Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 335: The West Memphis Three Part I - The Road to Hell

Episode Date: October 6, 2018

It's time for us to finally cover one of the most controversial murder cases in recent history: the child murders at Robin Hood Hills and the West Memphis Three. Join us in the first of a three part series as we discuss just how three teenagers came to be accused and convicted of a crime they didn't commit in addition to the murders themselves.

Hey, how you doing there, party people? This is Henry Zabrowski from Last Podcast on the left. You know what show. You click the link. And I've had a lot of people come up to me and ask, hey, Henry, how can I see that body of yours jiggle on the stage? And I say, first of all, sir, I'm going to need you to step back from me. And second of all, you're in luck because we got a bunch of new dates on our nothing but trouble tour. We got Dallas, Texas, November 7th at the Majestic Theater, Austin, Texas, November 8th at the Paramount Theater, and OK City, Oklahoma, November 9th at the Hüteberg Chevy Center. So that's going to be fun. But we got new dates, Indiana, November 29th at the old National Center, and the city of wide shoulder Chicago,

Illinois, shite down December 1st at Talia Hall. And we're going to be taping our live show there. So please wear your see through clothing. Can't wait to see you guys come hang out. Hail Satan. And now for last podcast on the left. There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk on the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? You know, I don't know about you, Marcus, but you know, it really takes the edge off after like several hours of being hit bone deep in boy murder, right? Uh-huh. You know what really takes the edge off? And I don't recommend this for everybody, but I think it would help you. OK. Like eight or nine glasses of bourbon. Well, that's not going to help Marcus at all. His brain

can't handle that. It just relaxes you. I mean, that's really what you're talking about. It's a holistic way to kind of get back to ground zero. No, that's what you want. You want to even yourself back out after you've been typing. You talked to me with text last night. How many times do I have to read and or write the word genitals? All right. Well, I just have a calm down shot. I do have my own method. And instead of whiskey, I have three or four balls of Oreo O's. That is much better if it was whiskey industry in your underwear claiming to be Jesus. All right. This is the last podcast on the left. I am Ben with the Oreo loving Marcus Parks. Of course. Or I didn't even know Oreo cereal was a thing. Oh, yeah. But then, of course, we have Henry Zabrowski. It's also known

as Diabetes O's in many parts of our country. And I want to start off this very what will be a very somber series with a this is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, this is Halloween. I'm allowed to do it one time. OK. Be excited for a rollout into Halloween. It's October and we are covering a topic that people have been asking us to cover for many years. And it's a topic that I've actually been not avoiding, but it's definitely a tough crime. And the waters are murkier than they see. And I think it is a good thing that we waited this long as we got more mature and research got so much better. And that is a testament, of course, to you, Marcus Parks. Congratulations. This topic has been well-treaded. I think that we're going to provide you with some new information,

however. Today we are covering the West Memphis Three. That's right. And thank you for congratulating me before we even begin. No problem. Hey, man, that's like a problem. I've seen the documents. I've seen the documents. So the story of the West Memphis Three is a twofold tale of injustice. On May 5, 1993, three children named Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers, all eight years old, were found brutally murdered in a wooded area known as Robin Hood Hills in the town of West Memphis, Arkansas. A month later, three teenagers named Jesse Miss Kelly, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Eccles were arrested for the crimes. Within a year, Miss Kelly and Baldwin had been sentenced to life in prison, and Eccles, the accused ringleader, was on death row. Now,

for those of you that are totally new and totally unaware of any details about the West Memphis Three is that what you're going to find out is that immediately after the conviction of these three boys, there was a massive movement that came forward and said they were essentially victims of injustice, and they were innocent of these crimes. And there was a very debated world of information about whether or not they are innocent or not, and Marcus will look and hit. We'll get into it, of course. This is a tale of wrongfully accused without a doubt. As I said before, West Memphis Three are both the luckiest and unluckiest people because without the outpouring of support, Damien Eccles is not alive today. Yeah. And while we have strived to

be objective in studying this case, and we've definitely researched sources for both innocence and guilt, might as well get it right out of the way and so we stake our claim in the Innocence Camp. I'm going to put it this way, too, for we got a lot of goth listeners out there, right? Because that's a part of what this is. This episode's about, you know, the three little creatures from Nightmare Before Christmas? Of course. Imagine if they were cues of killing three boys. That might not be a good comparison because I think they did kill three boys. That's why they're sort of in hell. But you know what I mean? But it's a goth crime. It used to be a lot more dangerous to be goth. And you should, and those of you out there, you're sitting in your leather

skirts. It's 85 degrees outside in Los Angeles. You are fully lured it up with nowhere to go. What I would say is you should be thankful to Damien Eccles and these boys for taking a bullet for all goth crimes from going forward. And I will say, I'm a person, I will say these goth crimes and these goth injustices will not be rectified until we elect a goth president. That's right. Good point indeed. And of course this wasn't a goth crime. This was a perceived goth crime. Yes. It was a very basic crime in many ways. I'm quite interested and I'm sure we'll get into it. Now these three teens were railroaded using Kiersey, evidence that was circumstantial at best, admitted perjure testimony, and most famously, a false confession from Jesse

Miss Callie. The West Memphis Three were swept up in the hand-wringing satanic panic that infected America in the late 80s and early 90s when both the general public and law enforcement saw so-called devil worshipers in every shadow. Now I will say these, they are victims of the satanic panic. Who is not a victim? The producers for 2020 because 2020 would run a satanic panic story. My parents were so convinced about this. 2020 benefited greatly. Honestly, you know who else would not have been half as scary if it wasn't for the satanic panic? I'm going to be a kissle here and say the undertaker from the WW. Oh, the best of course, Mark Calloway. The thrust of the prosecution was that these three killed the children in a ritualistic satanic slaughter

using the writings, drawings, reading habits, music taste, and general mouth and off of a troubled small town goth kid as their primary evidence. Our jobs as little goth, I'm going to say pistules as we start out, like when you are just filling your black cargo pants for the first time, our jobs are to snark off at the police. Our jobs are to sit and extravagantly smoke cigarettes with hair in our eyes and be like, yeah, well, midnight's the only time I ever eat. Like you say like dumb shit. Well, absolutely. And that's what that's what is so relatable about Damien Eccles and mainly Damien. The other guys are not quite as charismatic in a strange way. Definitely not as charismatic. But when it comes to Damien, it's smothering off. It's because he

