Bob says. And, you know, as I'm looking at them, one of the reports I read somewhere, and I think it was Jerry Driver's statement. And Jerry Driver is obviously very important because he's one who's talked about some of Damien's violence in the past. He said something along the lines of them taking pictures and you having a pentagram tattooed on your chest. And I'm looking at this picture and there's nothing on your chest at all. Do you or did you ever have a pentagram tattooed on your chest? So we're trying to undermine Jerry Driver and just sort of set this up as Damian is being framed from the beginning. He is being presented as this devil worshiper, when in fact he's not. And here's what Damian says. No, I don't recall ever having that. You know, I have a lot of tattoos. I think maybe at one point I did have a small cross that I covered up with something else. No, it's actually still there. I guess he's, like, looking over his body for this. The cross is still there. But no, that's it. Maybe he was calling and it's not even technically a cross. It's just so old. It looks like a cross now, but it was like a Venus symbol that's like a cross with a hoop, and it's just so old and faded that all you can really see is the cross. Maybe that's what he could have been calling. Who knows? Driver is or was half crazy and half corrupt. So it's really hard to, you know, use logic or reason when you're talking about anything that came out of that guy's mouth. Now, this is a weird exchange because Damien testified about the pentagram under oath during his trial on direct examination. So it wasn't even on cross. This was something they wanted to get out, deal with. And I'll read you the transcript. Did you have another tattoo on your chest? Yes, I did. And what Was that tattoo a pentagram? Alright, why did you have a pentagram tattooed on your chest? I just thought it was cool. Was the fact you had a pentagram tattooed on your chest, did that mean at any time you were a Satanist? No, it was not a Satanist pentagram. It was pointing up. So pentagram pointing up is not Satanist. If it's pointing down, you have the two points, the star pointing up, at least at the horns of a goat. Satanist. So we all, I think, have been clear on the difference between the Church of Satan and Satanism. So anyways, I will move on. No, it was not a Satanist pentagram. It was pointing up. Okay, it's faded out now. I don't even have it anymore. So I guess after this happened there was some criticism of this interview and Bob Ruff would sort of fall on his sword in a follow up episode, which I actually never heard. I listened to Bob Ruff's show, but I didn't listen to his follow ups. I just listened to the substantive episodes. And so it wasn't even until we started doing this again. And I always thought they'd lied about the pentagram thing. And when we started looking into it and seeing this, I was like, wait a second, I thought he didn't have a pentagram. But anyways, on a follow up, Bob fell on his sword and claimed an editing mistake had made it seem like Damien was denying the pentagram when he was doing no such thing. If he ever played the unedited audio, I haven't heard it. And it's really hard to imagine how the discussion can be explained away based on editing. I think your best thing would be somehow he just forgot this. But given that it was such an important part of his trial and sort of the whole ethos, I don't know. It's a weird thing. And it's not going to be the only time you're going to see Damian seemingly lie or forget or completely rewrite history in ways that are important.
- [22:31]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Yeah, and I think this is really important because we just read directly from the trial transcript with him on direct. He's not having to face this in crime examination. He's bringing it out in the first instance because it was there. And he's saying it was even faded then. I mean, it's interesting because it's. There's strands of the same if it's a lie. Right. Even on the stand he's like, well, it's pretty faded. You can't even see it anymore. And it's strange for him so many years later to say, and I never had it, or it's also faded, like it's one or the other. So whatever it is, what the jury heard was that he agreed and admitted that he had a pentagram tattoo. Now, whether this has anything to do with the murders or not, totally different. But like Brett said, there are so many instances where there's become this lore and this aura around, like what the facts are in this case or not. And it's helpful to go back to exactly what we have in the testimony to see what is actually said at the time, whether it's true. Something else. Okay, Robin Hood Hills. Now, Damien testified, remember, that he'd never been to the Robin Hood Hills area. This is another one of those instances where, you know, I think he's caught in some sort of inconsistencies in his testim. Now, he would tell Larry King in 2010 so well after the trial that he, quote, wasn't familiar with Robin Hood Hills before the murders. This is just a plain lie because we know that Damien had lived at Mayfair Apartments, which was just across from the woods where the boys were found. During cross examination and trial, Damien admitted that he was in the boys neighborhood an average of two to three times a week. This is the exchange, the question. It is east of 14th street and South of the service road and the interstate in that particular neighborhood, Market Street, Goodwin in there. Did you and Jason frequently walk and roam in that area, the same neighborhood where the three victims lived? Damien said, I think by looking at the map, I would have had to. How often? Probably in that area, maybe twice a week. For how long a period? A few years. How many? Probably at least two years. All right. And that when you told us yesterday that you hadn't been over in that area, the residential area near Robin Hood Hills, were you not thinking of that particular area? No. When you said neighborhood, I just didn't know what you were talking about, what that neighborhood is. But when I specified that particular area, the neighborhood that I circled, you were there two or three times a week. Damien responded, probably an average of two to three times a week. And what would the purpose be over there? Would you all have just been walking around the neighborhood? Damien responds, I had to walk through there to get from my house to Jason's house. I would have to walk through there to get from my house to Domini's house or anywhere in Marion. The prosecutor said, okay, where were you living at the time? Damien said, at the time I was arrested? Broadway Trailer Park. Okay, well, you were walking over here, this is the interstate. Didn't you where? If you could show me where you lived. So Damien stands up and he says right here. And he indicates to where the trailer park was. Somewhere along in there, the prosecutor said. So you lived south of Broadway, huh? And what time period was this? When did you quit living south Broadway of Broadway? When I was arrested. Okay. And your only reason to walk through here would be to go to and from Jason's residence? Uh huh. And that's the path you would take. You and Jason would take a path through here and over there? Yes sir. So you can see here from this exchange that it is a lie when he testified at trial. Let's say it's a misunderstanding, let's even call it a misunderstanding. At first he didn't know what neighborhood they were talking about, but yet he continues to say this in 2010 years after the trial. No, I've never been in Robin Hood Hills before. It's very clear from the cross examination that he not only knows exactly what area this is. The two people he sees the most self proclaimed and also the testimony of other witnesses, his girlfriend Domini, who he has a child with, and his best friend Jason. Those two people who he saw the most and he didn't have a car, he walked to their houses, he had to go through here to go see them. And he himself says over the period of two years he's walking through here two to three times on average a week, which probably means he's walking there more. So this is not a situation where he barely knows it or goes there sometimes. I think he was probably playing with semantics of what Robin Hood Hills was. Exactly. But when faced with a map, it was clear he knew this area very well. And he always walked through there very often. And he walked through there with Domini. Remember the Hollingsworth sighting of the two of them. And also with Jason, who is obviously also being tried for these triple murders. So the jury in considering this wrote that Damien had lied in his direct testimony as he'd actually been in the area some 200 times over the last few years. Now people have debated this, noting that the most direct path is a stair step route up and over some city streets. So there's a picture of it. However, that's not how Damien would get to Jason's place. According to Domini Tier Damian would go by way of the interstate. Number one, this is what she said. Number one, he doesn't walk on the service road. Whether he's with Jason or he's with me, he just doesn't walk on the service road because it's quicker to go over the interstate. In this statement, Dominique is being confronted by Fogelman about the Hollingsworth sighting. If Damien was never in the general area of the crime scene, she would have just said that. Instead, she says that they use the interstate and not the service road. And the cut through between the neighborhood and the blue beacon was a known and well used path people took to the interstate. In Jesse Misskelley's Bible confession that we'll cover in more detail, Jesse describes taking this very route that day. This is from the Bible confession, which is a conversation that Stidham, Jesse Misskelley's attorney, is having with Jesse. So Stidham says, and y' all walked off the service road going down on the trail. Jesse responded, right by blue beacon. Stidham said, did the trail go into the woods or did it go beside the woods? Jesse said in it, Stidham said, okay, was there anything in the woods? Was there a ditch or a river or what was in the woods besides trees? Obviously. Jesse responds, there was like a. I'm gonna say like a bayou. And it had a pipe going across to the other side. This is the crime scene being discussed exactly here. And this is the path that Domini testified that Damien would take.
