Crime Weekly - S3 Ep118: West Memphis Three: Allegations and Alibis (Part 4)

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

West Memphis, Arkansas is located in Crittenden County and is directly across the Mississippi River from Memphis Tennessee, but in 1993, West Memphis and Memphis were worlds apart. Memphis boasted a healthy and growing population of over 620 thousand, while West Memphis had just over 28 thousand residents. But Memphis, TN struggled with high crime rates, with 1993 setting a record for the most homicides in one year, a record that wasn’t broken until 2016. West Memphis Arkansas had a more small town, laid back feel, and as cliche as it sounds, people felt safe leaving their doors unlocked and letting their young children play outside all day with no supervision. That was until May 5th, 1993, when three eight year old boys rode away on their bikes, eager to expel the energy they had built up all day while sitting in their second grade classrooms at Weaver Elementary School, but they never came home. It wouldn’t be long before the residents of West Memphis and then the world found out what happened to Stevie Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers. Their battered and mutilated bodies were found the next day in a swampy wooded area known to locals as Robin Hood Hills, and the community of West Memphis felt a shockwave hit their community that they would not recover from for some time. Within a month three teenagers were arrested and charged with capital murder, and it wasn’t long before whispers of witchcraft, devil worship and occult killings rippled throught the homes and businesses of West Memphis, and those whispers eventually turned into a loud roar, a roar that might accompany an angry mob looking for someone to blame for an unimaginable tragedy, akin to the infamous witch hunts that are dotted throughout history. This is the story of six boys from West Memphis, Arkansas; three were brutally murdered and stolen from this world far before their time, the other three were marched to the proverbial gallows, guilty in the court of public opinion, and found guilty in an actual court of law. Six lives destroyed, six lives forever changed, six lives eternally tied together. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: Thuma Create that feeling of checking in to your favorite boutique hotel suite, but at home, with The Bed, by Thuma. And now go to Thuma.co/WEEKLY to receive a twenty-five dollar credit towards your purchase of The Bed plus free shipping in the continental U.S. Babbel Right now, get up to 55% off your subscription when you go to BABBEL.com/ CRIMEWEEKLY ZocDoc Go to Zocdoc.com/CRIMEWEEKLY and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours Vessi Click the vessi.com/CRIMEWEEKLY and use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 15% off your entire order! Free shipping to CA, US, AU,JP, TW, KR, SGP GameTime Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code CRIMEWEEKLY for $20 off your first purchase.

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apply. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we're diving into the fourth part of the West Memphis 3 case. Before we get into it, do we have any announcements, any housekeeping, anything to say? I think the only thing I'll say, because we have gotten a lot of DMs and emails about it is if you're someone who has ordered from Criminal Coffee, a lot of it is now showing sold out. We got more in stock. So if you want to go back over there, if you've been DMing us or emailing us asking about specific items, most of it is back there. If you order, you'll get it fairly quickly. There should be very little downtime from this point

forward, but that was really it. We appreciate everyone who's purchased something and we will try to keep it as stocked as we can. Sometimes it's a matter of coming from the manufacturers where we're waiting on the blanks before we can print the actual shirts or t-shirts or sweatshirts. So going forward, we're going to try to keep everything up, but if there's any issues, as always, you guys have been emailing me or DMing us and we get it right over to JNR. We get it figured out. Yes. And I'm actually still waiting on. Yeah, exactly. That's the point. Stephanie doesn't have her stuff yet. That's how, but I think for the most part, there's only about 15 pending orders right now. We've sold a ton. So

everyone for the most part should have it. There was a couple people who didn't get their item or i think even one person who had a hole in their sweatshirt it was like on the sleeve it's already been fixed yeah it's already been fixed so that's going to happen when you were doing a lot of orders the i think the biggest thing is to just make sure we fix fix it as fast as possible at no cost to you like so for that person they're probably watching this we just sent out a new sweatshirt they got to keep the one with the hole in it. You know, that's really simple. So just bear with us. We're getting up and running, but I think we're, we're firing in all cylinders now. Yeah. I grabbed a bunch of like t-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, hats and stuff when I was in Rhode Island at the beginning of this month. And I just, you know, because I had flown and I,

I did, I only brought a carry-on I didn't pack like real luggage. It was only there for a couple of days I just threw everything in the box and I was like ship this out, but I haven't gotten it yet So I know I wish I'd shoved a couple in my carry-on You will have it by net you you can wear what that stuff by next episode I personally guarantee it because it was sent out today So you will if she doesn't have it by next episode. I personally guarantee it because it was sent out today. So you will, if she doesn't have it by next episode, crush me in the comments. She will have

her criminal coffee merch next week. I personally guarantee it. Disclaimer. If I don't, I'm writing a strongly worded letter to customer service of criminal coffee. You will have it. I have the tracking number. You will have it. Okay. All right. So let's dive in because we have a lot to cover today. We're just going to get right back into it. And I'm going to kind of go back a little bit just to, I don't know, sort of get us back on track. Damien Echols about the Robin Hood Hill murders on three separate occasions, twice at the trailer park where he lived and once at the police station. Now, we did briefly discuss Damien's conversation with Lieutenant Sudbury and Steve Jones that took place at his trailer on May 7,

1993, a day after the bodies of Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Stevie Branch were discovered in Robin Hood Hills. The next day, Detective Bill Durham and investigator Shane Griffith questioned both Damien and his best friend Jason Baldwin, as well as a pregnant Dominique Teer, who by the way at that moment was carrying the child of Damien Echols. He'd gotten her pregnant. So that's stressing Jerry Driver out because remember, Jerry Driver claimed that Damien and Deanna had purposely gotten pregnant so that they could sacrifice their baby. And he was so sure of this that he made sure to tell this to everybody, even the Oregon parole office, the juvenile parole office who was in charge of Damien when he was living in Oregon. So now Domini is pregnant, Damien's new girlfriend. She's pregnant with his child. And Jerry Driver

was super stressed out about this. But anyways, Domini is pregnant and they're interviewing, the police are interviewing Jason and Damien. Jason and Damien said that on May 5th, they'd both gone to the house of Jason's uncle and Jason had cut the grass. Damien said that his father picked them up around 6 p.m. and then brought them home. Now, that was kind of the original alibi. And we're going to go over a little bit more in depth a little bit later in this video, how the alibi sort of evolved, because it does evolve and it does change, to be fair, to be unbiased. The whole alibi sort of evolved because it does evolve and it does change to be fair to be unbiased the whole alibi situation specifically with Damien and even a little bit with Jason Baldwin that does get me like I cannot for the life of me put it together to where it makes sense

and that does that does bother me the alibi is shaky and we're going to go over that in more depth in a little bit now Shane Griffith had started to ask the boys questions from the questionnaire sheet that he had with them, and he was actually able to complete a sheet for Damien. But as he was filling out one for Jason Baldwin, Jason's mother arrived home, saw them all standing on the front lawn, and she became upset. She accused the police of picking on her son, and she said she didn't want Jason talking to law enforcement. In his report, Detective Bill Durham writes that he attempted to reason with Jason's mother, but it didn't work, so he and Shane Griffin left. On May 10th, Damian Echols was summoned to the West Memphis Police Station, where he was interviewed by Lieutenant James Sudbury of the Crittenden County Drug Task Force, as well as Detective Bryn Ridge.

In his notes, Detective Ridge claims that at this time, Damien was not considered a suspect, even though we will find out later that's absolutely not true. They considered Damien a suspect the second they interviewed him for the first time. And Detective Ridge also said that Damien was very calm and even cold as he answered their questions. And these questions concerned his background, as well as any knowledge he may have had about the murders. Now, also later, we'll find out that at this time, Damien was still on antidepressants that he'd been prescribed when he was going through his mental health struggles not long before this. That could have something to do with his calmness.

He seemed to believe that it did have something to do with his calmness. But also, if he was just a normal kid being interviewed about these murders and he had nothing to do with it, I would expect him to be calm. I wouldn't expect him to be like all high strung and kind of stressed out about it. He kind of seemed like one of those kids that even if he was a little like on edge, he wouldn't show it because he was like too cool for school. You know, he wasn't going to let these police officers see him sweating or see him stressed out about being there. So I don't find his calm and cool demeanor during this interview, especially because it's like the third time the police

have talked to him at this point to be a red flag. But I don't know. What do you think? I think for everybody, it's different, right? Like, I mean, all the factors, the external circumstances that you just labeled laid out could absolutely be the reason behind his demeanor. I think that's why with everyone, there's a baseline. And we even had some comments where they were asking me whether or not like, what if the person is naturally anxious when they come into an interview you're developing a baseline and their natural tendencies may show signs of deception well that's their baseline right so those things those ticks that they display even under normal non-stressful situations are factored into their baseline so you when you do

ask tough questions you remove those ticks because those are something that you've seen normally. So yeah, every person is different. The way they react to stress is different. It could be some of the medications that he was on that was contributing to his demeanor in those interviews. It could also be the fact that at this point, like you said, this was the second or third time he had been interviewed and he's realizing they really don't have anything either a, because I didn't do it or B because they're shitty investigators and they just haven't put it together yet. Either, or he was feeling more comfortable in that situation because he had been interviewed

by them in the past and knew their tactics and wasn't really concerned about it. And then it also might be part of his personality, right? Like he might be slightly anti-police where he's like, these guys are boneheads. And so I think they're jokes and I'm going to treat them as such. I've had that happen too, where there could be a lot of factors playing here where this might just be part of Damien's personality. I don't look too deep into it to summarize. I don't think you take anything away from it either way.

So what you're saying is if you're guilty, you should go into your first interaction with the police acting like stressed and anxious in general to establish that kind of baseline. That way, nothing you do afterwards in any further interviews makes you look suspicious because they're just going to think you're just like an anxious person, kind of like Stephanie Harlow. Yeah. Yeah. You threw up a lot of flex i think i mean there is actual documentation from fbi polygraph exams where there's been people they didn't make me do it but there's been times where they've checked your your shoes before taking a polygraph exam because what some people were doing in the past way back in the day is they would put a tack in their sneaker or their dress shoe and And when they were answering controlled questions,

they would step on the tack to create that level of pain. So it would spike their heart rate and whatever to their body so that it would, it would throw off their baseline for the polygrapher. So yeah, I know you're joking. Couldn't you just pinch yourself really hard? Well, they would physically see you doing that though.

You know, like if the FBI agent was like, so what do you think about the Red Sox? And you just grabbed your nipple and start pinching it. No, like you're like, I was just doing it when you were talking because I wanted to see if I could do it and be like covert about it. And I was like pinching the inside of my thigh like really hard yeah, you could do that, but there are things that for most people, some people, they don't do anything at all. But when you're lying, there's a subconscious response that you haven't even figured out that you make yet. I'll tell you, when I was on Big Brother, one thing that I noticed that I do, and it's not even necessarily when I'm lying, but when I'm in a stressful situation or thinking really hard, I noticed it on big brother watching it back.

I'll play with my face a lot. I like rub my, my jaw and my mustache like this. It's the weirdest thing. And it, I'm so conscious of it now, but if you, if you're in,

if you're watching certain clips from big brother, where I'm trying to do something without them knowing it, it like the conversation means a lot to me. And I'm, I'm, I'm where I'm trying to do something without them knowing it. It like the conversation means a lot to me and I'm working. I'm constantly rubbing my face. And I wondered like, was I doing that when I was undercover? I can't remember because I never had it recorded to look back on. But that was something that I noticed I subconsciously do a lot. Like if you're a Big Brother fan, you know what I'm talking about.