believed in justice still. So we didn't see the police as this over or he did see it as overbearing, but he didn't conceive of the idea that he could be wrongfully convicted because he did believe in justice. In the wrongful conviction, that's the first injustice, the second, and perhaps the one that's a little more sickening is that the killer of the three little boys, Stevie Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers faced no consequences and the state of Arkansas has all but legally made it so he never will. Because you know, if you've listened to our show before, we don't really like doing unsolved cases because we like having an ending to the narrative. And in a way, the state of Arkansas made this assault case by branding the three men guilty

of these crimes, which we'll go into detail further on from now. Yes, if you want to get some mental gymnastics, when we get to that, you're going to be like perplexed to say the least. It is quite confusing. Well, either way, the West Memphis three were set loose in 2012, after almost two decades behind bars, owing to the tireless efforts of hundreds, if not thousands of people, including some of the murdered children's parents who made astonishing 180s, as more evidence was discovered. And I would say no small contribution by fucking Pearl Jam. Was there no hallway, man? Yep. Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp. He literally, in some strange way, got the coolest friends of all time. Johnny Depp and the peak cool of Johnny

Depp and Eddie Vedder, when Eddie Vedder was like, whatever you say. But Eddie Vedder was very much, he was very happy with himself. But you know, he would have gotten, he was very happy with himself. You know, who would have gotten those boys out faster? Bono. Because he's got the drive. No way. I don't know about that. Absolutely not. Ben, you were saying something about Eddie Vedder before we started recording that he had no idea what he was getting into. Yes. Eddie Vedder, Johnny Depp, all these musicians, and God bless them for doing what they did. Because again, without them, they wouldn't have, the West Memphis three wouldn't have gotten the exposure. But if they would have known how long this process was going to be, I don't think they

would have really put on all the concerts because if you listen to the tapes, they're always like, any day, any day, like no, it's 1998, buddy. You got another almost over a decade. I kind of thought I'd just show up and play Jeremy and everybody would just let him go in a celebration of a stand-in ovation. Me, Eddie Vedder. I really wish the legal system worked that way. Well, you know, these guys, you know, their hearts were all in the right place. And you know, to their credit, you know, and Henry Rollins was involved as well. And Natalie Mainz, strangely enough, from the Dixie Chicks. Dixie Chicks had been on the front lines of Civil Justice for a long time. I have a lot of respect for the Dixie Chicks. Yeah. Well, they were very,

they were an important band. They were. For like five years. Yes. And then, of course, they came against the Iraq war and they got a lot of blowback because their fan base was more right leaning. So I really like her. She actually put her career on the line for her beliefs. She definitely did. And you know, and these people, another thing to be said about them is that they stuck with this case long after it was fashionable. Yeah. Like they stuck with it because it was right. Right. And this entire case, the reason why they knew about this case was because of a series of HBO documentaries called Paradise Lost. Those were released between 1996 and 2012. Now, admittedly, these docs are insanely biased and selective, as well as terribly

hypocritical, irresponsible and exploitative of certain people involved. But even though they have their problems without these documentaries, Damien Eccles would be dead right now. Right. And the case would live on only in the memories of the family and friends who were involved. Right. Because now we see this trend quite a bit, especially with shows like Serial, things coming out like using cold cases and open cases to work. But at the time, this was kind of revolutionary. Yeah. And then if you put the amount of content, just the documentaries itself, that's 10 and a half hours of shit. And that's those three documentaries. Right. Never mind the Peter Jackson documentary. Never mind the fucking books, Damien Eccles book, all that kind of shit. There's

so much stuff that came out of their camp. I think that's kind of unprecedented. I don't remember another case that has this much coverage from the defense side. Well, you know, this does remind us that civil action does work. You know, you got to put pressure on the powers that be. It takes a long ass time, but that is a wonderful way to get justice. Yeah. And our other sources today include the definitive West Memphis three book Devils Knot by Mara Leveret and the aforementioned 2012 documentary West of Memphis produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh of Lord of the Rings fame and directed by Amy Berg. I am going to say it would have been nice if Gandalf showed up. It's just a little if Gandalf just showed up in the courtroom and it's just like my

wizard is never late. I will say Peter Jackson at one point technically his first like his first attempt at helping was just showing up with several men in green screen suits. You know, we can do the whole kind of small things. We make him up and we'll make them all and be like, get out of here, Jackson. He's like, all right, I'll make a documentary. Absolutely. And in addition, he also contributed what $10 million to the defense. And we have we have to remember Peter Jackson is a whole is a huge horror movie fan. Dead Alive is his first film. And it is if you haven't seen Dead Alive, it is one of the this October. Please watch it. It's a classic. Dead Alive is fucking great. So disgusting. Don't eat. Don't eat while watching. No. And

we're also including arguments gleaned from various pro guilt websites as I did do the reading to see what the other side thinks. But I'm going to go ahead and say right now that I found most of this evidence to be contradictory, half baked and ignorant in the vein of look at that evidence that has no real science to back it up. It's kind of like the same like Flat Earth type of shows like look at that. Look at that. That's proof. All right, just look at it. Well, the one thing we will definitely say about this is that because of the nature of the crimes, people are highly emotional about the this case. People are very, very emotional. And this is one of those where it is real difficult to convince somebody of Damien Eccles and the other two boys's

innocence. If they already just like they did it because what we're going to see that's that's a part of what led to them getting their convictions was they everybody was driven insane by what happened to these children. Right. And it was very, very difficult for people to separate the objective truth from their emotional truth. And they want it. They want a closure. They wanted it done. It's like Casey Anthony times three when it comes to the emotion in regards to the death of a child. And then you combine that with what people believed at the time to be a wrongful conviction. I mean, this whole thing was huge. Yeah. Now the book Devils Not as well as the documentary has been criticized by guilters and the people of Arkansas as left wing propaganda.

Partly because it paints Arkansas as a cesspool of unsophisticated bottle thumping morons. No way. I don't agree with that. I'm going to say Arkansas is wonderful. They have great people. And you know what? I'm I'm going to agree. Like the books and documentaries are pretty heavy-handed in that respect. And I totally understand the resentment as being as I am from Rochester, Texas, where people think the entire population of 378 is inbred when in fact only one family is inbred. Only one. Only one out of 378, which I don't know what the going ratio is. I mean, there was about seven or eight of them. So it was about seven or eight out of 378. But regardless. All right. Okay. But at any rate, it tends to piss you off when people generalize like that.