- [29:19]
Bret
So when you look at a map, it's obvious he would have passed this neighborhood all the time. I mean, as a matter of fact, it wouldn't even shock me if he wasn't walking across the pipe bridge quite often because you got to get over this diversion canal. Now, there are various bridges and there are a few ways to do this. Al said people dispute this. Exactly. But basically, if you're thinking of this because you can't see this, if you're just listening to me, imagine we're looking at a map. That's a square in the bottom right hand corner is where Damien lives. And then if you go all the way to the top left hand corner, that's where the two trailer parks are, where Jesse and Jason lived. You got the bayou splitting the box in half. You got the interstate above the bayou. You got to get past both of them. Right? And you got Domini saying that basically he would make his way up to the interstate and he would walk along the interstate and says they never walked on the service road. He had to have passed through this neighborhood. Now why is this important once again? Because it just goes to. How much can you trust the things Damian is saying? Does he just have a poor memory? Well, he writes in his book About a time when he lived in Mayfair and he was playing on the playground and he had a vision where he saw himself in the future. So, like, I don't think he just forgot about this. Maybe it's just a lie because he knows the fact that he's in the neighborhood so much is bad for him. But I think what we can say for certain is he absolutely knew this area and he was willing to lie about that fact. So we talked about Aleister Crowley a little bit before. Let's talk about it more. In Paradise Lost, you've seen this. Damian is asked if he has the interest in Aleister Crowley. Now, why is Aleister Crowley important? Because probably to be shocking more than anything else, he advocated for human sacrifices. And he said the younger and purer the victim, the better. And here's what Damian says. You're familiar with a fellow named Aleister Crowley. I know who he is. He is a guy who kindly professes he is a noted author in the field of satanic worship. Right, I know who he is, but I have never saw any of his books personally. Not much of a follower of his. I would have read them if I had saw them. But Aster Crowley is a guy that, based on his writings, believes in human sacrifices, doesn't he? He also believed he was a God, so. Which is true, but also indicates Damian knows more about Alistair than maybe he's letting on. He also had writings that indicated that children are the best type of human sacrifice. Right? Yes, sir, of course, everybody knows that. I mean, come on. But Aleister Crowley doesn't have a particular significance to you? I know who he is. I've read a little bit about him, but I've never read anything by him. The prosecution then produced this document. It has Damien writing in these other alphabets, other names. The names he write are his own, his sons, Jason Baldwin's and Aleister Crowley, which not great for Damien because once again, it seems to show that he was lying. And although he tried to downplay this, it turns out Damon's familiarity with Aleister Crowley went way back in 2016. Damian would say that he discovered the Hermetic Order of the golden dawn when he was 10 or 12 years old, which is a precursor to modern Wicca. And it should surprise you not at all that one of the most famous members of this group was Aleister Crowley, who actually tried to take it over and caused a bit of a schism in the group. And Damian would have been aware of this. In 2018, Damian changes his story again and says he actually discovered Crowley and the Order while he was in prison, where he began to practice the rituals of the Order. So these are things he's saying that appear not to be true. He's misleading the jury. But I gotta tell you, all of this pales in comparison to what he has said about the infamous Exhibit 500.
- [33:01]
Sarah James McLaughlin
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- [33:24]
Bret
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- [35:41]
Bret
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- [36:14]
Sarah James McLaughlin
So, exhibit 500. As we noted earlier in our coverage, one of the most damaging documents was Exhibit 500, chronicling Damien's psychological issues. This document originated with Damien's attorneys who introduced it at sentencing, which doesn't surprise me, right, because there's already been a conviction. They're trying to avoid the death penalty. And you often do this with mitigating evidence, such as a documentation of all the psychological issues. You have to mitigate the horrific things that, that you're being convicted of. So this is not surprising that Damian's attorneys would bring this up now, despite this. Astonishingly, I guess we shouldn't be that surprised at this point because Damien has lied several times already. Damien has blamed Jason Baldwin's lawyers for this filing. So Damien gives this interview to HollywoodChicago.com where he talks about Exhibit 500. So he said, and this is quoting him, when you have to fight against the other lawyers as hard or harder as you do against the state, Jason Baldwin's lawyers, their entire agenda was to make me look as guilty as possible, thinking somehow I was going to help him. The number one thing that people quote is exhibit 500, a mental health report that comes from the fact that one day Jason's attorneys contacted me and said they had this idea that would be really helpful and great. I was naive. It was years ago. Okay, sure, let's do it. This woman comes and writes up this report that diagnoses me with every single mental illness known to mankind. She can't even file it herself because she's already perjured herself. And so she takes it to another doctor to file. The number one piece of evidence that people use to try and hurt me wasn't even filed by the state. It was filed by Jason Baldwin's attorneys, We know that this is a complete, complete lie. But one really quick thing, even, even his explanation of this makes no sen sense. We talked about last time, how Jason and Damian would try together. The trials were not severed. Right. There is no strategy. You want it severed or you want both of you to look innocent? Right. It doesn't make any sense that they're going to try to play this game of one or the other. If Jason's lawyers actually wanted to make Damian look bad, they would sever the trial because then you can bring in all the bad stuff and separate Jason from it. And so his explanation, just so you know, it sounds like he knows what he's talking about. It doesn't even make any sense. But no, this interview from 2013, again, years after the trial, he says, brett, Jason Baldwin's lawyers, because I was so naive, had this report written and filed and it had nothing to do with my attorneys. Is that true?