I'd be sitting there for literally five minutes Rubbing the what little mustache that I have i'm surprised it didn't just come right off I wasn't rubbing it so much but I was doing it. I'm like, dude, what the are you doing? Like how didn't anybody pick up on this? But yeah, everybody has things about that your towel Is that your towel you shouldn't have revealed that I don't really do it anymore Because now i'm aware of it because I because I had footage to go back and look at to kind of like evaluate it. And I don't think I do it anymore. You didn't notice it ever, right? But that was something for me. I'm going to be back and watch the footage. So for most people, you haven't had that opportunity. So you may think you're doing the exact same thing that you normally do when you answer

a question. But if you are lying, there may be something that you've never realized about yourself that someone who's trained in looking for those things may pick up on. So yeah, some people try to throw you off and talk a different way or sit a different way. But in most cases, there's going to be that one or two things that you pick up on where it's like, okay, every time I ask a question about this robbery or this murder or whatever, they repeatedly do this one thing. Again, that doesn't mean they're guilty, but it's just something to note going forward

in the investigation. So as far as Damien's concerned, if anything, the medication, which some people do as well, deliberately, that might have thrown off his demeanor, made him more calm and relaxed in that situation, which might have just been an unintentional result of his medications, not necessarily because he was trying to be like that in those interviews. You know, a couple of weeks ago, Derek asked me a question and I answered it and he said, you're lying. You're lying because I know you and you did. I'm not going to say what he said I did, but he was like, and you're not going to say what the question was either.

You're dead. That'll go to her grave. That's that's best friend talk. But yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And he's like, you're lying. And I'm like, no, I am not. and he's like you're lying and i'm like no i am not and he's like you're doing this this and then i'm like bitch you shouldn't have told me because now i'm aware and you will never catch me again and that she turned red she turned red but yeah there i was like in a second as she finished her sentence i was like yeah you're lying 100 you're lying and she's like i felt so called out i felt so vulnerable and called out and i was like what that's strong like self-confident in her answers was like okay let's record the episode like a little girl damn yeah exposed me but like yeah but now i'm aware of it how many people right now are like

oh my god i would pay to know what that question was oh no one will ever know no one will ever know that's for sure that was off he wasn't even right i wasn't even lying okay i'm still going with it yeah you you go with it as long as you want great example though thanks all right so let's talk about the interview that Damien had with Detective Bryn Ridge on the 10th. During this interview, Damien, and this is why I think he was just fucking with them at this point, because he's like, just honestly answering, you know, and he's saying things that I think he knows they're going to find to be like odd and suspicious. But he's like, it's the truth. And I'm just going to say it. And like, he kind of wanted to shock them a little bit. I think, you know, that is the teenage kind of rebellious thing. Like I remember being that age and I loved saying things to adults that would shock them because I loved seeing their faces when like hearing the change of the pitch in their voice and knowing they were uncomfortable and knowing that like I had piqued their interest kind of. So sometimes I just think teenagers do that But especially if they're innocent right is let's say for if he's really in a degree

He's like this is a you guys are barking up the wrong tree I'm having fun with this now because having fun with it exactly you guys are looking at me, and I didn't do shit You're so far off But yeah And tell me if you get that from what he's saying because like that is exactly what I got like he Like he was having fun with them. Like he was like, well, I'm here. So might as well make this interesting, you know. Instead, they believed in a goddess, and everyone in the group actively worked on reaching a state of divine light, at which point they would become gods themselves. Damien also mentioned his ex-girlfriend, Deanna Holcomb, and he said that he considered her to be a priestess and that she worshipped cats during her practice of witchcraft. At the time of the interview, Detective Ridge noted that Damien was wearing a necklace which had a pentagram on it. And when he asked about this necklace, Damien said he had just purchased it at the Mall of Memphis the Saturday before. And the pentagram was a positive Wiccan

symbol. Damien also repeated his alibi, the one we kind of talked about a little bit earlier, but it had slightly changed and it would sort of continue to change and evolve as time went on. When we come back, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back from the break, we're going to play a clip or actually, you know, pretty much a video from a YouTube channel called Crime Retracer, which I got to talk to the person who runs this channel because the way they put this together with the graphics and stuff is amazing. If you're listening on audio, you're only going to hear it, which is more than enough to understand and follow. And Derek, you're going to want to take notes while we're watching this clip. But if you're watching on

YouTube, you'll be able to see like these very cool graphics and the way that she breaks everything down and makes it very easy to understand. But when we come back, we're going to watch and listen to that video and kind of go over what Damien's alibi was and sort of understand that it's so complicated and convoluted that I don't even know if it can count as an alibi, really. But we'll do that when we come back for the break. All right, we're back. I'm going to play this clip. Derek and I are going to watch and listen along, and then we're going to discuss. Aged 18, Damien lived in Broadway with his birth parents, Pam and Joe Hutchison, and sister Michelle Eccles. His best friend, 16-year-old Jason Baldwin, lived in Lakeshore, a stone's throw from 16-year-old girlfriend, Dominie Teer, who was pregnant with his child. Damien's adoptive father, Jack Eccles, also lived right

by them in Lakeshore, and Damien had stayed with him when he returned to West Memphis from Oregon in 1992, about six months before the rest of his family did. Narlene Hollingsworth lived one road behind, and Ken Watkins was staying nearby at his uncle's trailer at the time of the murders. You'll hear both their names as we move through. Damien was first questioned the day after the bodies were found by his juvenile officer Steve Jones and Lieutenant James Sudbury. There are no police notes relating to an alibi, just a cult. He was questioned again two days later with Jason and Domini in Jason's yard.

There's no audio or transcript, but the notes from Bill Durham are the first outline of an alibi we have. They say they went to Jason's uncle's to m Jason's yard. There's no audio or transcript but the notes from Bill Durham are the first outline of an alibi we have. They say they went to Jason's uncle's to mow the yard. Damien called his father to pick them up from the laundry on Missouri. They got picked up at 6pm. They dropped Jason and Domini home and then went home. His first proper interview is at the police station on the 10th of May where he gave hair and blood samples and took part in a polygraph exam. Again the interview wasn't recorded but according to police notes Damien was with Jason and Domini. They went to watch Jason mow his uncle Hubert's yard. Damien called his mum not his dad to get picked up from Alexander's laundry. They dropped Domini not Jason back home to Lakeshore and then

he added in that they went with his family to visit the Sanders from about 3 to 5pm, before going home and spending the night on the phone with Holly George until 11.30. His friends and family largely corroborate the core of his alibi, although the details and timings have changed and often conflict with one another. According to his mother Pamela Hutchison, she woke him about 10am. They left the house in the car at 10.15 and went to East Arkansas Mental Health Unit for an appointment. His counsellor wasn't there, so she waited to see the doctor. While waiting, they spoke to his ex stepsister, Carol Ashmore. Ken Watkins said Domini called him at home about 12. They saw the doctor

around 12 for about 20 minutes and left by 12.30. Pam dropped the prescription off at Marion Discount Pharmacy and they dropped Damien at Lakeshore at 1pm. This is corroborated by Dominie, Dominie's mum Diane and LG Hollingsworth who stated he popped over after job hunting. While Dominie and her mum say they watched TV and waited until Jason got home from school, Damien says he went to the Sanders by 3pm. And this is where the conflicts really start. Witnesses made multiple statements and the timings often shift around between versions. So to map Damien's day we've used full

transcripts over notes and grouped the information into 30 minute ranges. Domini, her mum Diane and Ken Watkins all say Damien was there at 3.30. Then Jason came over after school and they went to his trailer. Holly George and Jennifer Bearden say they had a three-way call with Damien when they got home from school. He was at home but was going to Jason's

and asked if Jennifer could call back in 30 minutes. His family say he called from the laundry around 3.30 and they picked him up between 3.45 and 4. Acclaimed family friend of the Moors, Carrie Morris, says she saw Damien following, in air quotes, Michael South on Wilson. She didn't stop or intervene but says Michael was going to get his bike. However, we know he already had it when he went to Stevie's at 3.30. Ken says when they left Domini's he went home to check in and Domini went to the store to get snacks and Damien waited outside Jason's. Damien's family say they dropped Domini home about 4.10 after they had already picked them up from the laundry. Then they went to the pharmacy

to pick up the prescription. But according to Domini, they were only just leaving Lakeshore to go to Mo Jason's uncle's yard, which is a 30 minute walk away. Ken also says they left Lakeshore but only went the 15 minute walk to Walmart to play video games. At 4.30, LG says Dominique and Damien were arguing on the corner near Jason's trailer. Jennifer says she called Damien back at Jason's and spoke for about 20 minutes while they played Nintendo. Dominique says they were at Uncle Hubert's house watching Jason mow the yard. And Ken says they were still at Walmart playing video games and avoiding LG by hiding inside looking at tapes.

Damien and his family arrived home from the pharmacy and dropping Dominie off and had dinner. According to Dominie, her and Damien were just walking to the laundry to call for a lift and Ken says they were still hiding from LG inside Walmart. He left at 5.30 to go home and babysit and said Jason and Damien told him that they were off to the bowling alley. Damien's family are still at home. His sister says he was on the phone to Jennifer for an hour. This is not corroborated by Jennifer's statements. Dominique says she was picked up at 5.30 and taken home by Damien's whole family. Her mum Diane says she saw Pam and Damien in the car when they dropped her off and A Different World was on TV. There were two 30-minute episodes on that day, starting at 5.30.

Damien's family is still at home. His sister Michelle says he was still on the phone to Jennifer. This is now the critical part of the timeline, as is when the boys were last seen alive by the Robin Hood Hills. Damien's family drive over to see their friends the Sanders. Jennifer Sanders, their youngest daughter, says she was in when Joe, Pam, Damien and Michelle all arrived just before 90210 was coming on at 7pm.

This is corroborated by Jennifer's older sister, Stacey, who was across the street at her cousin Meredith McKay's. Meredith also says she saw Pam, Joe and Damien. All three say they know it was this day because 90210 was on and because the Sanders had gone to the Splash Casino for the first time with the DeWitts. A conflict in statements is Jennifer says this was the day before her boyfriend's concert, however this was refuted by the assistant band director at trial who said this was actually on the 17th of May. Stacey says this was two days before Damien was arrested. He wasn't actually arrested until the 3rd of June but was subject to regular police questioning in the days after the bodies were found. Joe remembers the day but not if Damien was with them or not Damien and his family stayed at the Sanders home for 20 to 30

minutes leaving about halfway through 90210 which finished at 8 while nine people corroborate the visit happened while 90210 was on and the Sanders were at the casino there are conflicts Pam and Michelle and Meredith all corroborate the time date and fact Damien was Pam and Michelle and Meredith all corroborate the time, date and fact Damien was there. Jennifer and Stacey also corroborate this, but there are conflicts with some of the information they gave to anchor the date as the 5th. Joe remembers the date but isn't sure if Damien went with them or not. Debbie McKay only remembers seeing Pam and can't be sure of the exact date, but knows it was a Wednesday. 90210 was on stacy and meredith were both there and

her sister susan was out which supports everyone else's account randy and susan were at the casino so didn't see anyone themselves but say their daughter told them the next day that pam and family had come over and that pam left a note the trip to the casino was corroborated by the dewitts who drove them there and had dinner for four and Gail Poindexter who saw them on the 5th when she won $10,000. The conflict to the casino trip on the 5th is the sign-in sheet which was only for one or two people instead of four. The only person to put Damien elsewhere at this critical time is Ken Watkins who says he was playing Nintendo at Jason's from 7 till 9. Last we heard from Ken, he had left Damien and Jason at Walmart

at 5.30. Walmart to the crime scene is approximately a two mile walk. The service road route is slightly shorter, approximately 30 minutes, and the neighborhood way is slightly longer, approximately 40 minutes. If they left Walmart at 5.30 when Ken did, they'd get to the woods by 6, 6.10. It's a two and a half mile walk back to Lakeshore, approximately 50 minutes. So to get back by 7, they'd need to leave immediately or at most have 10 minutes to find and kill the boys, then conceal their bodies and bikes. Between 7.30 and 8, Damien and family were driving home from the Sanders,

although according to Ken, he's still at Jason's playing Nintendo until 9. Jennifer called Damien, but he wasn't home. His grandmother answered and said to call back at 9. By now, the boys had been reported missing and the search was getting underway. Michelle and Pam say Damien is on the phone all night with Jason, Jennifer, Holly and Domini. Jennifer calls at 8.30 but it's busy, then she speaks to him from 9.30 to 10. Holly George says Jennifer told her she spoke to Damien around 9. Heather said her and Holly tried calling Damien at 9 but didn't get hold of him till 10.30.