Totally get it. And that's a part of what this is too, is that people are we I think we've talked about this in many different cases, where like, sometimes you're just a big city person that is born in a little city. And you don't have any choice over that. You're just born with like a person where it's like your eye show up. If I was born in West Memphis, Arkansas, and me being like, I love macaroons. Ever been like, get the fuck out? Like I would get wailed on. You know what I mean? Well, but on the other hand, though, I mean, the week of the Robin Hood murders, a theater in West Memphis was in the middle of a week long exhibition of silent films from Russia. Hey, so this place was not a cultural vacuum. There were people there that were into this

shit. They were into cool shit. Absolutely. And not everyone from Wisconsin loves cheese. Oh, is that a hunk of mozzarella? That was a pair. That was an audio pantomime. Go Pat, go. You know, it's not that it's there's no it's, it's not that the people of Arkansas lack culture of this with that there was a problem with the West Memphis. It's the powers that they what happens is that they they have an agenda. The state attorney had an agenda in this case. We're going to see this being expressed again and again and again. And the Damien Eccles just happened to be at the bottom of a very bad list that he put himself on. He got himself the bottom of a list of a bunch of cops who fucking hated his guts. Sort of. Yeah, sort of, kind of sort of. But you know what?

It's also unfair to say that those Bible thump and morons didn't exist because they did and they do. Right. I just think that viewing this case solely through the lens of Christianity is to miss the bigger picture. I think that there were three things that drove this case and they are all very human emotions present in every single one of us. Hunger, horniness. No. Oh, I just wanted to grip on a pair of butts, grip on butts. Well, I don't think that those are the three hunger, horniness and grip on butts. I don't even think that grip on butts is an emotion. I think that's more of an action that might come from your first emotion. I like roller coasters and I like graphic tees. Again, not an emotion. Those are those are things you enjoy. Oh.

Well, in the beginning, the driving factor was one of boredom, which manifested itself as a misguided attempt to give meaning to a boring life. And as we all know, the easiest path to finding meaning is in the destruction of others. But that in and of itself was not enough to put these teenagers in jail and leave the real killer of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers on the street. That required another human emotion, desperation, that was provided by the police. And finally, the trifecta was completed by the prosecution who provided the most potentially dangerous human quality of all, ambition. And in Arkansas, we were kind of not and I were having a discussion and then Marcus and I were kind of having an extended conversation about how like,

a lot of times if you're from West Memphis and you have crazy ambition, right, you end up going to like, you'll go to Atlanta, you'll go to New York, you go to you go to these places where like, your ambition can blossom into a crazy new place. But if you really want to reign in hell instead of serving heaven, you just stay in Arkansas as a super ambitious person. And you could take over the whole fucking state by just by sheer power of will. And so what we're looking at is that you have three kids who got pulled into the world of a bunch of people who don't give a fuck who you are. They don't give a fuck what you stand for or what your little personal lives are. This is bigger than this, man. I'm trying to be attorney fucking general. I'm trying to work my

way up the fucking ranks. And you're just a little step on my way. So congrats, Damien. Thank you for the boost. Right, sure. And we're not maligning the state of Arkansas, nor Christians, you know, as a religion. These are specific West Memphis is a very small town in a smaller state. So you can just imagine how nutty it could be. I'll say whatever I want. And then it's on the burden of everyone else to prove me wrong. That's the problem with our country. That's exactly the problem. The crew were in prison. So so in order to see how all these emotions and motives came together, let's get into the story of the child murders at Robin Hood Hills and the West Memphis three starting with the three teenagers themselves. Jesse Miss Kelly, the first convicted,

can easily be described as an unfortunate soul. Now, while Jesse probably could have muddled his way through life with some difficulty, his mental capacity never reached above that of a third grader, with many arguing that Jesse is in fact mentally handicapped. Right. Technically, he's he's kind of a forest gump. Yeah, where he is on the cusp of actual mental handicappedness. But actually, it's just that he's just kind of slow minded enough to believe that people are good. Right. Well, you know, as someone who took care of a lot of foster children, a lot of them fall in this in this area, where it's not something that's not really a physical appearance of like, you know, somebody might be mentally disabled or something like that.

It really is difficult to diagnose. And it's really hard to tell. But you do see little things along life where you just start to realize, you know, a little bit of their mental faculties might not all be there. Diminished, like mentally diminished. You know, at best, Jesse could be what people in the South call a little slow minded. And that was made worse by a two year gas often habit. You know, sometimes you wake up in the morning and you say, you know what today, I want to be a Subaru. And then you go to the gas station and you get some ethanol pumping through your veins. So in addition to the gas often and the diminished mental capacity, right, man, we it's good to slow yourself down a little bit. I feel like I would have been a

scientist if it wasn't for weed cream. Well, I will say you don't want to pump the brakes when the car is stopped because it floods the engine. Well, besides all that, he also came from pretty abusive family background. And people who come from abusive family backgrounds, as I'm sure you know, Ben, they have a very intense need to please others. Absolutely. Now, in addition to that, Jesse, along with the other two, lived in trailer parks in one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the 10 poorest counties in all of America, placing them squarely in an economic class that most of us couldn't give a fuck about. And these are I mean, these are people who get sacrificed by the system as needed. Yeah, no need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and became lawyers.

You know, it's hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when they're like, where'd you get the boots? Literally, I purchased these all give me the boots back. Yeah, or if your boots descend to grade every three months, because that's the only boot you can buy, put your pull yourself down by the Birkenstock. You guys are, you guys are bumming me out. Okay, because I'm going to be a Supreme Court judge. We're already on the way. I'm going to do it by the time I'm 85. Well, Jesse Miss Kelly has to be noted, he was violent, but only in as much as he was a fighter. I mean, Jesse Miss Kelly, he was five foot one, he was under 100 pounds, he had damn near no choice in that environment, but to fight, you know, to show that he wouldn't take shit from anyone. So he was just,

he was a perfect victim, basically, for bullies and things like that. Yeah. And you know, he still took shit. I mean, when he was arrested, the police report said that he had the word bitch tattooed on his chest, which I don't know, he didn't choose that. Like, I don't know, man. I don't think he did. No, I can see the exact fucking scenario where there's a bunch of dudes hanging out, giving each other shitty homemade tattoos. And Jesse's like, Oh, well, hey, can I get one? They're like, Oh, yeah, just come on over here. Just I'll give you something great. You're gonna love it. Just don't look at it. And he said, All right, I won't. And then when he looks, the assholes written bitch on his chest, and they're all laughing at him. Yeah, technically, he probably