- [38:47]
Bret
This is, as Alice said, this is such a bald faced lie, it is hard to even fathom that Damien said it. Not only did Jason's attorneys not introduce Exhibit 500, they were the only ones fighting to keep the records from coming in. Here's attorney Ford for Jason at the sentencing hearing. This is long, but it's worth hearing. Ford. Your honor, I'm not even sure of the doctor's name. Moneypenny. Moneypenny, he was testifying, brought with him some medical records that he reviewed. How thoroughly, he's not real sure. But he did review the medical records of the defendant Damien Echols. After directed past the reviews, the records that he had reviews were scanned by the prosecuting attorney in preparation for cross examination. And at that time, medical records which apparently never had been reviewed by the prosecutor before because they were privileged in the mental capacity of the defendant, had yet to be placed at issue, were not relevant at this point in time. That privilege is probably waived because they have placed his mental functions at issue as to mitigation. And now any privilege probably has been waived without making an argument. However, there are things which are in that record which are extremely telling. As to the defendant Echols, however, having been tried together and jointly, these records are going to, I believe, be extremely prejudicial to the defendant Jason Baldwin. These are offered by the defense, the defendant Echols and mitigation. And what is going to turn out, your honor, they're going to probably be some of the most telling evidence and aggravation to be brought out by a mitigation witness. This is something the defendant Baldwin has No control over. And unfortunately, I don't believe a cautionary instruction will be. I don't believe the court can give one that will be strong enough to cure the prejudice that is going to be brought out by the statements of the defendant, Echols. Jason Baldwin's life is on the line. And these statements that are going to be brought out may in fact take his life without any opportunity whatsoever by counsel for Jason to have ever obtained these records, to have ever obtained any psychological profile. Because we didn't know these records existed. The prosecutor didn't know they existed, didn't know the psychological state of Echols would be placed at issue. We are totally and completely handcuffed. And they're going to bring out statements about Damien making statements that he gets power from drinking blood, that there are sheep and wolves and that the wolves eat the sheep and that he is a wolf. And they're going to bring out statements about. I think a lot about what happens after I'm dead because I want to go where the monsters go and all of those things. Your Honor, Jason Baldwin sits over here helpless to defend. And there is not a cautionary instruction the court can give that will truly go back into that jury room and prevent this evidence from being considered against Jason. We object to it. We ask the prosecution in limine be ordered to make no reference to these things because the issues of his mental ability does not. I just don't believe this should be used because I don't believe the court can cure the prejudice to Jason Baldwin. And we are helpless to defend ourselves as the evidence just has been discovered in the last 20 or 30 minutes. We did not know that the psychology of Damien Echols would be placed an issue. We've never had an opportunity to review these records. We are totally and completely helpless. Yet his life hangs in the balance. And we would ask the court to instruct the state and limine to make no reference to these records. The court did not do that. Damien's lawyers did bring it in, and it was absolutely devastating for both of them.
- [41:47]
Sarah James McLaughlin
If that is not vociferously objecting on Jason Baldwin's behalf. Strenuously object is strenuously objecting. I was trying to go for a different one that was different than what, you know, a Few Good Men was bringing up. Because this is. This time it's not a joke, right? I agree with Jason Baldwin's lawyers, but despite that, I don't understand how Damien can lie so just like, without even blinking. But we see this over and over. Having seen this enough times where I'll read something and I'll say, wait a second, but I thought he said something completely opposite. And he does. And it's. The thing is, he gives a lot of interviews. So, like, we have his direct quotes. This is not like, by implication, this is him talking. Okay, so here's how the Devil's Knot describes the introduction of Exhibit 500. Moneypenny had interviewed and tested Damien and reviewed many of his records. Oh, I notice that there is a packet of information there in front of you. Defense attorney Davidson said, are those the records that were compiled in this case? It was a simple enough question, but Lacks, who was sitting in the courtroom, heard it with a sinking heart. He knew what was in those records and he knew that now that Damien's own defense team had introduced them into trial, they were fair game for the prosecutors if the prosecutors wanted to explore them.
- [43:02]
Bret
Yeah. And if you're wondering why is it that Damien and Jason seem to have had a falling out, it's pretty evident. I think it's stuff like this. And this is not the only telling excerpt from that interview. In it, Damien and Lori, because Lori, his wife, is with him and she's one of the people who fought to get him out, told how Jason and his team were essentially bullied into giving in to the Alford plea by threatening to cut off funding to his defense. We talked about this before the Damien, if you've watched Paradise Lost 3 or if you've watched west of Memphis, it's very evident that Jason Baldwin did not want to do the Alfred plea. He wanted a trial. He wanted to do this again. But in the end, he ends up taking the deal. And the story has always been that he was worried about Damien. Damian's life was on the line, but at least Damian and Laurie put it a little differently. Laurie says, and this is right after this discussion about the records. At the end of the day, when you have multiple defendant case, that usually happens. It got really dicey at the end with Jason. Once he said okay to the Alfred plea, we just plowed through. His attorneys were still fighting that. Damien says, yeah, they were telling him, no, fight it. Stay in prison until they heard. You're not getting any more money. You've gotten every effing penny you're going to get. In Hollywood, Chicago says they were trying to milk the defense fund. Milk the defense fund. ECHOES Take the deal. Take the deal. Lori was the one raising money for all of us. She's not married to Jason or Jesse. She's doing the fundraising for all three of us. So essentially, they threatened Jason. They said, oh, you want to go to trial, great. You're not gonna have any money. All the fundraising, that's Damien's money, that's not Jason's money. So that of their own words, I mean, Jason told a much more flattering story that he kind of. He was worried about Damien. But according to Damien, now they threatened him, it worked, and he caved. And so the Alfred plea went through. That's a little bit about sort of things Damien has said and done over the years, including at his trial and in the time afterward. Now we want to get into sort of the profiles of the defendants, and we want to start that off with John Douglas, because people have asked, was there a profile of the person in this case? It seems like BAU provided West Memphis with some questions they could ask when doing their interview. But other than that, they didn't really do a profile. But John Douglas, who has been involved in this case, did. And John Douglas, if you don't know, is a famed member of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. He's written a bunch of books. They're great books. Check them out. And he was asked by attorneys for the West Memphis Three to look at the case. In 2006, he prepared a 20 page report. First, he noted that while there were killers who exhibited the trappings of Satanism, he mentioned Son of Sam and Richard Ramirez. Their actual motivations were more typical. So basically it's like, yeah, they talk about Satanism, but ultimately the reason behind their murders wasn't ritualistic. And strictly speaking, the FBI was aware of no murders. They were directly committed purely as a part of a satanic ritual that called for such. So there are Satanists who have murdered people, but as part of a ritual they don't know of anyone. Now we have done the Adolfo Costanzo case out of Mexico, where they absolutely were sacrificing people because they thought it made them invisible. But we'll put that one aside. Other than that, no evidence of this. Right. So he goes on to say that he agreed with Warner Spitz, Dr. John Norby and others, as we discussed earlier, that many of the injuries signifying something like satanic killings, the emasculation, for instance, were actually caused by animal predation. And Douglas believes the removal of the clothes was about fear and control. The boys do not want to run away naked. We actually talked about this. Douglas believes the point of the murders began as an effort to taunt and punish the victims. But then after they were dead, the attacker had to try and Hide the evidence as he was known to the victims and a local in the community. Hence the hiding of the bodies, bikes and clothes in the water. Moreover, he needed time to establish an alibi, so he's hiding the bodies, delaying discovery, delaying an ability to tell when the time of death was. Go establish an alibi and you'll be good. Douglas speculated that the perpetrator would have left the bayou in sort of the wooded area from the same way the kids went in, across the drainage ditch, pipe bridge and back into the neighborhood. And this coming into the woods via the pipe bridge and leaving via the pipe bridge. During one of these times, he would have spotted the bikes and that's why he saw the bikes and that's why you find the bikes right next to the pipe bridge. Douglas speculated the offender had a violent past. It was not a youthful offender. The manner in which this person disposed of the victims showed sophistication.