Heather's 2008 affidavit says when she stated Holly, it was actually Jennifer. Her and Holly didn't get on as both like Jason, but Jennifer was worried what her mum would say if she knew she was talking to Damien, so she asked Heather to lie. At this time, Narlene Hollingsworth and her family allege they saw Damien and Domini walking towards Lakeshore on the service road behind the crime scene, but then both make it home to their respective houses in 20 minutes to be on the phone arguing about him speaking to Jason's girlfriend

until Domini's told to get off the phone about 11pm by her mum. Damien himself doesn't provide much detail into his day and has shown there are plenty of inconsistencies with his alibi witnesses. However, even if you think the Sanders alibi is made up to protect him or you just don't believe Ken, there were half a dozen witnesses who saw the three victims playing near the woods around 6 p.m. But the only person to put Damien there or even close by at this time was Jesse Miss Kelly. Okay, so that was a lot of information and I think, you know, it's all relevant in general, but I think the most important time

that we want to have covered is that kind of 5.30 to 7 p.m. or 7.30 time. And I think we do have that covered because I did look into this alibi as far as the Sanders goes. What it seemed happened is everybody from Damien's family kind of wanted the Sanders. So it was Damien's mother, Pam, his father, Joe and Michelle, and then Damien himself. They show up to the Sanders house because they're going to visit Susan Sanders, who was a friend of Pam's. Now, when Susan Sanders was asked about the evening of May 5th, she said she'd gotten off of work around 6 and she rushed home to get dressed because she, her husband, and some friends were spending the evening at Splash Casino. They left for the casino around 6.45 p.m. and later Susan's daughter Jennifer told her that after they'd left at around 7 p.m., Pam and Joe Hutchinson along with their kids Damian and Michelle

had stopped by to visit and Pam had left a note. Susan Sanders said at first she didn't see the note because Pam had told her that she'd left it on her purse and Susan didn't see it on her purse but later she saw the note on the table and basically it was Pam saying like hey we stopped by etc etc like hit me up when you're home. As far as Susan knew, according to her daughter, they had stayed around 20 to 30 minutes, as you heard in this clip when 90210 was on, which would have been a Wednesday night, and then they left. I also think it's important what she said at the end of that clip where she was like, well, even if you think that the Sanders alibi was made up, which I feel like it would be hard to make that alibi up because as this clip said, nine different people collaborated the fact that Damien was there at the Sanders home, probably, you know, between like 7 and 730.

Even if you thought that was made up, still, everyone else who saw Damien that night saw him at different areas. You know, he was never like by the woods. And as this clip said, the kids, the three kids, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch, they were seen playing by the woods between that 6 to 6.30 time. That's when they went missing. So unless they were kind of hiding out and then Damien ran into them later, even though that would still be hard, given that he was on the phone with Dominique, he was on the phone with the majority of that night, which his sister says, his mother says, and as well as Domini's mother, who knew that she was on the phone with Damien when she asked her to get off, which I think was around like 1130. So it doesn't seem like Damien would have had much opportunity to sort of be missing for long enough where he could have done what was done to these three boys

in the woods. It would have taken at least a couple of hours. And none of these people at any point said, yeah, actually for like two hours that night, we didn't know where Damien was. He seemed to always be accounted for. But what do you think? So I'm with you on everything that you said. And I think having multiple people state that Damien was there, it does give a lot of credence to it. I know that there's something in question as far as did it happen on that day or was it like a week or two later or something like that with the dates being possibly off. But you're always going to have something like that where sometimes a witness can confuse two different events. I think what's significant is the fact that there was a casino that day. That is something that more than likely you would remember what day you went

to the casino and what day the family came over. We didn't really talk about it in that YouTube video too much. They more talked about what you discussed, which is the time after, right? If they were involved, how were they able to be back at their house, on the phones, et cetera? I actually think it's more important where they were before 6 p.m. And the reason for that is I personally believe, based on everything we've covered over these last four episodes, that whoever did this was already in the woods when the boys got there. That's just my opinion. And that's based on the fact that multiple

witnesses saw the boys, but didn't see anybody, including Damien with them, whether it's a trucker or someone else who was in the... They didn't see anybody with these boys. They saw the three boys near Robin Hood Hills. That was was it so i believe that whoever killed these kids was already inside the woods and basically the kids came to them and it was unexpected i don't think whoever murdered them unless you're going along the sign of this was a family member they they expected those boys to show up it just happened to play out that way. So in that case, if you're to believe that it's the West Memphis Three, there would have been a window of maybe an hour or two before 6 p.m. where they would have been unaccounted for and they would have been at the woods.

I'm doing air quotes for audio, worshiping the devil, practice some type of satanic ritual, and then these boys would have showed up, and then this would have went down. It sounds like the time beforehand with the laundry, that's more concrete. Nobody's really disputing that. There's multiple people who say Damien was with them. Yes. In the car, in the car with his mother, she dropped Domini off, and Domini's mother saw

Damien and his mother, Pam, in the car around that 5.30 to 6 p.m. time period. Right. So, we're to believe that even if you're with the... Was it Ken Watkins? Is that his name? Is that how you say it? Because there was so much info in that YouTube video. The one who said they were at Walmart playing video games?

Yeah. They would have... And according to that, which the person who was relaying it laid it out, Damien would have literally had to leave the Walmart, walk there, and basically, as he was walking to the woods for no particular reason, because there's no way he would have known those three boys were going towards Robin Hood Hills. It would have just so happened that he was heading to the woods at six and they crossed paths as they were walking into the woods at the exact same time. I mean, I guess you could argue that maybe he had set it up prior, like maybe he had

spoken to them prior and said, oh, you guys should meet me in the woods at this time cuz I'm gonna have like a surprise for you or candy for you, so he like Wouldn't have been seen with them. So the boy the victims are saying yeah Like Damien had talked to them beforehand and made sure they'd be there at that time like that is theoretical, but it's possible, right? Yeah, it's possible. And you're taking the words that I usually use, right? To qualify everything, which people get annoyed by. It's possible, highly unlikely. So, I mean, I just feel like the person I'm looking for is someone who would have already been in the woods. They would have known that the boys were maybe heading

there. That would, that would gear towards a relative or a friend, someone who would have known the boys were on the bikes and maybe heading that way, or they were victims of opportunity where it was a trucker in the woods going to the bathroom, or someone was already in the woods, who knows, fishing, hunting, whatever they might've been doing. What if someone followed them in? Do you think that they could have seen the kids going in and then followed them in? It's possible. I would like to think that if they did, someone would have noticed that because so many witnesses saw the boys. You would think they would have been like, now in hindsight, I remember seeing like a truck following them or another group of people going in the woods. Like we had the three kids that someone said they saw leaving the woods, right? Like you would have had someone put Damien or the other two individuals in that location at

that time where they might not have seen them physically following them, but would have said, yeah, you know what? I did see, I did see Jesse, Ms. Kelly, or I did see Damien. I did see someone over in that area at that time. Nobody's putting them there. So the only plausible scenario there is they showed up at the exact same time. And that's the case then the same people who would have seen the boys near Robin Hood Hills would have also seen the West Memphis three and they didn't so some people claim they did right how how would they be in two places at once though that's why it like you have nine people putting Damien somewhere else exactly I agree and then we're gonna talk about one of those eyewitness testimonies

and why they, that this person has maybe a, you know, a reason to lie. Right. Someone, or again, we can't forget the fact that we talked a whole episode about law enforcement or people in the law enforcement capacity going around and showing Damien's photo. So that obviously did not help. And it definitely probably brought in people who thought they saw something that they really didn't, or at least didn't see it on that day. But no, I think it's pretty compelling to have nine people say that Damien was with them. I think it's more compelling that you have other individuals putting Damien somewhere else other than the woods before 6 p.m. Now, if I'm wrong in my my theory my hypothesis that the murderer or

murderers were already in the woods when the children arrived well then damien's a little bit more fair game because then it's a situation where if you believe ken watkins maybe the boys are in the woods and then damien and his crew show up and they and they walk in on them and then that's possible but now you have to talk about what- It's still like- It's a small window. Yeah, very small window, I agree. And they're hog tying these kids,

they're beating them, they're doing all these things in a matter of an hour and getting back and now they're hopping on the phone like nothing happened. I'm not seeing it. I think for me, the more important factor is Damien would have had to literally walk up on them with his crew as they were walking in the woods and they would have had to do walk up on them with his crew as they were walking in

the woods and they would have had to do it without any witness seeing them do it. Like, has anybody seen them walk in or walk out of the woods at any point, which you're going to go over some people who say they might have. Well, I mean, if you have the devil on your side, he can cloak you with invisibility. Well, that would be very convenient in this situation. But yeah, no, I think this is very compelling, especially the fact that you said it was the first time they had ever been to That casino, right? So it was a significant occasion. It wasn't like they were at the casino every week Yeah, and that one lady I forget her name She remembered that they were there because she had won ten thousand dollars that night and I feel like if you're living in west

Memphis if you live in anywhere man, and you win ten grand you remember i'm that night. I'm remembering that shit for, I'm going to write that date. I might get it tattooed. You know what I mean? It's a big day. It's a big day because you ain't never winning at the casino. Not that much either. No, that's why they're in business because you usually don't win. So yeah, I think that's all significant.

I think that's important. I think it's relevant. Do I think Damien might've made his life a little harder based on his own personality and these guys not liking him and him not liking them and him busting their balls because he knew he was innocent? For sure. Worshipping cats and shit. Yeah, definitely.

He's messing with them. For sure. For sure. But some may say, oh, he's doing that because he's being suspicious and he's lying. Some may say he's doing that because he knows they got nothing and he's just, he's a ball buster. But you know, the conflicting stories yeah something that as I'm sitting here trying to write it all down definitely something you want to make note of but there is a lot of occasions where even

though someone's telling the truth they may get a factor too wrong that's why it's important to have multiple people saying the same thing so that you can maybe separate some of the things that they might be off about from the truth. And it seems like there's a lot there that does suggest Damien was in fact at that house during that window. And again, it's not being just confirmed by his mom. It's outside parties who may be less likely to lie for him. Okay. Let's take a quick break and then we'll continue on with what Damien told Detective Bryn Ridge. Okay, we're back. Damien continued talking to Detective Ridge, saying that he'd only found out about the murders the next day when he went to the Lakeshore Trailer Park to visit with Jason and Domini. Damien also told Detective Ridge that he had talked to Steve Jones from the juvenile

authority a few days prior, and Jones had told him that someone had cut off the murdered boy's testicles and urinated in their mouths. Damien said that Steve had wondered if maybe that was why the bodies had been placed in the water, to wash off the urine. In Damien's opinion, he said whoever had done this to the three boys had been sick, and Damien believed it might have been some type of thrill kill, also noting that in his religion, Wicca, the penis was a symbol of power, and the number three was a sacred number in Wicca, like the three boys murdered. Damien said that through the grapevine, he had heard that the boys had been cut up, and they had probably died from mutilation. Quote, he heard they were placed in the water and that they may have drowned. He stated

that because of what he heard, he believed at least one of the boys had been cut up. He stated that one of the boys may have been more cut up than the others. Damien felt that the homicide may have been for the purpose of trying to scare someone. Damien stated that he felt that it was probably one person because more than one person, somebody would probably tell sooner or later. He said there would be a fear of squealing by one of the persons in the act if there was more than one person, end quote. Real quick, by the way, this is a tactic that investigators will use sometimes where you'll say, okay, you didn't do it, but how do you think it played out? What do you think happened? And it really doesn't matter because ultimately, why would this person know what happened? They're

not a trained investigator, but the investigator at that moment is hoping that they start talking about something that's a form of guilt knowledge, where they say something that's completely out of left field that only the killer themselves would even consider or maybe they slip up during that speech and they say something in a certain tense that sounds like they experienced it as opposed to their speculating about what happened. Okay. And like, I think that's what obviously Detective Ridge is trying to do here, right? Yeah, for sure. He's trying to see if Damien has guilt knowledge, but it's not just something the killer would know. It's something that only, well, I guess what he felt only the police would know. But as we just heard Damien say, he heard all this shit from Steve Jones a couple days ago.

