jessie knew damien echols and jason baldwin but not very well. they lived in a neighborhood close by. what was your world? what was your day like? what was your life like? poor white trash. i think that s one of the things that made it so easy for them to put this off on us, is because we were expendable. our lives didn t matter. whether that was true or not, the police were struggling to solve a crime with very few leads. what kind of pressure are police under at the time? business was suffering. people were not going out. life was not going on as normal. and they weren t getting crucial information from the state crime lab. three weeks after the murders a police inspector pleaded for answers about the young victims. time of death. cause of death. were the kids sodomized? we need information from the crime lab desperately, the inspector says. our hands are tied. police had all these theories, but what did jessie misskelley do for them in terms of confirming what they wer
damien were found guilty of killing stevie branch, christopher byers and michael moore. we the jury find damien echols guilty of capital murder. getting accused killers off the street was a big, huge relief to people. and then trying them and convicting them just sealed that relief. i feel wonderful at this point. i feel like we ve definitely been vindicated in this case. now my boy can play and go on about his life in heaven the way it is, and i ll go on with mine the best i can. what are you going to say to your son? son, we won. and wait till mama gets up there, and we ll have a good time when i get there with you. i m glad it s over. jason was sentenced to life in prison. damien was dealt with even more severely. he was sent to arkansas s death row. i was satisfied that they had
that was the first thing that everybody started saying, that it was a ritualistic killing, satanic killing. three teens, convicted. guilty of capital murder. their accused ringleader sent to death row. i m in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. he deserves to be tortured and punished for the rest of his life for murdering three 8-year-old children! it was a crime almost too horrible to imagine. three teens worshiping satan, murdering three 8-year-old boys. that happened right here back in 1993. two of the teens got life in prison. a third was judged to be so evil that he was sentenced to die. but after spending 18 years
sentenced to life in prison. damien s and jason s trial was next but the case against them was much weaker. now, going into the trial of damien and jason, they don t have a confession. they don t have any information, a witness, anybody who says that these boys even knew the victims. six months after the child murders in west memphis, arkansas, prosecutors had little evidence against jason and damien. they had jessie s confession but he wouldn t testify against the other two. they did, however, get a big break right here in this lake behind jason baldwin s home. there was an announcement by the prosecutor that he had a hunch that there was a knife in this lake. dennis riordan is damien s attorney. the hunch, however, turned out to be a situation where they had informed the press to be there because they would
i was immediately very reluctant to get involved in a death penalty case. prosecutors generally will not pursue the death penalty unless they feel the evidence of guilt is overwhelming, and i was stunned to find out that there was not, in my opinion, a single piece of credible evidence in the death case of this man s guilt. damien echols, jason baldwin and jessie misskelley, now known as the west memphis three, have all found supporters from all over the world, including celebrities like actor johnny depp and rock musician eddie vedder. do you know how rare it is for someone on death row to be set free? there are so many things about this case and about my life in general that are against the odds that things like that don t even make me blink anymore. and that support has led to hundreds of thousands of dollars for dna testing of a hair found at the crime scene.