- [47:46]
Sarah James McLaughlin
So here are some excerpts from Douglas's report. This 20 page report he wrote. Ritual crimes Research in this area revealed that a ritual crime is personal in nature. It fulfills the need of an offender either sexually, spiritually or some psychological need only known by the offender. Ritualized acts observed and perpetrated by offenders included necrophilia, urination or defecation on a victim, posing or displaying a victim after death, as well as amputation and the evisceration of a victim. Results of ritualistic crimes were not found satanic, but rather were for some personal gratification or, or need for ritual behavior on the part of the offender. Research revealed that it was a way for some violent offenders to fulfill their sadistic and perverted needs. Some of the offenders studied mutilated bodies, amputated limbs from victims, cannibalized victims, and some bathed in the victim's blood. In every case studied, the offender was found either mentally ill or sane, but having some personality disorder. In no case was the offender of his crime found associated or affiliated with some satanic belief or ideology. Due to the brutality exhibited by the offender at the scene. It can be said with confidence that he has the reputation from his past behavioral problems as having an unpredictable and extremely explosive and violent personality. Although this crime may in fact be the first time he has killed anyone, it is not the first time he has violently attacked someone.
- [49:17]
Bret
So a couple interesting things about this. Number one, you can see how finely we're slicing things with a satanic ritual thing, right? It is, it is almost a straw man. But I'm not going to say it is to say, well, they Said it was satanic and we've never seen that. So that's crazy, right? He's basically saying there are people who do things that seem pretty satanic and they may even think a ritualistic, but they're not really ritualistic and they're not really a sacrifice and they're not really part of a religion and they're not really for the purpose of edifying their dark gods. But they may do all the things you'd expect, amputate, bathe in blood. All this because they have some sort of mental issue. That is a really fine distinction. And I hope you recognize that if you had someone, let's say, like Damian, who was interested in these sort of alternative things, those notions could influence the kind of crimes he commits, even if those crimes are not ritualistic. And I hope you see the distinction there. I don't think there's any way they went down there with an acronomicon, lit a bunch of candles, drew a bunch of pentagrams, sacrificed these kids and the devil appeared and granted them a wish. That didn't happen. But it doesn't mean if you had someone who had psychological issues and was interested in this kind of stuff and saw an opportunity to commit some sort of violent crime, that they might not do something that kind of looks like a ritualistic murder. And I feel like Douglas is saying exactly that.
- [50:41]
Sarah James McLaughlin
It's like two different sides of the same coin, right? And it's, it's very, very thinly slicing it. So the report goes on. Predicting the age of an offender at the time of a crime is difficult. There is chronological age and behavioral age to consider. However, based upon the method and manner of death of the three victims, coupled with the offender's behavior post offense, which included secreting the victims and disposing of their clothing and bicycles in the water, what can in fact be said with a high degree of certainty is that this triple homicide was not a crime perpetrated by a youthful offender or offenders or one without a history of past violent behavior. The violent prone offender responsible for these homicides did not happen to just evolve on May 5, 1993. As a triple murderer, he has a violent past and I would expect him to have a violent future as well. The offender demonstrated criminal intellect by the method and manner in which he controlled the victims and the way in which he disposed of them and hid their clothing and bicycles.
- [51:42]
Bret
So Douglas wrote more about this in the West Memphis three in his book Law and Disorder, and he essentially recapsulates all this in a shorter version. I Think this is important to hear because, frankly, I think this is better written. Probably had help from somebody who's good at writing books. So he's going to give you his profile of the offender. So this is the profile that you should keep in mind as we're talking about the backgrounds of the West Memphis Three. Due to the brutality exhibited by the offender at the scene, it can be said with confidence that he would have had the reputation from past behavioral problems as having an unpredictable and extremely explosive and violent personality. He probably came from a bad background in which there was family violence and or he was physically abused. Although this crime may in fact be the first time he has killed anyone, it is not the first time he has violently attacked someone. So there's your profile. Somebody who has behavioral issues, psychological issues, who has a reputation for violence, for explosive violence, for being in an unstable family, being abused, that sort of thing. And even if they haven't killed before, they would have been involved in violence before. Now he applies this profile to Damien, Jason, and Jesse. I'll tell you what he says about them, then we're going to talk about their backgrounds and you can decide for yourself whether or not this is accurate. Damien and Jason had no indicative violence in their past. And while Jesse was known for a hot temper, he channeled his aggression into pursuits such as wrestling. He was also known to be very gentle with children and often babysat in his neighborhood. Though the three were raised in a culture in which corporal punishment was common, none were abused. Okay, so that's the expert's opinion on the profile. That's his analysis of the West Memphis Three. Does it match reality? Let's take a look at the backgrounds of all three individuals who were accused and eventually convicted of this crime.
- [53:30]
Sarah James McLaughlin
So let's start with Jesse Misskelley. Jesse Misskelley spent most of his life in the Highland trailer park with his father and a myriad of women that came and went in and out of his life. Highland is a half mile from Lakeshore, where Jason resided. Jesse had an IQ in the mid-70s, and he was categorized at the time as, quote, mildly retarded. What we'd now term intellectually disabled. He was known to play with children half his age. So remember talking about behavioral age versus actual chronological age. He was five feet, nothing, pretty small. He was nevertheless a stout young man and one to be feared. He wanted to be a professional wrestler, and he could be violent. In fact, he stabbed a fourth grade classmate in the mouth with a pencil. And when he was 11, he assaulted a young girl in Lakeshore chasing her down and smashing her on the head with a brick. After a disagreement, he was sent to a court ordered psychological evaluation and his stepmother expressed her fears, noting that, quote, he gets so mad he's capable of hurting someone. Jesse also had a habit of breaking windows with his fists when he was mad and had once required stitches from punching out a window. He could not control his anger and he tended to take it out on others when he was mad. He was described by one clinician as being under socialized and having an aggressive personality. While Jesse was undergoing this evaluation at age 11, his father was in prison for trafficking marijuana. In 1992, Jesse reportedly held a knife to John Pirshka's throat and told him that he would kill him. Though no report was made of this incident till after the murders in 1993, shortly before the murders, Jesse was accused of punching a 13 year old girl in the face. If you remember that incident we've talked about earlier.
- [55:19]
Bret
So yeah, Jesse was known for a hot temper. I mean, that is an accurate part of John Douglas's analysis of him. But I think he vastly overstates him channeling his aggression into pursuits such as wrestling. Yes, he was into wrestling, but he also had these violent outbursts. He had some other criminality, minor criminality people always want to focus on. Like he decided he wanted to create a race course, so he stole a bunch of flags from the school. Like flag girls, the band. People always point that out as like a silly thing, you know, look at silly Jesse. But he was doing some really violent stuff as well. We've talked about this instant where he punched a girl in the face. That was the girl that he claimed he'd slept with and she said no, 13.
- [56:00]
Sarah James McLaughlin
And she's 13. Note the age thing again. Right. And also one thing, one thing about his violent history that really stuck out to me too. Chasing a girl down who was what, 11? And trying to smash her head in with a brick. We obviously know in this homicide there were some massive beatings of the head.