So they're literally going to go out of this interview and be like, yo, this Damien kid knew so much stuff. He knew so much stuff that no one else knows except the killer. And, of course, the police and, of course except the killer. And of course, the police. And of course, Steve Jones and of course, Jerry Driver. And then, of course, anybody Jerry Driver and Steve Jones talks to. But he knew it. So like he must have done it, which to me is like bananas because he told you Steve Jones told him this stuff. He told you that. So I think also the specificity of it, like him saying, I think it'd be one person. Well, they're asking him that like that they're asking. And as like a kid who's morbid and spends his time thinking about this stuff, he's like, thanks for asking.

No one ever wants to talk about this shit with me. Let me just open up. The worst part is I agree with him on that. I know I've said it in multiple episodes. I do. I am leaning towards it being one person. And for some of these reasons and i know we have some difference in the knots and stuff but if damien didn't do it i kind of agree with

his assessment as far as what did happen right well i mean i guess he knows or maybe he chose the wrong career field maybe if he wasn't out there doing what he's doing it could have been a good cop who knows i don't think that would have been his career choice but you know i think he just read a lot you know and read a lot like stephen king and like mysteries and thrillers and stuff so you just sort of i don't know you get like you kind of get that pattern in your head but either way uh it doesn't sound to me like and he's saying i don't think it was more than one person because somebody would have like told you know which true right what do they say two can keep a secret if one of them's dead like loose lips sink ships yeah you don't do something like this if you think that there's a chance somebody's gonna like rat you

out so usually this is a primary a primary person and the other people may be apprehensive about it they might be more spectators and they have second thoughts and then they decide to roll on everybody because they don't want to go down for what happened. That's what does happen from time to time. So I think the fact that Damien is so comfortable in this interview and willing to speculate and not shut down and he's willing to talk about it, he could just be a sociopath where he's just like, I don't care. Or it's because genuinely he knows like this is comical to me Because I did not do this and you guys are sitting here wasting your time So I'm gonna sit here and waste your time as well Like that sounds like the type of personality we're dealing with where you know indirectly

He's kind of an asshole and he's like, you know, I'm gonna mess with you guys He's an 18 year old kid. He's definitely an asshole Yep, and so he's kind of like, okay you you want to know what I think happened? Sure. Sit down, grab a seat. Yeah. And I mean, honestly, I feel like this could be me. Like, and maybe I do like relate to him in some ways. Like, I feel like this could have been, this could have been me. Like, if you ask me, what do I think happened in the murder? I will tell you, you know, like, I'm not going to play games, but why would he tell them exactly what he had done? You know, that's another thing. If he was guilty, he wouldn't be like, let me tell you my whole game plan and exactly how I did it so that you know where to

look. It just doesn't make any sense. But anyways, Detective Bryn Ridge asked Damien if water had any significance in his religion of Wicca. And Damien told him that water was a demon-type symbolism, and that all people have a demonic force in them that they can control. Damien was asked what he thought the person who had committed the murders was feeling, and he responded that the person was probably feeling good that he'd had the power to do what he had done. He probably thought it was funny, and he didn't care if he got caught. When asked why he thought the victims were so young, Damien responded that the younger the victim, the more innocent the victim, and the more innocent the victim, the more power the person who committed the murders would have gotten from the sacrifice. Quote, Damien went further to explain that in his Wicca religion, he knew that evil done

comes back three times. He stated that meant that any evil done by a person would be rewarded by the person doing the deed, having three times the evil done to him in revenge. Damien stated that his favorite book of the Bible was that of Revelations because of the stories in it about what was being done by the devil and the suffering done by people at the hands of the devil. Damien stated that he figured that the killer knew the kids went into the woods and even asked them to come out to the woods. He stated that the boys were not big, not smart, and they would have been easy to control. He also felt the killer would not have been worried about the boys screaming due to it being in the woods and close to the expressway. He further stated that the killer probably wanted to hear the screaming, end quote. All right, so this is going

like a little bit further. All right. A little bit further a little bit further right yeah i mean it goes back to what i said i won't keep repeating it either he's just an absolute sociopath like he's just he's enjoying this because he's telling them exactly what he did or he's an asshole and he's just like i'm gonna tell you exactly what i think because i know you guys are sitting here writing this down thinking you got me when in reality the person who actually killed him is still out there walking around laughing at you but i'll tell you what you want to hear and and nothing he's saying to me is like super out there or like specific to this case this guy enjoyed it they would have brought them into the woods they would alert them down there they would have been you know they would they wanted to hear

about screaming yeah it's all kind of like vague stuff that is mostly common sense at this point They would alert them down there. They would have, you know, they would, they wanted to hear them screaming. Yeah. It's all kind of like vague stuff that is mostly common sense at this point. Like, especially for someone who grew up on horror movies as a form of nostalgia. And him being in the woods before he would know how noisy it would be with the trucks passing by the free, like, none of this is specific to this case where he slipped up and said something about the boy's injuries that would only be known to the murderer or murderers. It's all kind of just very general to me at this point. I don't think it's a good choice for him or anyone in the future to do something like this, where if the police ask you what happened, tell them, I don't know. And I'm not, that's your job. Don't go into all this

because it's definitely not helping the situation. And as I asked you before, like, how does a jury, and was it two juries that convicted them, right? Two different juries convicted? I think it was only one. And then the judge like held it up, but I'll have to go with one for now. But either way, how did the jury get to this point? Well, I'm sure some of this, the way they presented this narrative that he's relaying, I have a strong suspicion without having the transcripts, this was verbatim said to the jury members yes so that's another thing right because in an interview that i forget what what year it was but after damien got out he gave an interview and he was asked about some of these odd statements he made and he was like listen like it's not like I just started talking about, you know, this stuff. Like they were asking me, you know, why would these boys be sacrificed? Like if it

was like an occult thing, like he kind of felt like they were asking him as somebody who knew about this stuff. Yeah. And he had been asked about this so many times by now, like they knew, he knew that they like suspected him, but he also knew that they knew he knew about this stuff. So he was like, well, I didn't do it they knew he knew about this stuff. So he was like, well, I didn't do it. I have nothing to be concerned about. And if they want to really know what somebody would do if they were into like Satanism or occultism or stuff like that, this is what they would do based on my knowledge and my research that I've done on these different religions and these different like, you know, spiritual kind of things over the years. Like

this is what would happen. So it wasn't like I just like unprompted started talking about like, oh, the younger the child, the more innocent and the more power. Like they were asking me specifically in terms of like if somebody did this on behalf of like the devil or because they were involved in some occult stuff, why would they do it and how would they do it? And that's why he was answering, but you will not see that in the transcripts. the more power you have like was he was his tone more of a question than him looking at them going well the younger the child the more power you have over the more innocent there's a way there's a tone intonation like leaning forward and yeah like looking them in the eye and i'm not trying to be funny here like you know looking in the eye and saying it with conviction like i'm not speculating i'm telling you why this person would like this. Very big difference. And you can't get that through a transcript.

And this is why these interviews should be recorded. I'm glad I forgot to bring that up earlier at minimum audio. But yes, in a murder investigation. Absolutely. There should be video. They weren't. Okay. They weren't added to the list of things that should have been done, which is usually at the core of these cases where I wasn't it done, though, because when they interviewed Jesse Miss Kelly, like a month later, to lose a little bit of that context a little bit possible or it's just incompetence

that too you know just like just like they didn't return it on until halfway through it like oh shit we forgot to turn on the recorder these don't seem like very high speed investigators so it's one of those things where if you if we had we were flying the wall and they were like shit we didn't turn on the recorder i wouldn't't be shocked. Well, damn it. In all the interviews, three interviews, the first interview that he has with Steve Jones and Sudbury, I can't get over the Steve's name, Lieutenant Sudbury. There's not even notes. Okay.

There's not even like specific notes. The second time he's interviewed outside, they don't record that. And now again, at the police station where you think if any of these interviews are going to be recorded, this would be it. They don't do that either. Or with Jason Baldwin. I think it probably helped, as you said, it probably helped them more at the jury trial than it would have possibly helped Damien more if there was a video recording, because the tone in which he said it could change the whole narrative if he was saying it like hands up shoulders up Like I don't know maybe small the kid get more enjoyment out of it. Maybe I don't know, you know, or there's two different There's a couple different ways. So not having that all they're doing is reading the words and it's this one two-dimensional thing

Where they're just looking at it and saying wow, that's terrible that he would even say that, you know, and that sounds pretty bad Yeah, it sounds bad. Yep. So Damien was also asked what the police should be looking for, like if they're looking for the crime scene and stuff. And he responded, they should look for stones in the area, candles, a knife and some type of crystals. Damien also said that he felt the murderer was someone local who would not run away from the area. During the interview, Detective Bryn noticed that Damien had the letters E-V-I-L, evil, tattooed across to the knuckles of his left hand. This was also a tattoo that Damien's best friend, Jason Baldwin, shared.

But when Damien was asked if he would submit to a polygraph exam, and if he would give hair and blood samples, he agreed. He didn't put up a fight or anything. So Damien was handed over to Bill Durham for a polygraph, during which he reportedly showed deception. When asked if he'd been in the woods on the night of May 5th, when asked if he'd been present when the boys were killed, when asked if he had killed any of the boys, when asked if he knew who had killed the boys, allegedly he showed deception. So the police

decided to continue the interview after that polygraph since they believed Damien was being untruthful, and Detective Bill Durham wrote, quote, In the post-test interview, the subject denied any involvement in this crime. After approximately 45 minutes, I asked the subject what he was afraid of. He replied, the electric chair. He then said he liked the hospital in Little Rock. He said he had been treated there for manic depression. After a short period of time, the subject ceased to deny his involvement, admission through absence of denial. He then said, I will tell you all about it if you let me talk to my mother. Detective Ridge brought his mother in my office to talk to him. After talking to his mother, he again denied being involved in the murders after approximately 20 minutes. I asked, you're never going to tell anyone about this, but your doctor, are you? He replied, no, end quote. So to me, this is clearly

like Damien's done talking to them. He stops like even denying he had anything to do with it. And they write like, what does it say? Admission through absence of denial. And then he's like, okay, I'll tell you if you bring my mom in. me. This is just like he's like these assholes aren't listening to me They keep talking to me I'm 18 years old like I want to see my mother and so I'm gonna tell them like I'll give them what they want if I can see my mom and then as soon as she gets here and I have an adult present to like advocate for me I'm out and that's what it sounds like happened, you know I've never heard of admission

through denial or absence of denial. Is that a thing? If you're just questioned about something for an hour and a half, you keep saying, no, no, no, no. And then finally you give up and you're like, I'm beating my head against a wall. I'm just going to stop talking. And then they're like, well, you admitted because you're not denying it any longer. Doesn't the amount of time you're being asked and denying before you just give up and stop trying to convince these people count for something? Yeah, it definitely does. And I've had interrogations where we've been in there four or five hours going back and forth. And even that, then you start talking about duress and, you know, did they give some type of admission because they felt like that's the only way they're getting out

of there. So that all comes into play. And with what you just said, yeah, absolutely possible where he's like, there's, they're never going to let me go. I'm not denying it anymore because that's obviously not working. So I'm just going to lie to them and tell them that I'll tell them what they want to hear. If they'll let me talk to my mom, cause that's the only way they're going to let me talk

to her. Conversely, just to just be on the other side of it, even though I don't necessarily believe this, there are times where in an interrogation, the person's emphatic about their lack of involvement, them not being involved. And as you start to chip away at it, they start to play it in their head and they're realizing like, they got me. And they are less adamant about them not being involved. And that's where you really want to drive it home to try to get them over the finish line. So maybe that's what the detective Ridge was seeing at that point where he's like, all

right, he's starting to break. I'm sure you've heard that phrase before where he's starting to break. I got him. But I'll tell you what, if that were the case, the last thing you want to do is let him talk to anyone because that's going to give him strength to continue to deny. So if that was what he was thinking happened, if let's just say he was right, the worst thing he could do is let him talk to his mom at that moment and just give him that pause to kind of think about what he was about to say, maybe and pull back.