flipped it into a joke himself. And then he adopted it as something he enjoyed. That's the problems that you can't I mean, you can do that. Or just get it covered up. That could also work with a nice American flag. Oh, yeah, it's big. You got to do a big like one of those cover ups, a big eagle holding the flag. That's what I want to get. However, this is the last time we're going to hear about Jesse Miss Kelly until episode two. And that is because Jesse Miss Kelly barely knew the other two boys to say hello to him. And he was only 17 at the time of the murders. The second of the three was Jason Baldwin. Now Baldwin, he's the one that I really identify with here. I mean, he's just typical outsider kid did well in school. Love drawing

skulls, metal, had long hair. Like he wouldn't what you'd call goth, but he was close enough in West Memphis where it didn't make a damn bit of difference. And I am not maligning him whatsoever when I say this stunning mullet. Legitimately, you go back and watch old Sean Michaels footage. I'm going to put his mullet against Michael. Wow, dude, you took care of that. You could take a hair surfboard and take it from his eyebrows all the way down to the grounds. And he is great. He is a but he was a very sweet kid. And again, he was he was barely goth. Yeah, he just had like Oh, yeah, a couple of shirts. Yeah, they and he was goth enough in that time period, where by the time he was in sixth grade, they were all the kids are calling him a Satanist, you know, and I get

that shit too, because I used to get that shit all the time, like, Oh, Marcus is a devil worshiper. No, what do you mean? I'm not I'm a devil worshiper. I'm just writing a pentagram on my hand. I'm just drawing pentagrams on my desk. Yeah, I'm a devil's apprentice. And all this shit, the kids, they based all this stuff on the fact that he wore T shirts from bands like Metallica, Guns N' Roses, and inexplicably, you too. I wish you used to be a thing. I just really wish the thing is Metallica used to harness that power of being edgy. Yeah. And then some kind of monster came out. And I don't think they are some kind of monster. I think there's some kind of emotionally damaged adults. What's happening? Group therapy is decidedly

unmetal. And I think it's great that they did it. But I don't want to see it. It's like making it's like making foie gras. Like, I mean, like, I don't want to see them at the beginning of I mean, I'll watch it. I'll jerk off to it. But I don't mostly I just I want to see the end result. We have but you know, you remember Judas Priest was evil. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, AC DC was evil. All these bands were evil. I mean, hell. And that's the other thing, though, is that by the time I was in high school, like I was in high school from 97 to 2001, like I had a Metallica shirt, the big flaming skull on it said fuck it had 666 written on the fucking forehead of the skull. People didn't bat a fucking eye. No, like by that point, like it's like, all right, yeah, whatever.

Like it's people didn't bat a fucking eye. I mean, some of the some people would give me shit for it. But for the most part, everyone's like, oh, yeah, that's just Marcus who gives a shit. Yeah, dude, you should thank Damien Eccles for that because they took the goth bullet. We were allowed to live like that after a while. I had my two shirts. I had my Texas chains on massacre shirt. And I had my chud shirt. I wore it fucking every day until they fell off my body. And I slicked my hair back with Tommy Hilfiger gel. So it would smell good. You always want the top of your head to smell good. Right. And I'm a black cargo pants that I call my ghost puster pants, because it was the first time I'd ever seen pants with a fly on it. Because up until

the about the age of 14, I wore little boy shorts and jogging pants. Interesting how you've reverted back to that style. Of course, after the better. Yes, well, we all had our fun shirts. I had the Rob Zombie demon face shirt. Very cool. Very cool indeed. Now the only one out of the three who had anything even close to being serious on their record was Jason Baldwin's best friend, Damien Eccles. Damien would eventually become the focus of both the prosecution and later the fight to set the three free. Now out of all of them, Damien had it the hardest. I mean, for him, the trailers, those were the fat times. Like his childhood, like his family for a time, they were living in dirt floor shacks, no indoor plumbing. Damien Eccles was the poorest of the poor. Their shack was in

the middle of farmlands. And what would happen is the farmlands, they would have pesticides that would go over their fields. They their house was just in the middle of their flyovers. You got crop dusted. You got crop dusted. And that gave him horrible bronchitis, gave him massive amounts of allergies. And he had asthma, right? Asthma. So his house was so bad. And his parents at that time just said, don't breathe in. That was their advice. Not the best parenting. This is a little story that he tells in his book, Life After Death. They're walking into the bank on a Friday. That's when that's when his father was cashing his measly paycheck. And they're walking by all of these exhibits that I believe like sixth graders made these little paintings. And he's walking by,

walking by, walking by. And then he stumbles upon one painting that catches his attention. It's his house. And it was and it devastated him. He's like, my house is so bad that this person used it for their art project. And his father comes up and is like, there's a lot of houses with the crepit porches. It's probably not ours. But it was definitely his. So that he was known. Their house was known as like, that's where the poorest of the poor live. So it was it was really hard. But if he had done his reading at the time, he would know he is a part of a long line of crust goths that originated with the Rasputin. Yes, he rocked it. But there yeah, he was tough. Well, Damien was 18 at the time of the murders. And out of the three, Damien was what you could

call true country goth kid, true small town goth kid. And just like all small town goth kids, Damien Eccles had a big fucking mouth. He wore black all the time. But like most goth kids, he only started doing it because a girl told him once that he looked cute wearing black. All right, that's all it makes. That's all that's all you need. That's all I needed to be to be goth. I wanted to be goth, but it's hard when you're a ginger. Like a little redheaded goth is the saddest one of all. And my parents would let me dye my hair or wear nail polish. Well, and honestly, God won't let you dye your hair red hair doesn't die. I tried multiple times in high school. Well, at times like Damien, he'd look powdery space white, he'd wear tiny little

sunglasses, you wear a trench coat. That's he called like his vampire look, he played the head up. And he left fucking with other kids too. He told him like, I drink blood. And the other kids would fucking believe him because they didn't I mean, they're kids, you know, when you're that type of kid, a part of it is that you it's the way society works is that you got to be on the offensive. Yeah, you've got to be aggressive with your societal stance. So before they can make fun of you for the way that you dress, you're wrapping yourself in your persona, you are making sure that other people and this is what's going to end up damning him in this in this stretch of time is that you have to make your character known and solid so that when people try to get at you, you can hide your