- [56:17]
Bret
And Jesse's home life was a complete wreck. As we said, a lot of this was going on while his dad was in and out of prison for trafficking marijuana. Women were in and out of his dad's life and in and out of Jesse's life as well. Very unstable, violent life, violent history and had some issues that had been diagnosed during his various encounters with authorities. Let's talk about. Damien Echols talked about some of this, but let's go into more detail and we're going to talk about Exhibit 500. So, as we've said, Eccles did have several run ins with the law, resulting in lengthy stays in mental institutions. On June 1, 1992, following the event with Deanna Holcomb, he was sent to Charter Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, which was the state's premier mental institution. Damien's thoughts, medical reports and doctor's evaluations were collected in what would become Exhibit 500. So if you go to Callahan, it's every page is a link and it takes forever to read it. I'm almost positive that we put this online, a compiled version of this. If we have not, we will link to it. So you can just read it without having to click on everything. Just a 500 page compendium of this is worth reading. We're gonna give you the highlights. But it's wild. I mean, it really is. There's a reason Damien focused on that in his interview and in his mind is blaming Jason for it, because it is wild. So in his admission to the hospital, it was reported that Damien's parents were concerned about his interest in Satanism. This actually comes up several times. They were also concerned that he had taken to carrying multiple large knives on him at all times and in his trench coat that he always wore. Damien was marked as homicidal and with psychoses. The report noted that Damien, quote, has little regard for others and stated he feels people have no true feeling for each other. Their main purpose is to use and bring harm to others around them. The report goes on to state that Damien had been suspended for inciting fights at school, starting fires, and then in one fight, he had almost gouged out the victim's eyes, which we've heard a lot about, that Damien had, apparently, in preparation for this, filed his nails to points. Whether that's an exaggeration, I don't know. But he certainly did attack the young man. He would deny that he felt violent. Instead, he saw these outbursts as a release. He said, quote, sometimes I have to do this. Not because of being angry. Sometimes I'm confused. He further states that he has one friend who would die for him, presumably Jason. Further mental status assessments indicate that Damian thinks a lot about life and death and he wants to go where the monsters go, which is something people have definitely focused on. He would say that he believed he had the power to steal energy from other people and influence their minds through witchcraft. He believed in magic and that he could make things happen using it. And he talked about how he hated the human race and that people are in two classes. The sheep and the wolves. And the wolves eat the sheep.
- [59:09]
Sarah James McLaughlin
So Damian told his therapist that he suffered past abuse, his words, but that it didn't bother him. Rather, he just bottled it up inside. And he described his feeling as more than just anger. He's filled with rage, and sometimes he blows up. When this happens, the only solution is to hurt someone. Damien says that he's been told he could be another Charles Manson or Ted Bundy and that he knows he's going to influence the world and that people will remember him. Remember famously what he said at the end of episode one, paradise Lost, like, with a smile on his face after the conviction. Now he's going to be the monster under the bed of all the West Memphis children, right? This was said with a level of glee. Now, Damien had been hospitalized three times. All were associated with anger, thoughts of killing others or killing himself. Damien explained that he obtained power by drinking blood of others. While in Craighead County Detention Center, Damien grabbed another inmate and began sucking blood from his neck. Though Damien, he doesn't deny this. He just says that the sucking of the blood was actually consensual. So have what you will with that. But he didn't deny sucking the blood. He had previously threatened to kill and eat his father. Cannibalism. And he'd also threatened to cut his mother's throat. The other inmates at Craighead were afraid of him, though he would deny reports that he rubbed blood all over his face. He also denied chasing a child with.
- [60:35]
Bret
An ax, which some of this probably is a little inflated, but nevertheless, I mean, you see the issue, you know, the whole drinking blood thing. I have this memory, which I assume is not a false memory. So maybe someone can provide this clip of Damien, I think, in an outtake from Paradise Lost, where he says, they say I drink blood. I don't drink blood. I'm more. Lick it.
- [60:54]
Sarah James McLaughlin
It's like I want to remember him saying that.
- [60:56]
Bret
I can see why that one didn't make the cut for Paradise Lost. Yeah, I think there's like an.
- [61:00]
Sarah James McLaughlin
West of Memphis. I think it was like west of Memphis or something. I don't know.
- [61:04]
Bret
I remember this.
- [61:06]
Sarah James McLaughlin
I remember I paused and I listened to it again because I was like. He says, well, it's not sucking it if you put on your finger and lick it or something like that.
- [61:13]
Bret
Something like that. So if you can find that. I've been looking for it. I can't find it. So if you can find it, and if it's not out there, I apologize ahead of time. Maybe I just made this up in my head. But I remember I have this image of him saying this anyway, and there are multiple reports of it. And even Jesse talks about this. And in these reports, it goes on to say that Damien said he would drink the blood of a sexual partner, or what he described as a ruling partner, whatever that is. He'd draw the blood either by biting or cutting. And drinking blood made him feel like a God. And he said that the more blood he drank, the more power and strength he'd attain. And look, they didn't make this up, okay? The doctors at these various hospitals didn't just make this stuff up. Damian said it, whether it's true or not. And once again, we know he has a history of saying things that aren't true. Well, we're just telling you what he said. Damien's ultimate goal was to be in total control, to be all powerful. And he talks about how he always feels like he doesn't have any power and how he feels like an outcast. And a lot of things he's doing is to combat that. So he has some really deep seated issues and problems that he's trying to overcome through a lot of this sort of acting out stuff. Damian's penchant for drinking blood was well known. Big Jesse Misskelley, who's Jesse's father, told reporters that Jesse had told him Damian drank blood. And Big Jesse used this as an example of why Jesse was actually scared of Damien and never would have done anything with him. Though telling the story probably just tied the two together more closely. And little Jesse would also mention the drinking of blood in his statements to police.
- [62:39]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Okay, so Damien described also having a spirit inside of him, that of a woman who had been murdered by her husband. With the spirit, Damien said that he felt more powerful and stronger. He could only hear her, not see her. And he also had conversations with demons and other spirits, which he achieved through rituals. Although not Satanic, he viewed himself as more of a demonologist. Now, this contradicts what he told another social worker who said he readily stated he was a vampire who worshiped the devil. Damien would alternate between growling at other patients and purring like a kitten. Now, one assessment concluded that Damian had a desire to gain power and demean other springs from animosity and a wish to vindicate past grievances by provoking fear and intimidation in others. Damien believed there were surveillance cameras behind mirrors and that he was constantly being watched. Damian wanted to meet Anton Lavey and Stephen King.