Or I mean, you don't have any actual evidence against this person and they continue to deny that they had any involvement and you won't listen to them so it's like maybe you should like let him go in general and he shouldn't have to add like play tricks to get the hell out of there yeah I'm with you I mean I'll evidence you know did I ever talk about the the conviction that we got or the the confession that we had from a young man who we essentially didn't have much on but we had one photo of him on a toilet did i ever tell you this story no okay i'll give the quick version because it wasn't just me there was multiple detectives involved in this long story short double homicide we find a photo on one of

the victims they were stabbed to death we find a photo on one of their phones of someone passed out on the toilet, right? On the toilet. And so, and it's stamped, the time date is from the night in question that we think they were killed. Again, two people stabbed in this apartment. So, we bring that person in. I'm not going to say their name, anything like that. They're denying it the whole time, a couple hours. They're denying it. I wasn't even the primary detective and there was two other guys. But they're denying it the whole time. We're watching the interview, denying it, denying it. He's emphatic. I'm starting to sit there thinking maybe he didn't do it. And then they pull out the photo of him sitting on the toilet. He passed out while he was going to the bathroom. And the detective starts hitting him with, you were

embarrassed. They made fun of you. They were questioning your manhood. They were embarrassing. They were laughing at you. And out of nowhere, I thought the interview was over. He looks at the detective and goes, yeah, but they ain't laughing now, are they? And it was like, what are you trying to say? He's like, you know what I'm trying to say. They ain't laughing now, are they? He ended up admitting to killing them both because of this. They embarrassed him. It was over a girl. My point being here, I agree with what you're saying, but right when you think there might not be nothing, that one extra angle, if you have something else to play, you make it. This guy admitted to everything. He definitely did it. There was no clean cut case. No problem. Not always the case.

I think an hour and a half, I've seen interrogations go a lot longer. It's clear. Like you just said, the detectives had nothing on them. They were just trying to break them and maybe they had them here. But based on the alibis that we have, I don't believe that was the case. I think he was just over it. And it sounds like he was like, dude, I'm going to say whatever you want me to say, just so I can talk to my mom. And I don't think he ever had intentions on admitting to something.

Even the electric chair comment that just sounds like a sarcastic, like, what are you afraid of the electric chair? You know, obviously exactly not gonna i don't want to be fucking fried for something i didn't do you know that doesn't mean exactly because you'd be afraid of that if like you were talking to the police and they kept accusing you of murdering three little boys and you kept saying no i didn't do it and they like didn't believe you at some point you'd be like damn even though like you're not going to tell anyone what your doctor are you no well no i'm not going to tell them anything because i didn't do it or you know like you can look at that however you want to look at it so yeah i don't know i mean i feel like you just get sick

of somebody after a while you know like they keep talking to you questioning you and at some point you're like i'm not even going to waste my breath like giving any more than like one word answers at this point like because they're not going to believe me no matter what i say i just want to get away from them you know like we've all been like that in a relationship, right? Where it's just like, you're just like kind of disassociate and you're like, whatever. Nope. Yeah. Okay. Whatever. Believe what you want, man. Okay. Then they're like, you're this, this, and that. Okay. So I am. Okay. You know, it kind of feels like that to me. It's absolutely possible. Again, it's, we're looking at the transcript. He's the detectives,

obviously writing the report. So he's writing it from his perspective, how it looks. And the way it reads, it sounds like he had them. And then after he talked to his mom, he was able to lock it back in. But that could also be just what we're saying, where he was over the interview and said, hey, I don't want to talk anymore. So I'm just going to say what I got to say to talk to my mom. Yep, exactly. So let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. We are back. So detectives also interviewed Jason Baldwin, hoping to get a different version of the story. But they were disappointed when he also denied knowing anything about the murders and really, you know, denied even knowing these three boys. Damien and Jason and Jesse all

said, like, we didn't know them. We'd never seen them in our lives. Damien's statements during his interview on May 10th, though, had disturbed the police officers who felt his theoretical statements about what the killer would have done, why he would have done it, and how he would have felt were a bit too spot on. And on top of that, they believed that Damien had expressed guilt knowledge when talking about how the boys had been mutilated and how one boy had been more mutilated than the others, details he claimed to have heard from Steve Jones and just through gossip around town. And we do know that this gossip was going around town, that the paper had heard this on the police radio and they were publishing things like this. So it

wasn't as if nobody knew any of this stuff. Now, something you need to know is that on May 10th, when Damien was being interviewed, the autopsies on Stevie, Christopher and Michael had not been done yet. In fact, it seemed like Dr. Frank Peretti, the state forensic pathologist, was taking his sweet time getting the results to the West Memphis police, which is indicated been killed first, etc., etc. Additionally, Dr. Peretti, the ME, he'd mentioned finding urine in the stomachs of two of the boys. He had mentioned this verbally to the police pretty early on after getting the bodies, and he'd asked the police department to send samples of the water that the bodies had been found in. So Gary Gitchell did send a mason jar

of creek water to the crime lab, but then several weeks passed and he'd heard nothing confirming or denying the urine claim. Gitchell begged in his letter saying, quote, we realize you have other cases coming in and must go to court on other matters. However, this case has received national recognition and without the crime lab's information, our hands are tied. We feel as though we are walking blindfolded through the case at this moment, end quote. So it shows you that like they really didn't know which way it was up. They had no idea what was going on. And this is, you know, 20 days after the bodies have been found. He's waiting for information from these autopsies because he doesn't feel like he can really move forward in

one way or the other until he knows these things. Now, for the record, there was no sign that any three of these boys had been sodomized. And like I said, Dr. Peretti had mentioned verbally something to the police about the possibility of urine being in two of the boys' stomachs. But when the written report would finally be given to the police several weeks later, there was no mention of urine. So Damien had mentioned something like this to the police on May 10th. And that's because he clearly stated that Steve Jones had given him this information and Steve Jones had gotten it most likely from Lieutenant Sudbury, who was with Steve Jones when Damien was first interviewed, because Lieutenant Sudbury would have heard it from the police and Dr. You know, Dr. Pretty, because Dr.

Pretty had wondered if there was urine in two of the boy's stomachs. I don't believe that there was because there was no there was no sign of that in the official autopsy reports. So it may have just been like a preliminary sort of theory or maybe something he saw like acid or something he saw and he wanted to test the creek water. And then he realized the creek water had that same acidity, et cetera, et cetera. So he just kind of left it out. But either way, there wasn't urine in their stomachs because it wasn't in the official autopsy report. So for Damien to have said that isn't guilt knowledge. It's just like, I heard this through the grapevine because that's not what was a reality of the situation. So him wondering or hearing that there's urine in their stomachs wouldn't have been something he knew because he'd been there.

In fact, I mean, it kind of shows that he wasn't there because he said it as if he thought that it could be true, but it wasn't true. Yeah, I would like to think that if he had done it, that that is something he would have left out, because it would have been too specific. You know, to disclose that information, I think it would do exactly what it kind of did, right? Like it made him, if he wasn't already the number one suspect, this kind of solidified it, they they took his speculation as to what happened to the boys, specifically some of the details that he was disclosing, as a as a form of guilt knowledge from their perspective. That's how they were interpreting it.

I will say one more thing while we're on it as far as the pathologist. I know some of you are probably looking at like, oh my God, 20 days seems like a long time. I'm honestly saying the same thing. We have a lot of cases come in. This wasn't the only murder or probably homicide or whatever happening at that time. And this pathologist wasn't probably just overseeing that area. They probably see a lot of jurisdictions and they're getting inundated with cases where all the detectives are hounding

them for their cases as well, because obviously there's victims in those situations and family members, et cetera. But you would think that in this particular case, I'm feeling pretty confident that there wasn't a string of young little kids being murdered in the woods in this manner at that time. So you would think that this would be moved to the front of the line where there would be some type of priority put on this because of the circumstances surrounding it, where you would want to get this information back to investigators as fast as possible because whoever did this was still out there and you want to give them all the tools they can have to try to find this person so that they can't do it again. That's just me speaking as a human being. You would think this would be top

priority, first one you can do, get these autopsies done get them whatever information you can find during this in this investigation of their bodies so that the the police officers have a better understanding of what they're looking for and who they're potentially dealing with 20 days seems excessive to me and i mean 20 days is just when gary gitchell was like getting you know kind of impatient right They still didn't have it back by the time, by the time the West Memphis three were arrested, which I think it's June 3rd or 7th. Like, I'm so tired at this point. I can't remember and I don't have it in front of me.

But the beginning of June, when, when they were arrested, the autopsies still weren't back. So they made arrests without the autopsies being back yet. Which you would think at that point they would have mountains of evidence against them. And I havenies being back yet. Which you would think at that point, they would have mountains of evidence against them. And I haven't heard it yet, if they do. No, they did not. Okay. So, yeah. So, Damien wasn't the only teenager hooked up to a polygraph machine and asked

questions about the triple murder and then basically being accused of being untruthful. Juvenile probation officer Jerry Driver went ahead and picked up Damien's ex-girlfriend Deanna Holcomb and had her take a lie detector test after she claimed she had not known about the murders until the afternoon of May 6th. She said she'd never even been to Robin Hood Hills and she suspected that Damien might be involved, but she didn't think he would do it himself. Instead, she thought he would get someone else to do it for him. When asked to elaborate, Deanna said, quote, I said that Damien would not have been there. He's a coward and would be afraid of going to jail, but he could have ordered it done. And so probably Jason Baldwin would have been the one. He's a follower, end quote. Deanna