true vulnerability behind this mask of I'm actually a scary person. Yeah, absolutely. That was the thing with Damien. He was he was abused so badly as a child. His I mean, there's sort of fathers going in and out. And there's one situation where he was forced to put on these flippers and jump in this really nasty pool. He's drowning his parent, his father and his sister are just laughing at him. That's just one of many stories about just and the finally he makes his way out and his mother is just like, well, don't do that again. He's like, I didn't really want to do it in the first place. So there's just countless stories of abuse. So he was deeply sensitive and scared. Yeah. Damien, he read everything he can get his hands on as well. And like a lot of gods do in

high school, he got in a wicca, he decided he'd start worshiping a female goddess and he got a shitty homemade tattoo of, you know, the feminine symbol. And he's doing it all right. Technically, all of this shit is well played. Because the rest of them weren't weren't scoring mackin on chicks. He was mackin. Yeah, man, he was slick in game, man. That's what the kids say. He had a lit game. If he was a Mac Daddy, he he was a real Mac Daddy, and he could stand his ladies. I don't think we're using any of those terms right. He stand the cure. No idea what that means. And Damien, like he played up the spooky kid angle as much as he could, partly because it was fun to freak out the squares, but mostly like Henry said,

mostly just to control what the other kids made fun of him for. So the question here is, how did a simple goth kid get mixed up in a triple murder? Well, for starters, from what I read, he wasn't without his troubles, or at least he was perceived as such. It was reported that when Damien was 17, he and his girlfriend broke up and Damien handled it in a particularly dramatic way. This is what I was telling you inside stories, Kessel, about goth people being flamboyant. It was claimed that he started harassing the ex-girlfriend and he started harassing the boy she was hanging out with after the breakup. He said he was going to kill the dude and dump him in the front yard of her house and then he was going to come back, take care of her,

and then he was going to burn down the house. And if this is what happened, it's a real shitty thing to do. But, you know, I'm from a small town, shit like this, it gets out of hand very quickly and a lot of shit like this gets blown way out of proportion. But to be fair, he definitely did get into a fight with the kid that was hanging out with his ex. But a month later, Damien and the girl, they tried running away together and by Damien's word, they made a very goth kid suicide pact. That if the parents interfere, then we're going to kill each other and so on and so forth. Of course, it's not serious, there's a shit the goth kid say. It's romantic when William Shakespeare writes about it, but when Damien Eccles proposes it, all of a sudden it's criminal.

But in Romeo and Juliet, they were both 12 and played by men. Well, that is true. That is very true. Well, the thing was, though, is that neither one of them could drive. So when a storm came rolling in that night, they had no choice. They had to just go hang out in an abandoned trailer at Lakeshore States. So Deanna's mom called the cops and they eventually found the couple making out. And since the trailer didn't belong to them, the two of them got charged with burglary and sexual misconduct. Now, to be fair, the trailer belonged to Noah. In West Memphis, they were just like, that's a trailer. It's fair game for anyone to use.

If he was a sovereign citizen, he would be like, I will not be detained. You have to just stand your ground. You got to plant a flag. That's what he should have done. So after Damien was arrested for burglary and sexual misconduct, that's when Jerry Driver came into the picture. This fucking piece of work. Right. And when we say sexual misconduct, it was just two kids. It was all consensual. They were making out. They were just making out. It's not, so don't don't misconstrue that as anything. It was literally just two kids and him being the poor one got the short end of the stick. I had the same thing happen to me. I was, I just turned 18. I had a 17 year old girlfriend. We would go to the fucking make out spot that was out by the cause

way. And we parked the car and we were dingledangling. You know what I mean? We were doing some of them night moves. Understand. No, no, no, you don't understand. Back in the day, oh man, my fingers, my eyebrows. Got you, got you. And dangling doing night moves. It sounds like you're just pooping while sleeping. Is that what you mean? Okay. But yeah, I had cops come and fucking knock on the window. And then they came in and they did the thing. We're like, you ready to go to jail? Like to me? Like I've done bad. And I was like, no, sir. I have to be in little shop of horrors this weekend. Well, we don't want to mess up that performance. So Jerry driver, he was the perfect example of the kind of idiot that got swept up in the satanic

panic of the time using all this to turn his boring ass life into a hero's journey. He legitimately thought that the world was covered in devil worshipers. They were in every corner and his one job was to strike them out and burn every last one of them at the stake, simply because they can wear a 32 waist. And I am going to once again blame 2020 for this. Lou, what was it Lou? Not Lou Dubbs. Sam Donaldson. No, he was five o'clock anchor. Hugh Downs. Hugh Downs. I blame 2020 and Hugh Downs for making this man believe that satanists are around every corner. No, dude, you remember the HBO documentary on satanism that we played? I think the first time we had ever covered satanism with the guy with the drumming, the

do you want total war? Total war. Like he watched that and he was like, oh man, he got his gun belt on while he's completely nude, just being like, they're satanists in the closet, opening up his own closets in his own home, just completely empty. That's not my gun. I'm touching myself. Oh no. See at the time, some of the more gullible members of American law enforcement were convinced that just about every brutal murder that wasn't quickly and readily solved must have been the work of satanists who are in the habit of sacrificing innocent men, women, and children in the name of the devil. But as we know, there was no evidence whatsoever that any of this was happening. In 1991, the FBI did a study to see just how widespread this problem was because every time they were getting called by local law enforcement about murders, as soon as

they showed up, the cops always be like, you know, I think maybe, might be satanists involved here. Well, did you swatch any of the training videos? Yeah. Oh, yeah. All of the training videos that are sent to local police officers. And so was a man named like Greg Barrister Barish, who was just like, and here you can see the common frame of a satanic crime. And it's like his niece on a plank with a pentagram drawn in Sharpie on her stomach. He's like, you'll see symbols such as this, my lovely niece Becca, please stand still. I know you were cold. But you will see the pentagram is where they will make their incisions. We're just like Anton Lavey wasn't trying to do that shit. He was trying to get pussy. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's absolutely fascinating that it was taken

seriously. And if you're the FBI, you just show up in the small town, you're like, we'll get Mueller and Scaldi on it right away. Like, what do you say to a local cop? He's like, I think it was satanist and you're like in the FBI. And you're like, Oh, man, how do I tell him how stupid? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think every time they said like, I think it's satanist, they just go, yeah, yeah, yeah. So tell me who the suspects are. Satan. Satan's actually the number one suspect. If you look at your heart and all the dark things you think, Memo cuts to his partner, who is Satan back in the car, just hanging his head. No one ever believes in special officer Satan and his lost for justice. But no, it's true. So they go, they were saying that and they