- [63:38]
Bret
Anton lavey is obviously the founder of Satanism. Stephen King's an awesome horror author. I'm sure he loves. He probably actually does like being tied together. Damien, but beside the point. So a girl named Laura Maxwell would tell police that she had dated Damien in 1991. This is interesting because this predates what we've heard of before. And Damien told her that he had been a knight in a past life that had killed a bunch of people and wrote books on witchcraft. He further said that he wished he could knock someone out with a baseball bat and suck their blood. He said he hated her brother, threatening to kill him along with her parents if necessary. He also told her that he hated little kids and talked about cutting off their fingers and toes. And in fact, Damien had been found to be 100% disabled by the Social Security Administration due to mental impairment. Damien's attorneys were not aware of this fact, which maybe could have been useful at trial or sentencing, that is, were it not for the reasons Damien claimed for his disability. In his initial application before the murders, he wrote that he was, quote, mentally disturbed. In a supplemental application dated February 1993, he wrote that he was a sociopath. In another supplemental report, Damien wrote he'd been hospitalized because he was, quote, homicidal. Manic depression, drug abuse, sociopathic, suicidal, schizophrenic, alcohol abuse. So maybe it wasn't such a good thing to bring up and they should have left all this out altogether. But they did bring it up in Exhibit 500. And if that's not enough, we know that Echols would say that his stepfather, Jack Echols, was physically and mentally abusive to him. And there were also allegations that he was abusive to his sister Michelle. So going back to what John Douglas said, Damien and Jason had no indicative violence in their past. Though the three were raised in a culture in which corporal punishment was common. None were abused. Not true. You know, we talk about sometimes, how do you know when to believe an expert and when not to? He completely blew this. I mean, I don't know where he got that information about Damian, but that is not true. And it would be interesting if he went back and actually looked at Damian's history and whether or not he fits the profile that he created. Forever did this.
- [65:49]
Sarah James McLaughlin
It's really interesting because it's not just all the exhibits and what came out in trial, Damien's interviews after the fact. Even though he says it all, he has a really good demeanor. Like, as he's gotten older, the way he interviews, it's a very relaxed demeanor in which he talks. But the things that he's actually saying, he doesn't deny these things. He gives like a different spin on it. Like, oh, I don't love Satanism. I just have pentagrams. So when you listen to what he says, it's not like it's difficult to find out what Damien has said about his own past. And also the records of his own past from medical experts as well. Okay, now let's turn to Jason Baldwin because I know a lot of people who kind of know this case will say, I can never believe anything about West Memphis three, that they're guilty because of Jason Baldwin, because he looks like a kid, because X, Y and Z. So let's look at Jason Baldwin.
- [66:46]
Bret
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- [67:39]
Sarah James McLaughlin
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- [68:24]
Bret
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Sarah James McLaughlin
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- [71:05]
Bret
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- [72:09]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Jason is unlike Damian and Jesse, he's rather unremarkable as a potential triple murderer. So he's a quiet kid with a burgeoning artistic talent. Jason only had a few run ins with the law. In 1990 he and some other friends broke into a car repair shop and damaged some vehicles. He was charged with breaking and entering in criminal mischief and had to pay $450 in restitution. In late 1992 he shoplifted some M&Ms. He was in fact the only of the three still in school and he worked odd jobs to make money, so some level of responsibility. His grades spanned the gamut between an A in art and a D in algebra. So in other words, he does have somewhat of a criminal record much, much shorter. And I would not categorize it as violent, but probably rather juvenile mischief. Now his home life, however, was difficult. When he was a boy, his mother attempted to end her own life. He found her and he called 91 1. In 1992, his mother was admitted to the mental health center on a 45 day hold. She had been cutting herself with razors, hallucinating a male voice and believed that she was dying of any aids. Then there was his stepfather, Terry Ray Grinnell. According to Baldwin in the book Dark Spell, Grinnell terrorized the family only a couple weeks before the murders. Jason had had enough of how Grinnell abused his mother and he took a baseball bat to his stepfather. Now Jason said, I took that little bat and I hit Terry with it. He hit the ground. I opened the door and I said leave. So those are Jason's own words, this sort of Explosion was atypical of Jason. Now he wrote in a school assignment, I am usually a calm person and can take most of anything, but sometimes I get angry. When I do get angry, it's usually not a pretty sight. He would write about attacking his brother over a video game, an incident which some have said exemplifies Jason's explosive temperature. Though to anyone with siblings, it might just be sibling rivalry, might be unremarkable. But while he does appear to be completely even keeled calm, you can see this in the documentary, you can see this at trial. He at least himself describes himself as having an explosive temper when he can't tamp it down anymore, and that it's, quote, not a pretty sight.
- [74:34]
Bret
I was going to say this about Terry Ray Grenell. Good for Jason. You know, I don't know anything else about Woody, may or may not have done, but that was honorable and I understand why people point to it and sort of see he can be violent, but to me that's completely different. And the thing with his brother, yeah, I get it. Once again he got angry. He, he, he like started choking the kid. Right. But once again, it's hard for me to describe too much of that.
- [75:00]
Sarah James McLaughlin
I mean, my kids beat the crap out of each other. Yeah, right. Like really, truly beat the crap out of each other in ways that I think are sociopathic and then I realize that they are siblings. Not excusing this, but I think there is something different when it's not an 11 year old girl or a 13 year old girl who you said you slept with. This is like your own flesh and blood.
- [75:21]
Bret
Yeah. And I think that also makes it different. I mean, to me we have the murder of three unrelated people and we have what is a very unstable family environment, unlike what John Douglas wrote, by the way. He has a very abusive home life. But I'll say this. I mean, there were plenty of people, and you see this in the documentary, who talked about the other side of Jason. His girlfriend talked about how he was quiet, kind and polite. She didn't know him to be involved in devil worship at all. He could not believe he was involved in the murders. And many people said this about Jason and say this to this day. She never saw him together with Damon and Jesse at the same time, which is always sort of an important question really. No one who knew Jason said he acted any differently after the murders. So if he was involved, it was a very cold blooded affair. Or alternatively, Jason is a follower. I think there's a real possibility that if he was involved in this. Damian was just so overbearing and his personality was so big. And the role that Jason played with Damian was such a follower role that if Damian started to do something and Jason could follow along. And you had people who said, in fact, I think Damian's ex girlfriend said the same thing, that if Damien wanted Jason to do it, he would do it.
- [76:34]
Sarah James McLaughlin
So two points to that, though. Damien didn't name Jason. Remember, he said that he had one friend who would die for him. Not just he would help me do the ultimate sacrifice, he would die for him. Now, he didn't specifically name Jason, but we can infer that his best friend is Jason. He said that Jason said that. The second point. Do we have an instance where Jason, in fact did something that was against his own interest, that he typically never would do, but for the. Whatever you want to call it, bullying persuasion of Damien. Yeah. Taking the Alford plea when he didn't want to, when he. This is after the fact, Right. This is many years later when he has attorneys on his side, when he's an adult rather than a kid. He. And we said in our previous episode, we agreed with him. We thought that he would probably be able to get out of being charged completely or having a conviction at all if he went to trial, despite all of those things, be on his side. What does he say at the end of it? It's not even like, I give up. No. He actually says, I do this for the good of my friend. That's a different reason than just, I give up. It wasn't just I'm being pushed against a corner. I think there was a lot of being pushed in a corner. But his own explanation on film for why he does it is altruistic for his friend, which is in line with what Damien said about this friend who would be willing to die for him.