Holcomb is like, yo, she's so salty about the breakup, though, because she's like, Damien's a coward. Like, he wouldn't have done it himself. And then to say, like, Jason did it. Jason was the nicest, like, calmest one out of any of those three. And nobody ever had a bad word to say about Jason. Like, he was a puppy compared to Damien and Jesse. So, like, to even suggest that Jason Baldwin,

that a 16-year-old kid who never said boo to anybody would go like into the woods and kill three little boys because Damien told him to is just ludicrous. During her polygraph, Deanna answered no to the questions, do you know for sure who killed those boys? And reportedly the test said that she was lying, even though she showed no deception when she answered no to the question, are you purposely withholding any information? And those

two things are kind of contradictory. Like, if she answered truthfully that she wasn't purposely withholding any information, but they said she showed deception when she asked, do you know for sure who killed those boys? Like, those two things can't be true at once. And this is the problem with these polygraph tests, especially when you have like teenage kids who are nervous, hooked up to them. Like there's a reason that polygraph exams are not admissible in court and why they're basically used as interrogation techniques. I said this a million times. I'll say it again. Like never once am I going to take anything that a polygraph says seriously. Never. Because stuff like this happens. Additionally, a 17-year-old boy named L.G. Hollingsworth

was questioned by police and given a polygraph after a phoned-in tip told police to look at him because he knew something about the murders. Specifically, reportedly, a family member claimed that L.G. had come home late at night on the evening of May 5th with blood on him carrying something that smelled bad in a box. LG Hollingsworth was actually the cousin of Damien's girlfriend, Dominique Teer, and he's the nephew of Narlene Hollingsworth. So the Hollingsworth

family tree is a little bit twisted, but I want to set the stage because LG Hollingsworth is going to be considered one of the alternate suspects, And we're going to discuss him in more detail during the episode where we talk about the other suspects. But LG was the son of LG Hollingsworth Sr. and Linda Hollingsworth. But his aunt, Narlene, had been married to his father before he was born. And then LG Hollingsworth Sr. had cheated on Narlene with one of her friends. So she got mad at L.G. Hollingsworth Sr. She divorced him and then she married his brother, Ricky, to get back at him in 1993, which was the same year that L.G. Sr. married L.G. Jr.'s mother, Linda So, Narlene and Ricky had four children, Anthony,

Ricky Jr., Tabitha, and Mary, and LG Sr. and Linda had two children, LG Jr. and Tim. So, Narlene was actually the person who claimed that on May 5th, 1993, the night that the three boys went missing, she had seen Damien and Domini, technically her niece, coming out of the Robin Hood Hill woods covered in mud. Gnarline said that on May 5th, she had dropped her younger kids off of school, and then she picked up her nephew, LG, to help him look for a job. But at noon, they had a car accident, and Gnarline spent a good portion of that day at the insurance office. After that, she went home. She lived in the Lake View Trailer Park as well, just a couple trailers down from Jason Baldwin. And she brought LG with her. And LG Hollingsworth claimed that he'd seen Damian Echols at Domini's trailer that day and

in the Lakeshore Trailer Park around 5 p.m. So once again, we have somebody else seeing Damian at 5 o'clock at the Lakeshore Trailer Park, not, you know, following three little boys into the woods. Gnarline would later bring LG home, and he actually lived in the network of streets surrounding Robin Hood Hill, the same neighborhood that the three young victims had resided in. Gnarline claimed that after she dropped off LG, she saw Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers on Barton Street right in front of the elementary school they all attended. Narlene said that one of the boys, who was a little heavier than the others, whipped

out in front of her on his bike while she was driving in her car. Narlene said her son Ricky was in the car with her, along with Ricky's girlfriend Sombra, who would have been about 13 or 14. Sombra said she knew the three boys, and Narlene gave detailed descriptions of the clothes the boys were wearing, which turned out to not be the clothes that the boys were last seen wearing at all, or the clothes that were found at the scene of the crime. And she said this happened about five minutes after 5 p.m. Narlene said she later saw Damian and Domini walking down the service road next to the

Blue Beacon car wash along I-40 around the time of the murders, which was what time? We aren't sure, right? But the police say like maybe that 7 to 7.30 time. Definitely after 6.30. She never really gives a specific time and it kind of changes because Narleen said it was 9.40 p.m. Her son, Anthony, who was in the passenger seat, said that it was closer to 10.30 p.m. And Narleen's daughter, Tabitha, who was also in the car, said maybe it had been about 9.15 or 9.30 p.m. Several members of Narleen's own family told police that they doubted the validity of her statements, claiming that she was known to exaggerate and would also do anything to cover for her children.

And maybe she had like a kind of because she did implicate LG Hollingsworth as well, her nephew. Maybe she kind of had an axe to grind with him as far as like that was her ex-husband's son named after him and she was just being like salty and bitter about it. John Hollingsworth said that Narlene was only interested in the reward money, which had recently shot up to over 30 grand. And he said, quote, I can understand them checking all these leads, but if they're listening to Narlene Hollingsworth, they're wasting their time. End quote. When L.G. Hollingsworth Jr. took his polygraph on May 11th, he showed no deception when he answered the question of whether or not he'd been involved with the murders, but when he answered no to the question of whether he knew who

was involved, the polygraph indicated that he was lying. After the polygraph, L.G. told police that he believed Damien Echols could be involved but gave no reasons why, at least not any reasons that the police wrote down. Additionally, Jim Agee, the youth counselor at the First Baptist Church, had told the police that some local teens had attended a revival at the church on the evening of May 5th from 6.45 to 8.45 p.m. Aji claimed that these two teenage boys, Murray Ferris and Chris Luttrell, were involved in a cult and practiced white witchcraft. These two boys, as well as a handful of others, confirmed the existence of a white witch group that they were a part of, and they said that they met in Murray's bedroom. The group was called the Order of the Divine Light, and they

practiced the religion of nature, vowing to do whatever they wanted as long as it harmed no one. According to Bob Loomis, another member of this group, new members of the group would be blindfolded and bound with their hands behind their backs for initiation rituals, and they had gotten this initiation ritual from a book called Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft. The book described a coven initiation rite in which the subject is bound at the wrists with a nine foot red cord and the cord would then be looped and fastened around their necks. So I guess like they kind of put two and two together here where they were like, oh, cords binding you. That's what happened to the three boys. But really, once again, a stretch. And as these kids said, they practice white rich

craft. They do whatever they want as long as it hurts no one else. It's called the order of the divine light. Like this does not sound like a Satanist group. It sounds like a bunch of teenage kids who are bored out of their minds, who are probably having like this standardized Christianity kind of religion pushed on them because this is a very religious place and they're trying to just like flex their muscles and be independent and like stretch their legs in the world. It doesn't sound like anything, you know, bad. And why, if there was all these other kids involved in this group, would they focus on Damian, Jason, and Jesse? Like if all of these kids were just running around town practicing witchcraft, why just these three boys? On May 28th,

Detective Bryn Ridge spoke to Victoria Hutchinson, the mother of eight-year-old Aaron Hutchinson, who had been friends with Stevie, Michael, and Chris, and who had claimed he'd seen Michael talking to a black man who was driving a maroon car after school on Wednesday, May 5th, the day that Michael would go missing along with his friends Christopher and Stevie. Victoria Hutchinson was also a neighbor of Jessie Miss Kelly Jr., and she would sometimes have him watch her kids. During this interview, Vicki said that when she had picked Aaron up from school on May 5th, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers had approached her truck and told her that they had a Cub Scout thing that night and Aaron needed to go.

She said the boys were insistent about this and she had to tell them no. It was a Wednesday night. Cub Scouts met on Thursday night. Once the boys realized that Vicki wasn't going to let Aaron go, specifically Michael Moore had asked if Aaron could come to his house and asked if Vicki would pick him up in two hours, which Vicki had said they'd done before. But that night she said no because she had an errand to run. The next morning, Vicki's alarm didn't go off, so she and Aaron woke up late. She drove Aaron to school, and then she went home to get ready for a job interview, at which point she turned on the television and found out that Stevie, Michael, and Christopher were missing. Vicki said

that at that point she went to the Moore home to see Todd and Dana Moore, Michael's parents. And Todd asked Vicki if she thought that Aaron might know where the boys were because this was before their bodies were discovered. This is in the morning on May 6th. So Vicki went and picked up Aaron from school and brought him to the Moore home. And Todd Moore asked Aaron if he knew where his friends were. Vicki said that Aaron replied, no, but she said that Aaron said this in a way that kids do when they're lying. And so when she and Aaron left the Moore home, she claimed that Aaron told her, mama, let's go to the clubhouse. We need to go there. What is the clubhouse? So Vicki said she knew about the clubhouse that Aaron was referring to.

It was where Aaron would go and play with his friends in Robin Hood Hill. And she knew that anytime Aaron didn't come home when he was supposed to, she had to go looking for him and she would find him there. Vicki said the clubhouse consisted of some boards up in a tree. She said it looked as if it had been a deer stand at one point. For those who don't know, a deer stand is like basically like a wooden platform up in a tree where you can hide and like wait wait for deer to come by and shoot them i'm not a hunter i don't like hunting so that to me sounds not like a great sport but okay but that's what a deer stand is am i right do you hunt you probably do do i hunt no you don't no i'm not a fan i am someone who is a big animal guy i will say anyone who's hunting for their food, for survival, they're processing the animal a certain way.

For sport, when I see these guys shooting lions and tigers and elephant, not a fan. Always love seeing the poachers or the hunters, hunters, I have quotations, end up getting eaten by one of the other animals. I'm all for it. I know that's going to trigger some people. I do not care. I shouldn't. I mean, if you're out there, it's like fair game at that

point, right? Yeah. If you're doing it for sport and you're doing it to prove that you're a badass with a gun and can shoot an animal that would tear you apart. Otherwise I'm all, I'm all, I'll pass. Yeah. So these people hide in trees and wait for these unsuspecting animals to walk by in their natural habitat and then just shoot them. And that's somehow fun to them. I don't understand how, but it is. And now maybe that person is using that to process the meat. And again, there's different worlds where I'm okay with it.

Deeper conversation doesn't matter for the sake of today. But for the most part, yeah, I'm definitely not a hunter. I'll just say that. I'm getting my meat at Whole Foods. I think I remember. Yeah, I remember you saying that because both of us, both of us like had confessed to each other that we have a problem even like killing bugs. I think like we don't even like to do that. Most people know I was in a shooting and that definitely traumatized me.

And even before that, I'd never been a hunter, but definitely not after that. I was no. Yeah, simply no so the last time vicky had seen this like clubhouse slash deer stand these like boards in the tree she said it had been mid-april and this like clubhouse was still intact it's worth noting that they couldn't really locate this clubhouse after she said this. Vicky said that Aaron made it to the woods by mid-afternoon. She brought Aaron to the woods by mid-afternoon, but by that time, the police had roped everything off, and so she got Aaron out of there because she'd heard that they may have found a body. Then Vicky decided after the funerals of Aaron's friends,

there was a lot of talk going around. Things getting pretty tense so she was like I think it's better for Aaron not to be around and she sent him to her sister's place out of town for eight days and it was then when Aaron was out of town that Vicky decided to sort of take it upon herself to go undercover and do her own investigation and we're going to talk about that as soon as we come back from our last break. Okay, so Vicki decided she was going to try to get information out of Jesse, Ms. Kelly Jr. And the reason that she decided to do this was because she knew Jesse. She lived just a couple trailers down from him. And she also knew that Jesse was not the sharpest tool in the shed, to say it in like the nicest way. Like if you're going to try to get information from somebody who's involved in a group, you're going to want to go for the weakest link. And unequivocally, objectively, that is

Jesse Miskelley. So Vicky told the police, quote, Jesse Miskelley lives down the street from me. And, you know, I was really close to him because he was always around. He doesn't go to school or anything. He'll like help you mow your lawn and stuff like that. I'd gotten really close with him. He made mention after this came out that he saw Chris Byers over by the beacon that morning on the morning that, you know, they were found. And that Chris was in a pink shirt and even picked him out in the paper to me. It was just odd for him to say something like that, you know.

So I just keep talking with Jesse because Jesse is, I mean, not a bad kid, but you know, you don't know who people know. So I just kept talking to Jesse and Jesse told me about a friend of his named Damien. And this friend drank blood and stuff. He just kept going on and on about how weird he was and stuff. So by the way, you knew the stuff we knew, the public knew that was coming out in the paper and stuff. I just thought how they were killed was odd. But, you know, maybe it was like devil worshiping thing or, you know, something just hit me. And I thought this kid doing this, he might know something. Or maybe Jesse knew something. End quote. That was so hard to read, honestly, because the way she talks. So apparently, once again, Vicki decides to go undercover.