found out that not a single murder could be contributed to the Satanism. Nothing. No murders at all. The only things they could contribute to so called satanists were like trespassing and vandalism, which that just means a bunch of stupid fucking kids misspelling Satan in an abandoned house. What's the criminal citation for lighting too many candles? I tell you, the best way to punish him is to blow them out. Because that's how you squash the spells. Also, it does smell heavenly vanilla in here. And I'm extremely allergic. Now, to be somewhat fair, I can see where this fear came from. And it's something that I'm actually surprised people don't talk about more in relation to this, the whole murder satanic panic thing, because it seems that the roots of

the murder satanic panic phenomenon were planted in the mid 80s. And 1985 just happened to be the year that the whole country saw a young man accused of killing 14 people was flashing pentagrams in the courtroom every single day, claiming that he did all of it in the name of Satan. Who was that Marcus? That man's name was Richard Ramirez. That's a good point. And he scared the fuck out of people. The closest thing to a satanic murder is is what Richard Ramirez did. But I think again, that was part of his character, right? It was his character. And he put it on in front of the cameras. But that is the closest you would say to somebody that went completely rogue. But it's not about Satan. It was never about Satan. No, not about Satanism. It wasn't about the now what

you'd see with the TST and the COS. It was about a truly evil motherfucker. Now, actually, I would say in my mind, right? It's sort of my magical thinking side of my brain that Richard Ramirez really was dabbling into very, very dark energies. But that has nothing to do with this theatrical satanism or modern witchcraft. It also corresponds perfectly with the rise of a group called ABBA. Now ABBA, if you say it front words, it's ABBA. If you say it backwards, it's ABBA. So are you mispronouncing? Are you just scared of palindromes? I don't love it. I don't love it. What does it all mean? Tell me the truth. Don't lie to me. Well, you know, the FBI, they knew that Richard Ramirez was an aberration. But your regular Joe of local law enforcement,

they weren't so convinced. And that trickled down to people like Jerry Driver. See, Jerry Driver wasn't even a cop. He was a former airline pilot who became a county juvenile officer in his 50s. And Driver had convinced himself that West Memphis, Arkansas was a hotbed of satanic activities. Nothing I like more than an airline pilot who also loves conspiracy theory. That makes me feel so safe on every Delta flight. I can't wait to fly. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, Jerry from the flight deck, have we ever thought about Columbine? Did it happen? Did it not? Anyway, we're at 35,000 feet. Feel free to unbuckle your seatbelt. You'll see. We're about to hit a little patch of bumpy air. So if you would put your seatbelts on and also keep an eye out for any of

the Podesta run, Hillary Clinton, pedophile, that may be at any, any turn. All right. I mean, it's true. The satanic panic is at its core a conspiracy theory. Like it's a gigantic conspiracy theory. And, you know, and it's, you know, of course, we've been talking about conspiracy theories, you know, how they play into modern society a lot lately. But, you know, today's conspiracy theory thought this isn't necessarily new. This is, it's all happened before. Absolutely. But the way that, you see, this is a part of it where I almost miss satanic panic and like this, this time period, because I miss things that were supposed to be evil. Yeah. Like I miss like that kind of things where we were supposed to be scared of this stuff. Like

they try to flip it now. They try to, like, you know, they try to make other things as scary. They try to, you know, between QAnon and all that other kind of bullshit. But I miss like the actual devil being involved. Yeah. Oh, well, they tried to involve it. Remember spirit cooking? Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, that just sounded like it was a fun dinner. Yeah. There are people who still believe all that stuff is very serious and very scary. Yeah. Very serious, very scary, very real. None of which is true. So Jerry Driver, he was so sure that West Memphis was a hot bed of satanic activity that he and his ghost buster sidekick, Steve Jones, these two guys, they would drive around on country roads during full moons, sincerely trying to catch satanic cults in the

act of celebrating what Driver thought was the witch's Sabbath. You could tell they made out here with the moon lot bouncing off their pale skin because it's flattering, wearing their fishnet shirts, join their music, sad dancing next to each other. Oh, how I long to wish to belong to the group, but they won't have me. Cause of the way I, the way I shimmy because I'm shaped like an acorn. But I'll tell you what, I'll bust every one of these covins as soon as I get my driving hands on them. So they went shining for covins, opposed for deer, basically. Yeah, that's exactly what they did. The whole time they're just driving around talking about, you know, all the evil things that are going on and you know, every fucking small town had these rumors. Not every

small town necessarily had these guys. Yeah, I look at the cat logs and do what I wish. Do I wish I could have a bunch of platform golf boots, of course, but they don't make them in a 14 wide. Oh, I can't wear them then. Well, driver even started keeping a list of kids that he considered possible occult practitioners. And these are kids. These are teenagers. Can I just say this? So if you just look at this abstract from the outside, you're just looking at a 50, early 50s, 52, 53 year old, just with a list of children. Just like speaking of like creepy, like who's the one who is like maybe participating in wrongdoing. Just the 50 year old with the list of kids.

It doesn't seem great to me. Yeah, and he would just want it. But none of this is a bit. This is all completely he was walking or and he was keeping tabs on children. For some reason he felt it was his duty to be to have a finger in the world of the children of West Memphis three of West Memphis, just so that he can make sure that his finger didn't touch any Satanism. You know, you say what you want about Freddy Krueger, but he knew where the kids were and he did know what they were doing. And I respect him for that. Well, Driver expertly described the telltale signs of occult activity and the people who practiced occult activity as quote, the tattoos and the devil rings and this and that and the other. That's a direct quote.