- [77:56]
Bret
Yeah. So that's what we have. And look, this has been a brief review of their history, but I think it's worth restating John Douglas's sort of his behavioral profile of the killer. I'm just going to read it to you and I want, based on what you've heard, do any of the three fit this? Due to the brutality exhibited by the offender at the scene, it can be said with confidence that he would have a reputation from past behavioral problems as having an unpredictable and extremely explosive and violent personality. He probably came from a bad background in which there was family violence and or he was physically abused. Although this crime may in fact be the first time he has killed anyone, it is not the first time he is violently attacked someone. And I think one thing you can say for certain, innocent or guilty, Damien Echols fits this profile to a T. To a T. Jesse Misskeli also fits it not quite as well as Damien. Jesse's violence, to me at least, feels more typical of someone from Jesse's background. Broken home has some mental deficiencies. To me, the things he's doing reflect that more than the sort of. The kind of person you would expect to commit a crime like this. Jason Baldwin doesn't really fit it at all, in my view. But Damien Echols to a T. Now, I don't know that you can separate the three. I think they basically all have to be in it or not, though I've had people tell me before I'm interested in the West Memphis one, not the West Memphis three. West Memphis one, which I always think is an interesting thing. But the only thing I know for certain is John Douglas got this completely wrong. From a profiling perspective, he completely missed this.
- [79:37]
Sarah James McLaughlin
I think he got the profile right. I think he completely boxed the application, and I don't know why. Right. It's almost like he did the right thing, which was the profile. The profile. I don't know. I am not a behavioral analyst, but it all seems right. I can understand where it's coming from. So if in fact, that is the profile, which I can completely understand, the application was like. It was like the Karen retrial, where you're watching the video of. So clearly the defense saying this video is exactly what ultimately happened with the car. But then they're saying the opposite. They're looking at A, and they're like, well, it's clearly Z. It's almost like that's what John Douglas is doing. He gets it right. And then when applied, he's like, two plus two equals five, and it makes no sense whatsoever.
- [80:19]
Bret
Yeah. And I don't get it. And the only thing I can say about it, I like John Douglas. I love his books. Fantastic. Mindhunter. Amazing. So is the television show. Right. And the stuff he did. And cutting edge of all this, a lot of it has been sort of superseded by more sophisticated methods. But a legend. We used to do ads for Masterclass, and he was on it. And I would. I listen to all this stuff. Right. And he's great. But honestly, I kind of see in him what you see in a lot of experts, frankly. And if you read his books, you see this. Start with Mindhunter, and you keep going. And Law and Disorder, I think, is one of his most recent ones. And Law and Disorder is so different from Mindhunter. And by that point he's sort of an expert for hire. And he just kind of changes, you know, I mean, and look, I agree with him on some stuff, but I kind of feel like he just gets there almost by accident. Whoever hires him, he tends to come up with a pretty good argument for why they're innocent. Right? And he did that with the Ramses. I agreed with him on that. He did that with West Memphis Three. They may be innocent, but his application, like Alice said, is completely wrong. It's propaganda. I mean, it's so bad he's just using his name to sell this. And if you take even the most cursory look at the backgrounds of Damien, you just. He must not have looked into him at all. He must have met him at like the west of Memphis film premiere and been like, oh, this guy, he couldn't have done it. Look how peaceful he is. It's just amazing that he would write something like this. And I think it's important. I just want to say one other thing. Because he's come up so much, people as we've been covering this have been saying, well, John Douglas did a profile. And he said, they don't fit the profile. It's like, yeah, we're going to talk about John Douglas, don't you worry. And it's so important with these experts, and we talk about this a lot, you have to use your brain and evaluate the experts and take your own look at the evidence. And you don't need, you don't have to be a behavioral profiler, an expert in this, to be able to say, John Douglas the expert got it wrong.
- [82:13]
Sarah James McLaughlin
And that's why I think it's so important to make the two parts of it. I think the profile could be right. I don't know. I have nothing really to evaluate it. It's the application that's wrong. Second, I think the reason we reach this is, sorry, John Douglas, you do great things. You make a lot more money than me, A lot more people know your name than mine. But it might be in part laziness what happened. Because remember, what is a profile? It is not for sure anything. These three, or these two, or these one, Damian could be the only one who meets a profile perfectly. Even if you meet the profile does not mean you did it. What are profiles used for? The purpose of a profile is when you don't know who you're looking for. And you go to the behavioral analyst, say, where should we look? Where are we've Run every lead down and we are hitting dead ends. Help us generate leads. Should we be looking in this direction or this direction? Help us think outside the box. That's what a behavioral profile is good for. It is not to do a post hoc. Does this match? So you don't have a suspect where you have all the evidence. And then you go to. It's not like a polygraph test after the fact. You go to the behavioral analyst and say, does it fit? Because if it doesn't fit, we're going to release the guy. That's not how you use behavioral analysis. And because we're talking about when you switch and you stop being a behavioral analyst and you start becoming an expert for hire, there's the danger in that because obviously the general public, if they hear you say this person or these people match the profile of who killed the children in West Memphis, three, most people will immediately go to. That means they're guilty. So it's very possible that John Douglas knows that at least Damian, and probably at least Jesse and Damien meet the profile. But it takes too much work to explain why that doesn't necessarily mean they did it. That's not his role as a behavioral analyst. But then all of a sudden he's like, oh, wait, no, I'm not in the camp of they're guilty. I'm in the camp of they fit the profile, but I'm not here to analyze whether the evidence fits them. That gets lost outside of the clickbait world. And so what he wants to be known as, I'm just guessing, is like, no, no, no, they couldn't have done it because of this. It's much easier and much better of a sound bite to just say they don't fit the profile. Because you can imagine you have to take too many steps to explain why fitting the profile doesn't mean you're guilty. And let's be very clear. I think Damien fits this to a T. Does that mean he did it? Not necessarily. The evidence separately is interesting, but I think what this shows is this is how you evaluate an expert. And just because you're an expert, there are lots of steps that you take before you reach your ultimate conclusion. And you're allowed to, as the juror, as the rational, you know, thinker, to challenge any aspect of that path in which they get to the ultimate conclusion. So I don't think all of John Douglas's analysis is wrong. I think the application is wrong. And I think. Why is the application wrong? May have something to do with the fact that we Know what most people think about behavioral analysis and it matching someone we know that not to not be true, though Damien can meet this perfectly and still not be guilty.
- [85:04]
Bret
And I have one other thing to say about this, and I've said it before, but I'm gonna say it again because for some reason I have just. This bothers me. It is the bee in my bonnet. It is the soapbox I can't get off of. And so I have to repeat this again because if there is one thing, one thing that I want you to come away from this series with, it is that Damian Echols was not targeted by police because he wore black and listened to Metallica. That is not why he was a suspect. He was a suspect for the reason that Alice just said. Because he perfectly fits the profile of someone who would do this. His history was the kind of history that tells the police, we need to look into that guy. As Alice said, that does not mean he did this. It does not mean he's guilty. But it was entirely rational for him to be a suspect in the minds of the police from the very beginning because of his violent history in his violent background. And maybe they paid too much attention to him. Maybe they put too much stock in his background. Fine. But the lie you have been told for years is not true.