And because she heard from Jesse, who I think she was sleeping with, by the way, I'm just going to say that. I think Vicky Hutchinson was definitely having a sexual relationship with Jesse and Miss Kelly Jr. But because she heard from Jesse that Damien would hang out at the Lakeshore Trailer Park because Dominique and Jason lived there, she began hanging out at the Lakeshore Trailer Park so she could befriend Damien. Now, keep in mind, this is all what she said. There's no evidence that this ever happened. And years later, she would come out and say, none of this did ever happen. I was just told to say all this by the police. So keep that in mind. She says she goes to the Lakeshore Trailer Park, gets Damien's

attention, and then she's going to befriend Damien and get information from him. So she does this. She gets his attention. And the first time they hung out, Vicki claims Damien came to her house and he wasn't super talkative, but he did want to talk about the murders and how the police had accused him of being the culprit. And Vicki says she asked Damien, why out of all the kids in West Memphis would they pick on him? And Damien looked at her really weird and said, because I'm evil. After that day, Damien called Vicki again and asked to see her. So Vicki, who claims in this interview that she'd been communicating with Officer Bray, that should have been everybody's first clue. And she was reading up on the occult and she'd gotten all these books and all this information from this police officer Bray before even like

talking to Damien. So was it Vicky who took it upon herself to go undercover or was she sort of like nudged in that direction by the police? Right. So she grabbed all of these like occult books that she had gotten to like study up on witchcraft and she spread them out on the coffee table so that she would be there when Damien arrived. And so Damien gets there and he's like, oh, you're into this stuff, too. Well, let's talk about it now. And then Damien and Vicky talked about being witches. And once he realized she was like hip to it and she was into the occult stuff, he was like, listen, do you want to go with me tomorrow to an SBAT? And Vicky was like, I had no idea what an SBAT was. So I took my occult books and I looked it up and I found out that it was a meeting of witches.

And Vicky said she immediately thought, yeah, this is where I want to go. I want to see what's going on. Those are her words verbatim, by the way. Vicky claims Damien picked her up in a red Ford Escort along with Jesse Miskelley and Damien drove them to nearby Springdale. Now, there's a couple of things wrong with this. Number one, Damien didn't own a car. Neither did Jesse. Number two, Damien didn't have a driver's license and had never driven a car in his life, so he would not have known how to drive down the street, much less to Springdale.

But okay. She said the drive took a while. It was dark by the time they arrived, and Vicky could see only woods and fields because it was getting dark. She said she was scared, but Damien took her hand and he led her into the woods where a group of people awaited. And he told her, don't be frightened. And Jesse ran ahead to join the other kids. Vicky said there was probably about 10 other kids there. And she guessed that none of them were over the age of 18. She said their bodies over their clothes, like anything she could see that was exposed, like their arms and stuff and their faces were completely painted black. Everyone was kind of just standing around until Damien got there. And then one person who Vicky identified as Sean Webb approached Damien.

They talked a little bit. And then she said everybody started taking off their clothes and touching each other. Vicky said at that point she looked at Damien and said she wanted to leave. And so he said, okay. And then Damien left Jesse there and drove Vicky back home. And when they got to her house, Vicky said that Damien never even talked about the S-Badge. She didn't bring it up again. But Vicky said that Damien left a pendant at her house, a silver skull with snakes through the eyes. He had dropped it by the bathroom. She'd picked it up. She put it on her dresser. And then when her son Aaron came home, he had found it.

She said she walked in and found Aaron holding it. And she said, Aaron, don't touch that. Put it down. Like, go away. That's not something to be played with. And Aaron did. But she said 20 minutes later, she caught Aaron again in her room holding it and staring at it. And apparently this is when Aaron opened up to Vicki about some things that he'd seen while hanging out at the clubhouse in the woods with his friends.

Vicki said, quote, Aaron told me that he, Michael, and Chris visited their clubhouse every day and they rode their bikes and they were spying on five men. And I asked who they were and he said, I don't know, mom, who they were. I just know we were spying on them. And I said, why would you be spying on five men? You don't know. And he said, well, they were there every day. So we would watch them. I said, what made you interested in them? And he said, because they paint themselves and they have dragon shirts and they talk in Spanish. And I said, Aaron, they talk in Spanish. How do you know that's Spanish? You don't speak Spanish. And he said, well, I don't understand what they're saying. And they sing bad things. And I said, like, what kind of bad things? He said, they sing about the devil. And you know that we love the devil. And he said, I think that they love the devil more than God, mom, end quote. Vicky asked Aaron why he didn't leave. And, you know, wasn't

he scared? And Aaron said they were hidden in the tree in that little like deer thing. So the men couldn't see them. Now, Vicky went on to name several teens who were in the tree, in that little, like, deer thing, so the men couldn't see them. Now, Vicki went on to name several teens who were in the occult group, including Jason Baldwin, Damian Echols, and Jesse Miskelly. Detective Bryn Ridge also spoke to Aaron Hutchinson on May 27th, at which point Aaron shared information about the five men in the woods that he and his friends had been spying on. Aaron said that he usually went to the woods with Michael and Chris. And while they were there, they would play and watch the men from their treehouse, the men who were doing nasty stuff. He said the men wore all black except for one of them who had a white T-shirt on. He said they were about 20 years old. And because this age doesn't fit with what the police narrative is at this point, because Damien's 18, Jesse's 17,

and Jason's 16. Detective Ridge, in the interview, he says, quote, around 20? Were they like teenagers? Or do you think they were still in school? Or do you think they just got out of school about that age group? End quote. Aaron responds, quote, like, they all looked like my mom. End quote. And Detective Ridge responded, quote, look like your mom, sort of young, end quote. And Aaron says, yeah. And Ridge says, OK. But then Aaron pops back in and he says, quote, except my mom is 30, end quote. And Ridge says back, quote, OK, but your mom looks young, doesn't she?

End quote. So it doesn't fit with like them being teenagers. So Detective Ridge is trying to get Aaron to say they looked younger than 20, which is the age he originally gave. But this is leading the witness and not only leading the witness, but this kid's eight. Right. So he's super suggestible to begin with. Aaron continued and said the men were doing sexual things to each other. He said initially they would wipe each other. And Detective Ridge kind of fills in the blanks for Aaron. He's like, what do you mean they would wipe each other? Were they having sex? Were they having sex from

the front or the back? And so Aaron responded, the front, you know, and since these are like five men, obviously they can't be having sex from the front. So Detective Ridge says, oh, they're having sex with their mouths. Were they having sex with their mouths? And Aaron's like, yeah, with their mentioned that sometimes the men would have a dog with them that they would push around and be mean to. And once they caught a cat and they cut its head off and then they ate it. And Detective Ridge was like, they ate it? They ate the body or the head? Did they leave the head to the side? And Aaron was like, yeah, they ate everything except the head. And Detective Ridge was like, did they cook the cat first? And he's like, yeah, they cooked the cat first. And then they ate it. And then Detective Ridge was like, what do you think they did with

the head? And he's like, I think they kept it. So it's just kind of like going randomly on. And Aaron said they all had knives, big knives. And Detective Ridge was like, how big? Do you think it's like this big? And he's showing him with his hands, you know, the size of like certain knives, like 10 inches. And Aaron's like, yeah, that about 10 inches. They had all these knives with them. Some of the knives had blood on them. Some of the knives had blood on them even before they killed that cat. And these guys had black paint all over them, even on their fingers.

And they had a bag or a briefcase type of thing that opened at the top, but Aaron never saw the men open it. They just carried it around with them. By June 9th, Aaron Hutchinson would have a totally new story. And this story was where he claims he witnessed his three friends get murdered by Damian Echols, Jesse Miskelley Jr., and Jason Baldwin. Now, this is a problem because never once does Vicky or Aaron mention that Stevie Branch is even there in these original stories, right? We heard multiple times that Vicky said when the boys approached her on May 5th, it was just Christopher Byers and Michael Moore who said that, you know, there was a Cub Scout thing and they wanted Aaron to go to Michael Moore's house.

Stevie Branch is never mentioned. When Aaron is asked, who does he play with in the woods? Stevie Branch is never mentioned. This doesn't make a lot of sense because if there was going to be one odd kid out, it would be Christopher Byers since Michael Moore and Stevie Branch were best friends. They were always together. And Michael Moore's family had issues with the Byers family, and they were kind of like fighting at that point. So it wasn't as if these kids were hanging out at each other's house all the time. It doesn't make any sense. But the statements of Vicki and Aaron Hutchinson would be heavily responsible for the police bringing Jesse Miss Kelly Jr. to the station for an interview on June 10th, 1993. And after several hours of interrogation, the teenager would confess to the murders.

And not only that, he would implicate Damien and Jason as well. And a lot of what Jesse Miskelley confessed to matched up with what Aaron Hutchinson claimed to have seen that day when he saw his friends murdered by Damien, Jesse, and Jason. It would kind of like align with it, even though years later, Aaron Hutchinson would also come out and say, no, I never saw that. The police told us what to say. So this becomes an issue, right? When did Aaron say, was it after the West Memphis three were let out?

When he came and recanted his statement? Yeah. Hold on. I'll tell you. And while you're looking that up, the reason I ask it is I'm, I'm staying in the middle here. I'm trying to stay impartial one way or the other. I said earlier in this episode,

as far as alibis with Damien Echols, I felt it's troubling. If you're, if you're in the camp of believing Damien did it, that timeline doesn't really line up for you. And if it, if it does, it's a very tight window when it went down. But the reason I ask about Aaron is because just like

with Adnan Syed, you have had people who were instrumental in the case against Adnan back in the day, come out more recently and be like, oh, you know, I can't remember. Maybe I was wrong. And I think- So it was 2004. 2004 when Aaron came out and said both Aaron and Vicky said it was a complete fabrication, a complete fabrication. The police hit away, hit her away from defense attorneys after she testified. Hutchinson's son, Aaron, who was eight years old and a close friend of the two victims, is alsouting, reputing, repudating state. I've never heard that word before. Reputing, repudiating, repudiating statements he made shortly after the murders.

Aaron, who's now 18, says the police tricked him and led him to say things that were not true. Aaron's interview with the West Memphis police were used to help justify the police theory that the slayings were related to the occult and tie three teenagers to the killing assistant police chief mike allen dismisses hutchinson's account saying quote it appears that vicki hutchinson is trying to get her 15 minutes of fame he noted that she testified under oath in one trial jesse miss kelly's in which she was called as a witness and the defense had a chance to cross-examine her i mean either they did lead her to say that or she made it up and she coached a. But either way, none of this shit happened, basically. Yeah, more than likely it didn't happen. I agree with that. I just wonder when they came out. So when were the West Memphis three let out? Because I don't want to get too far ahead for people who don't know the story, but I have said like let out,

they were set free. They took an Alfred plea, right? I don't want to steal the Thunder future episodes, but we've talked about the Alford plea in the past. Well, 2011, 2011. Okay. So that's interesting. So let me finish this thought. The Alford plea obviously is saying, hey, we didn't do it. We're still holding on to our innocence, but we do admit that there's enough evidence here where it does essentially look like we did it, or there'd be enough where we would be found guilty in a court of law. We're going to take this plea. We'll serve out our time. But then the deal with that usually is you'll get out before you would have gotten out if you had gone to trial and been found guilty.

So that said, they said in 2004 that it was completely fabricated. That's well before the West Memphis three were let out. Do I think there was already some movement about this case where there was a big following saying these guys are innocent? Sure. So maybe that's why Vicky and Aaron decided to come out at that point. But I do agree with you, regardless of how it all came to be, it does seem like either A, Vicky made it all up and coached her son through it as well. And now they're putting it on the police or the police coached them through it and did exactly what they said they did.