And the flim flams and the hand of scavengers and they get them rubber bats from Michaels. I want to go to Michaels and say you stop selling these bits. You stop selling these occult culture mall here in your Michaels. You get it back to Wicker. And I don't mean Wicker. I mean Wicker. They also shop at this store called Hot Topic. It's a hot topic. Hot isn't hell. The fires of hell and brimstone. I would love to see his reaction when Sting went goth from the WCW. I wonder if he was like, well, he's one of the good ones. I can get behind skin. Now, all this sounds really, really fucking dumb to us. Some members of the West Memphis Police Department considered Driver to be their local expert on all things occult. Although

there is sincere doubt as to how seriously the rest of the police department took him. Okay. So back to Damien. After Damien was arrested, his girlfriend's parents told Jerry Driver that Damien had tried getting their daughter into quote unquote black magic and that gave Jerry Driver a real big heart on. So he decided to search Damien's trailer. This is just a random junior officer. This is juvenile officer. Yeah. So this is juvenile officer. Yeah. Who could just walk into people's homes? Well, what these people do and what probably, I mean, I don't know exactly what Jerry Driver did. Maybe he got some sort of warrant. I'm not sure. But a lot of times, one of the things to remember about places like West Memphis is a lot of people and especially

in small town, white America, they're trained to trust the cops. Right. Like they're trained that the cops are here to protect us. They are here to help us. So when a cop shows up at the door and he's very nicely asking like, Hey, listen, your son's in trouble. And we just want to make sure that everything's okay. So if you would allow us, then you know, we would like to we would like to search his room. And and if he didn't do anything wrong, then you know, everything will be fine and we can put this matter to rest. And of course, the mother is like, Well, yeah, of course, my son didn't do anything wrong. He's got his trouble. Sure. But there's nothing like there's not going to be a fucking weapon in there or anything. So yeah, go ahead and clear my son's

name. Yeah. But what driver found was the drawings and writings of a typical goth kid. Right. And driver saw that as proof of satanic activity. Like he had shit like, you know, it's just like he had a notebook that he called the Damien called the Book of Shadows. It had a pentagram on the front and a bunch of upside down crosses. And not to be all like synchronicity, but then Johnny Depp starring in a movie called the Book of Shadows. No, no. Was there a movie shadows? I think there was a movie called the Book of Shadows, but I don't think it was Johnny Depp. No, he was a ninth gate. Yeah. Book of Shadows was the second Blair Witch movie. Yes, you could actually give it a review. It's pretty good. But yeah, they were they were very

upset by this and his poetry. They did not understand that his poetry was just like, it's just, you know, morose kid stuff that was filled with his very deep passion. Yeah, where he's it's stuff like, you know, I walk in the middle on one side is the light, the other is the dark, the dark calls to me and begs me to destroy the light, but I must walk in the middle. It's shit like that where it's yeah, it's dumb goth poetry. We all used to write that shit. I don't know. Did you write poetry, Ben? Oh, I used to write it all the time. You know, you know, the magnets you could put on the fridge there. Oh, you scramble is around. Absolutely. I have some poetry. I had some pretty dark things that I wrote in English

class. Yeah. And then this was pre column by this about 1997. And I wrote a very long essay about how I was not happy with what was happening to the school. And I did not particularly care for a lot of people. And my English teacher just gave me and I think I got a C actually. Okay. But then we had a small discussion. I think nowadays it would have been a red flag. It would have been quite dangerous. But we had to get it out. I wrote a whole long thing about burning down the world. But then I also wrote an entire junior high school version of Phantom of the Opera that I presented to the girl that I had a crush on. It was a 30 page script where I asked her to play Christine, the version of Christine. And I would play the Phantom because I did believe

that I was too ugly to be looked upon. Right. I wrote parents, I wrote songs in it that I sang at her. I did a whole presentation, a whole pitch. And I got the same reaction I've gotten that we've to that we've received to every pitch that we have done as a podcast, which was a solid no. No, very good. Maybe a little overkill on your part there, Henry. Yeah. So you know, driver saw all this shit. He's like, he looks at all this goth kid stuff. And he's like, there it is. There's your proof satanic activity. I was right. I knew I was right. Right. And him and Steve Jones, his little buddy, they were so serious about Damien being a witch of some kind that they actually went to Damien when he was in lockup at juvie. They went to Damien and tried

to get him to do magic. Oh, like they sat him down in a room. They tried to get this 17 year old quick kid to quote unquote do a ritual. Do one of your rituals. Do one of your funny ass rituals. It's a dumb ass ritual. They're like, hey, look at this. You see this, this ring? There's this ring. It's in this glass pyramid here. It's encased. We want you to get it out. Smash the pyramid. You gotta use your will. I'm going to use my will to smash this dumb pyramid. Why are you here? Can you imagine if they met David Blaine? He would set him on fire. He can survive well drowned and now who could do that possible? He did run over him. He cannot be killed. You must remove the head and put garlic in his mouth. Just cut to David Blaine being like, my writer specifically

says pierier water and I would prefer if I could have that. And no garlic because I don't like intense sense. But you know all this shit that, you know, Jones and Driver were giving him like kind of gave Damien an idea while he was in juvie started fucking mouthing off again, maybe to have fun, maybe just to look tough. And he started telling people that he was planning to have a baby with his girlfriend so they could sacrifice it to Satan. That's how it is, man. Yeah, you get to goosh inside and I get to fucking hail my savior. I don't know about all that. Again, obviously, type of shit a goth kid says to get a rise out of people. Right. But when Jerry Driver heard about it, he took it dead fucking serious and drove Damien himself to a psychiatric hospital

in Little Rock. It's really important to we can't overstate this. All of this stuff is very silly sounding and very you could from the mouths of teenagers. But this is the shit that put him on death row. Yeah, it was it was these statements. They took them to be dead serious, because that's what they needed to do. That was the frame of mind the prosecution had a half. But it is it's fucked man. Be careful what you say when you were in lock up. I mean, it's the same people that would watch the would watch the Lucille ball show or whatever that was called. What was the name of that show? I love Lucy and be like, I just don't like the way she has a job. Like they would take it very seriously. You are hung up on that. I love it. How do you think of that scene? I honestly

think about about three times a week, because it's how fun is that you have to eat it. You're not even doing it because you're obese. You're doing it because it's your job. This is a weird feeder gainer fantasy. Yeah, it's a bit of an issue. But Marcus mentioned the mental institution. This was not there for rehabilitation. This thing was really intense, extremely abusive. And this was like, it wasn't like dream warriors where they had a little therapy sessions and stuff. They did have a little bit. It was much more intense. It was more like a Freddy Krueger was real. And he was actually in charge of those therapy sessions in dream warriors. And he was diagnosed as a major depressive Damien was. But he said in one of his books that he was depressed

because he was in juvie. And he had some idiot up his ass 24 seven. Honestly, I think it's somewhere in between. Like he wasn't as wacko and sane as he was made out to be. But the kid came from a terrible, unstable background. And that's bound to do a number on just about anyone, especially when you're talking to the kid when he's 17. And he's still right in the middle of it. And everyone all the pain that he had as a child, his mother never stood up for him. There's one story he tells about just trying to get to the trying to get to the living room and his stepfather at the time, just blocked the doorway and just threw him against the refrigerator and his mom again, was just like, don't do that again. He's like, didn't want it to happen in the first place.