- [86:14]
Sarah James McLaughlin
And just because I'm sure someone's gonna clip this part, let's go on to say that, okay? We always know if you're looking at child predators, you pull like the registry of Sorna, you know, sexual offenders in the area to look at. It's not wrong to do that. It's a starting place. I'll go one step further. Because of his background, perfectly fitting the profile of someone who would commit these horrific murders. His own words repeatedly said to police continually indicate that they needed to investigate him more. So I don't think they actually paid him too much attention. I think they had to investigate him because of his own words pointing to lots of things that we've already covered in the testimony. You can read for yourself. I don't have to paraphrase and then somehow get it wrong. He had to have been looked at number one because of his background. And then once they started talking to him because of what he said, he was just endless troves of follow up. And the alibi will get to the alibi later. Doesn't necessarily rule him out. So if the police didn't look into him and someone else was convicted or no one else was convicted at all, I bet you like the entire social media World would be like, this guy is obviously someone you need to be investigating. Why did you not investigate him? This guy has pentagrams on his chest and he's talking about walking through these exact paths where the kids were found across the pipe bridge 200 times in the surrounding time around it. And he is blatantly lying about certain things that are provable at the time. You didn't look into him. What is wrong with you? Maybe he didn't do it, but now will never know because you never looked into him. That's what would happen if you didn't investigate him. So if you want to clip this whole part about, you know, why he's being looked into and why they followed him, this goes along with not tunnel vision. I think if we didn't look into him, we'd be having the opposite conversation of what a complete screw up the investigation was for not looking into him.
- [87:58]
Bret
Oh, somebody else had been convicted and there was an innocence campaign. Damien Echols would be like, he would be suspect number one to the innocence crowd. Can you imagine if they'd had somebody like this and let the Adnan Zayad case, how the people would have lost their minds? And I'll take it even one step further since we're continuing down this path. Damien Echols is also the exact profile of somebody who would be wrongfully convicted because there's all sorts of reason to think he did it. He is exactly the kind of person who would be wrongfully convicted because you look at him, you're like, this guy is perfect for this. If we just find some evidence because he blew a case, clearly him to.
- [88:31]
Sarah James McLaughlin
The family, you know, like, come on, you guys. Like, if he's wrongfully convicted, right? Like he's doing all these things that you're like, dang it. Talk about himself doing prejudicial things versus probative repeatedly.
- [88:43]
Bret
Oh, yeah. I mean, he walked himself into this conviction and he drugged Jason Baldwin along. I mean, that's essentially what happened. And Jesse Misskelley, we're going to talk about more later. Okay. I'm sure you got a lot of thoughts about this episode because we said a lot in this episode which could be controversial. By the time this one comes out, the Karen Reed case will be over and people actually be paying attention. So I have to watch out. So if you have thoughts, shoot us an email. Prosecutors pod gmail.com Prosecutors pod for all your social media and join the gallery on Facebook to discuss this case. If you want to watch us record these early and ad free. Do I'll say this. By the time you hear this one, this series probably be over. Join Patreon. If you'd rather just get the episodes without ads, you can do that on Patreon as well for as little as $3 a month. So I will tell you this. We are really, I know this is hard to believe. We are closing in on the end of this. This. We have the alibis, which I think we're going to talk about next week. We're going to go through the alibis of the West Memphis three. Whether or not. So they kind of fit the profile. Damian definitely does. Do they have. Is there an opportunity for them to do this or does the alibi rule them out? Then we're finally going to get to Jesse Ms. Gilly's confessions. We're sort of saving that towards the end because it's so important. We didn't want to get buried in the middle. We're going to spend probably a couple episodes on that and then we're going to talk about alternative suspects, some sort of popular alternative suspects and alternative scenarios, including Mr. Bojangles, some of the relatives, that sort of thing. Just some random folks talk about that as well. And then it will be on to our theories of the case where we tell you exactly who did it, what happened and how. So closing in. I mean, we're 16 episodes. Could be 20, 21 episodes, I feel like. And we'll be done.
- [90:30]
Sarah James McLaughlin
But not much more than that.
- [90:31]
Bret
No, exactly. Now I think we are rolling along towards the end, and I'm kind of sad to see it go. This is.
- [90:38]
Sarah James McLaughlin
I kind of can't believe four months have passed by.
- [90:41]
Bret
I know. It is wild. It is wild. And it's funny because I really do think there's been less controversy because of Karen Reid. People are so focused on Karen. By the time you hear this, anyone.
- [90:52]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Cares about West Memphis right now, like.
- [90:54]
Bret
Yeah, I mean, people are just zoned in on Karen. So it's kind of nice because we just kind of get to do this and we don't have to worry about like a bunch of backlash or whatever. It's been kind of nice. We'll see how that goes as we close in on the ending, but. All right, Alice, is there anything else you want to add before we sign off?
- [91:10]
Sarah James McLaughlin
No, but tonight was a workout. I got a little worked up, but.
- [91:13]
Bret
No, we didn't rush it then.
- [91:15]
Sarah James McLaughlin
We didn't rush it. I worked up. I just mean tonight was all about going right back to the source, the transcript, the record, to clear up a lot of misconceptions. And there was a reason that we stayed so closely to the text, because there has been so many movies, so many podcasts, talking about things that just don't exist. So we've really stayed very close to the text, which you can read for yourself and see that we are not taking things out of context or clipping things unfairly or so. So please do that, because this is important, and it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to correct misconceptions. And we are but one lone voice, so help us in correcting the misinformation.
- [91:55]
Bret
And I'll say this. You know, we're also. We are giving you our gloss on this, our thoughts on it, and some of it is a matter of interpretation, and I think that's important to remember. You know, sometimes people act like we're just reading to you off the page. Well, this is what the report says. We're not doing that. We're giving you sort of our interpretation of it as well. So if you disagree with our interpretation, that's fine. That's fine. Maybe we're wrong about the interpretation, but I think we're at least arguing off the same documents, which is good. You know, you can read the same documents we did. You may come to the conclusion, and it's a perfectly reasonable conclusion, that all of the stuff in Exhibit 500 is just Damian being an edgelord, you know, and frankly, trying to game the system so he can get disability so he didn't have to work, he'll get money. Perfectly reasonable interpretation doesn't change what's written on the document. It's just about your interpretation. And, you know, that's important, you know, matter of interpretation, as Justice Scalia's book says. All right, well, we'll be back next week with yet another episode, but until then, I'm Brett.
- [93:02]
Sarah James McLaughlin
And I'm Alice. And we are the prosecutor.
- [93:28]
Bret
Oh, I think this is going well so far. I like how you let your hair down.
- [93:34]
Sarah James McLaughlin
I wasn't on purpose.
- [93:37]
Bret
Did you take your shirt off? You look different.
- [93:39]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Do I? Did I take my shirt off?
- [93:41]
Bret
You did. Something. Something changed.
- [93:45]
Sarah James McLaughlin
No, my shirt is still on. Guys.
- [93:48]
Bret
Is it just me? Am I the only one? Maybe I haven't noticed you. I've been sewing the material.
- [93:52]
Sarah James McLaughlin
What is your.
- [93:54]
Bret
I don't know, you just look different.
- [93:56]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Like as of 5, all your shirts.
- [93:58]
Bret
Like your over shirt or whatever for.
- [94:00]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Like in jacket or your coat today? Ram.
- [95:00]
Bret
No, like. But from 10 minutes ago, if I. If I rewound 10 minutes ago, you would not look like you look right now, that's what I'm.
- [95:07]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Can I get some backup here? There are 124 people here. No one I'm not.
- [95:12]
Bret
You look. Sophie just said you look different. You totally look different.
- [95:15]
Sarah James McLaughlin
I look different?
- [95:16]
Bret
I don't know what you did, but you look different.
- [95:35]
Sarah James McLaughlin
Ram.
- [96:04]
Bret
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