Either way, it doesn't appear that what they were saying is true. I am very interested and I hate that you left us on this cliffhanger, but I am very interested to hear Jesse McKellie's confession, right? Let's hear what he has to say, because I know there's a lot of people who, you know, obviously false confessions are a thing. I want to hear how it was said, why it was said, some of the information that Jesse, the details that Jesse related to police in that moment. Was there any guilt knowledge in there?

Let's take out Aaron and Vicki's statement. You're already shaking your head no, so probably not. But I really want to hear the details of the confession. And we actually have some video and audio of Jesse's interview. So that is going to be interesting. But what it looks like, and I think we've seen this in other cases before, what it looks like happened with Jesse Miskelley Jr. is they brought him in. They talked to him for a couple of hours and they talked to him, coached him, in my opinion, on what he should say. Kind of like got him to a point where he was like he didn't know which way was up.

Then they hit record right when he was ready to confess. That's what it kind of seems like. And you can hear them. I think this is pretty objective, too. You can hear them in his interview, like leading him, you know, like he says, oh, it happened during the day or something. And they're like, are you sure it wasn't at night? Like it probably was at night, you know, and you can hear stuff like that happening constantly. Like they're constantly having to put him back on track. And he says random things that don't add up to anything.

And they just kind of like ignore that stuff and keep leading him towards like the proper path. It's like Jesse keeps wandering off the path and then they're like, come on back here. You know, you're going off. You're going off. We don't know what you're talking about. We need you to come back here and say what, you know, basically based on what Aaron Hutchinson claimed, maybe I, so I'm almost like tending to believe that Vicky coached Aaron. Yeah, it's possible. And then the police were like, because they're already like so twisted thinking it's an occult at that point. They're like, holy shit, like this kid witnessed this like and he he seems legit about it. And he seems like it

actually happened. So like this must have been what happened. So we're going to use that as our template for everything going forward, which I think is stupid to do. Like, I get it. You're convinced and you think it's an occult thing, but like he's eight. Okay. So probably don't go based on the word of an eight-year-old to like use that as your template for exactly what happened. I don't know. Crazy. There's something there.

I think there's a few things we can recap. The big highlights of this episode and one thing that we talked about, but I think is important first, the alibi. Yeah. Is it a concrete, is it video that shows Damien or, or Jesse or Jason somewhere other than the woods? No, but you have multiple witnesses with some TV shows that were on during those times that they can confirm a specific incident winning $10,000 at a casino, something that would be memorable for most people that most likely puts Damien

somewhere other than the woods. Now, there could have been something during that day where he was at Walmart playing video games. Maybe it was the day before, maybe it was the day after, but in any world, if that were the case and he is involved, he literally showed up right when the boys were showing up or moments after or moments before. Real quickly to skip around, one thing that you did talk about with the clubhouse that I find super fascinating is it opens up this whole other world for me because now we have evidence for the offender to know when the offender walks in the woods, maybe they've been there before, they know that there's some boys or girls who come to this specific spot

on multiple occasions. There's a clubhouse there, right? So it's evidence for the offender to know that, hey, if I stick around this area, these kids are probably going to come back. So if it's something that this person or people who did this crime were looking for kids, you have this deer stand that's been kind of changed over into a clubhouse. But nobody can prove the existence of that. Like that's the thing. You think the clubhouse is even fake altogether? I think the clubhouse is fake. Yeah, because nobody could find it.

When you were talking about it, I remember as a young kid myself, me and my boys, we all had like, little forts that we made in the woods in the surrounding neighborhood where we would go there and we would like tie trees together and make our little clubhouses and forts that like our hangouts where when we wanted to go somewhere and hide, that's where we would go. And when you were saying like they were asking vicky for aaron to go they had a somewhere it sounded like they had a place they wanted to go so maybe they were going to this clubhouse or whatever in the woods where they had gone before but you you see yeah if that even happened but i don't think it happened i don't think any of that happened you don't think the fork slash clubhouse existed at all no i don't think it existed at all and i don't think that christopher byers and michael moore approached vicky and like

begged that or you know begged her to let aaron come over you think it's all alive i think it was all alive because remember the behavior of aaron when he was asked by the parents like hey do you know where they would have gone or where they could go and he and vicky said oh aaron acted weird when he answered the question you think that that's a lie? I think she liked the attention. Remember, she was initially in the police station because she was being accused of stealing from her employer. And as soon as the police officer she was talking to realized that her son knew these victims and may have some information, he was like, who cares about the fact that you might have stolen from your employer? Let's talk about this. I think she liked the attention i think she liked feeling like she had an in with the cops

and maybe that like this whole theft thing would not be pursued because she'd already lost her job for it right she was looking for a new job she's going on job interviews does she really want to like have to pay this back or even you know have some jail time you know for this kind of theft. So she's like, yeah, let's keep going. I'll go on freaking witch hunts, literally. She's naming random other kids that weren't even there. Yeah, I'll go to an SBAT. I'll pretend that Damien and I are hanging out and I'm gaining his trust.

She made it all up, for sure. I mean, she admits that she made it all up. So it's not like I was about to say, allegedly even the clubhouse yes all complete fabrications no one ever found the clubhouse you're fixated on the clubhouse i am i am because it wouldn't make sense why they were going down there listen who knows who knows right i know what you obviously you're they could have been going down there just hanging out they could have been hanging out like a little that but i if there were in a world let's just say they couldn't find the clubhouse like they couldn't find the crime scene where this happened even though vicky knew exactly where it was because that's where she would go

whenever aaron wouldn't come home she'd know to make a beeline to the clubhouse to find him but they can't find the location find it yeah it's a good point it's a good point let's say they had something there something that left behind remnants of them playing there religiously going back and forth whoever the killer was they would have known that and it would be a spot where maybe they would hang out maybe the victims had encountered this person before being there hey this is so and so you know now they couldn't tell their story afterwards because obviously they're deceased but i wonder if whoever this killer was instead of it being this random act where they just happen to be the wrong place at the wrong time

maybe this killer knew of this location because there were some signs that boys or children in general were hanging out in this location playing for or playing army whatever they were doing where they said oh I can see there's something going on here where the sticks have been organized a certain way. It looks like the kids are coming back to this location multiple times. Maybe I'll hang around and hopefully I run into them again, or they ran into them in the past. It just opens up the door a little bit more to a whole different list of people who now you got to think about everybody who was going into that woods, adults, kids, not just the cult people, also hunters, fishermen, hikers, anything that anyone who would be in that area who might've came across an area where these boys might've been frequenting and known that there's a chance they could come back. So just something I'm thinking about as

far as expanding it. I'll also say, because I know a lot of people think it, if there were a fort or something where they were somewhere where they would normally go and hang out who else would know about that spot more than likely um the parents bingo yeah bingo and I mean just because there isn't a deer stand doesn't mean that there's not a little location a little clear out the base of a tree where they're bringing like sodas or snack leaving leaving little cars, stuff like that, where anybody might walk through and be like, oh, here's like stuff where kids hang out. They hang out here and then maybe they come by a different day, see different toys and they're

like, oh, these kids are regularly coming here. And now I know. This is their hideout. You know, it could be something of just shoelaces or strings tying a couple branches together to make like a little fake wall. You know, I did it. That's, you know, all kids do that. So just something, some evidence that, oh, these kids are using this as their hideout. Well, if you're aware of that, hang out there, you know, hang out for a few hours, see if anybody comes by. This person could have been waiting for them. You know, have you ever seen, you've seen Stranger Things. We've talked about it. Love Stranger Things. I always felt like the first season of Stranger Things was like kind of loosely based on the West Memphis Three. Like you even have Will Byers, right? Same last name as Chris Byers. They have like four Byers in the woods

where these kids go and they always were known to hang out. And like there's some boogeyman after them, you know, things like that. Like I always kind of felt like there was like overlapping, like that the people who made the Stranger Things were kind of... Loosely basing it on it, maybe. Maybe something. Maybe they were interested in the story. It was a terrifying story, right? So it's going to fit perfectly in with Stranger Things.

It's like this terrifying story that happens to these kids. And everything about Stranger Things was these terrifying things that happened to these kids and and that's they kind of it felt like too close to me it's possible either way the point i'm making is there may have been an indication to the killer that these boys were frequenting this area whether they were practicing a ritual down there whether they were fishing whether they were hunting whether they were fishing, whether they were hunting, whether they were just walking, there could have been someone who was aware that these boys were coming back there pretty consistently. So it may not have just been this random thing where you have a trucker who's peeing in the woods and sees them and then carries us out. This might've been a little bit more premeditated than I originally thought, which is an interesting concept. But yeah, the alibi

on the surface, it's not like a concrete thing where I would consider it exculpatory, but it's definitely something in the favor of Damien. I know you went over the interview, although not the way I would answer questions. If I was being questioned about a murder, we have to think about the person we're talking about here. What if you were like a rebellious 17-year-old dick? It seems, yes old dick it seems yes but it seems like damien was very intelligent so he had to know this probably wasn't the smartest move but i don't know i think it's still at 17 like in the early 90s you have some faith in law

enforcement that they're gonna like do the right thing you know like you're like ah they're messing with me this kid they had a hard-on for him though i know like and he had run but he had run-ins with the jerry driver not so much the police. But yeah, you'd think he'd be a little gun-shy. A little more cautious. He knows they're going for him. Yeah. He knows they're going for him.

But there's a lot here I'm not completely convinced yet. But I will say, I want to hear Jesse's confession. But I remember asking you, how did they find these guys guilty? There's nothing. And although this is all very, very weak, I'm starting to see how if painted right to a jury, a jury could say, yeah, yeah, they're guilty. Now I'm starting to see it a little bit. Not saying I agree with the finding, but I'm starting to see the picture now that was painted. It wasn't just, he operates a cult.

He definitely killed them. There's people for whatever reason coming forward saying they did it. And then on the surface. Because that's how people be, man. That's how people be. And you have one of them confessing to doing it and implicating his co-conspirators. So on the surface, I could see it. I can't wait to dive into it. And they would try Jesse and Miss Kelly Jr. separately from Damian and Jason specifically. Because they using Jesse's, well, not even, but they're using Jesse's confession against Damien and Jason.

So they have to try them separately, right? I mean, like, yes, if it's 1993 at a point where like now, like I said, 2023, we look at things like, oh, Satanism and occultism, like we're smarter than that at this point. You know, we understand that it exists, but it's not like this. we look at things like oh satanism and occultism like we're smarter than that at this point you know we understand that it exists but it's not like this but in 1993 it was all over that was satanic panic like prime time it was like this people legitimately thought there was just like kids prowling out in the dark like murdering people be in the name of the devil. So yeah, it makes sense how they were convicted with really very little to no evidence. Like I would say no evidence, but that's like too general and too broad a term, like very little to no evidence. Yeah. Now I'm looking for, I want to, I want to

see, you said we have video for Jesse and Miss Kelly, right? Some video. If you can hold out, wait till next week guys, wait to, cause I'm not going to watch it. I promise you, I'm not going to watch it until we're recording. But I really want to Google it right now. I'm not going to lie to you. But I'm not going to. I'm going to wait. I'll watch it with you guys. We'll see it for the first time together.

And then we can weigh down in the comments. I'll talk about it. We'll see what we think about it when we see it ourselves. Does it have legs? Are we looking at it saying, I don't know, pretty convincing to to me or are we watching it going? Okay, this kid's just being Yeah, this kid's just being led down a path and he has no clue what he's doing But I also want to talk about the mental capacity of a jesse miss kelly Like what what type of what type of intelligence are we talking here? We already kind of talked about that

He's not a little bit a little bit. Yeah, we did so we can dive more into that What do they say like an eight-year-old or something that he was like functioning? Yeah, not good. But I mean, they don't have any problem interviewing eight-year-olds and taking what they say at face value. Any final words? No, I don't have any final words except to say good night. Yes. As always, guys, we appreciate you joining us here.

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