That was just one of the hundreds of accounts of abuse. So he was always just laughed at when he was in pain. Yes. So after Damien was released, he and his mother high-tailed it out at Arkansas and moved in with Damien's biological father in Aloha, Oregon. But driver's harassment didn't end just because Damien was 2000 miles away. He was still dogging him. Still crazy. Driver contacted the juvenile authorities in Oregon and warned them about Damien, giving the following reasons. I, Damien and several others of his associates are involved in a satanic cold. B, Damien and his girlfriend were both placed in a psychiatric hospital. Guilty. C, Damien threatened to kill his girlfriend's parents. Five, Damien claims he is a witch. 94, Damien and his girlfriend

were planning to have a child so they could all for it as a sacrifice to Satan and F, the authorities in Arkansas suspect that Damien's parents are involved in this satanic belief system. It's a trickle down. Well, okay. I am, I'm just the, I'm just the secretary here. Would you like me to transfer you? I don't know exactly what to do with this information. Are you aligned with the devil? I am not. Because I got to come down there and I got to spuck the devil out of your perfect female butt. Well, I'm a male actually, but didn't mean to misgender. Yeah, I mean, he did send that. It was, it was A through F, all of this weird bullshit. And as far as the authorities in Oregon went, how they reacted, they just kind of went, okay. Okay. And then they've left Damien alone.

I just want to be like the elder, I just want to be like the elder, Lebowski, and just be like, do what your parents did. Get a job, sir. Like, what are you doing? I have three jobs. Oh, really? Yep. I'm a pilot. I zoom, zoom in the sky sky. I'll put the cloudy clouds. I'm also a police officer of my own making. But the thing was that the authorities in Oregon, they left Damien alone for a time, but they were brought back because Damien had a mental break. He threatened both himself and his parents. As I said, he had troubles. Damien was hospitalized again. But after he got out, instead of going back to Aloha, Oregon, Damien took a bus back to Arkansas because his parents had pretty much all been given up on him. They just like, get out of here. It was hard, man. It's a

hard, it was a hard go for him. And he was a complicated kid. Yeah. Yeah. And this bus ride, it was a five day bus ride. And it was one of the first times he was the first time he was ever really alone alone. Yeah. And problem was, when Damien got back to Arkansas, Jerry Driver was at the bus station waiting for him. Well, well, well. I mean, is this Duke's of hazard? Is Boss Hogg for crying out loud? Well, well, well, couldn't help but see. You end up the fancy old Oregon thinking you could do better here in Arkansas. But I tell you what, Arkansas wasn't going to be here. And we follow you everywhere you go. Geez, it is horrifying. Yeah. And since it was reported that Damien had threatened his parents and since he had called his old girlfriend

at one point once, driver said, you violated the terms of your probation. So he arrested him and threw him back into juvie. So he called his girlfriend. They talked very briefly and he's like, is no one else there. He had his sister call initially and then he got on the phone. And then it turns out either Jerry Driver was there or her parents were there. And he convinced his her parents that he was the devil incarnate. So they were super they all believed Jerry Driver. Honestly, how kind of fun about this? It's sort of like a satanic West Side story with him as Officer Krupke. And of course, you know, after Damien was released from juvie again, that harassment continued. But Damien wasn't the only one getting the full court press from the Satan squad.

Jason Baldwin, one of the other, the West Memphis three, he'd gained the attention of Jerry's little buddy, Steve Jones. And Steve, who used to join driver on his Sabbath hunts. Is that what they called them? No, it's just what I call them. Steve, he worked as a probation officer under driver. And he'd been assigned Jason in 1990, when Jason was 12 years old, and broke out the windows of a few old cars in a barn. But it sounded like it was a big act of vandalism, like it was a bunch of expensive old cars that got broken. But it was still just fucking vandalism. It's just kids. Yeah, just kids, you know. So you had it's kind of the funny thing here is that you had Damien and his best friend, Jason Baldwin.

And on the other, you had Driver and his best friend, Steve Jones. And they're both going at each other. Okay. And Jones, he used to corner balled when and he'd tell him this. I know, you're trying to get a cult started. And then when Damien returned that escalated to this. We hear you and Damien have got a cult. Well, why can't why weren't we invited? I don't want to invite you. Yeah, well, now I'm breaking it up. That's how it goes. Yeah, secret secrets are no fun. They're no fun. So when Driver and Jones worked up their Satanist teenager list, Damien and Jason were at the top. There were six others. And one of them was a kid that Damien and Jason barely knew. In fact, this other kid had admitted that Damien

scared the fuck out of him. That kid was Jesse Miss Kelly. And he gained a spot on that list because as Driver himself put it, he had quote, Spock hair and stuff. Spikes hair and stuff. That's spiked. Spock. Spock hair and stuff. Spock hair and stuff. Because you know what else got Spocks? The floor of hell. So you mean to tell me you want to make your head look like the bottom of hell? That's lower than hell. The rest of you. Yeah, spike hair and stuff. Okay. That was the extent of the fucking investigation. Two ears. What's he listening to? Two eyes. What's he's looking at? Mouth. What's he talking about? And it was across this backdrop that the events of May 5, 1993 occurred. So on May 5, 1993, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie

Branch, all eight years old, have been playing together after school, more last seen riding their bikes at the end of Macaulay Drive right before sunset. Two hours later at 8 p.m. the first boy was reported missing by his adopted father, Mark Byers. Now the most logical place to look for these kids was a place called Robin Hood Hills, which was a four-acre buffer of woods where all the kids played. It was located between the neighborhood and one of the busiest interstates in the country. It is a deceptively thick little forest. Yes. That was a part of what is important to know is that it was very clogged. It had a drainage ditch through it that will end up coming into play. But it was surprisingly forbidding. But it was next to an all-night trucker stop

where people, because it's on Interstate 40, which goes from there to California. So people on that cross-country hall are all at that truck stop. And so it's got a lot of drifters in it, which is a part of it why the kids even knew amongst themselves to never go in there at night. But that night, the mosquitoes were so thick that both the police and the regular folk that were helping them look, they decided to wait till the next morning. And even then, the next day, most of the people who were looking lasted in the woods until about noon. And totally to his credit here, the only person who braved the mosquito swarms that afternoon was Steve Jones. Yep. And before we get into all of this, we're about to enter Gold Star Territory. Uh-oh. I mean,

this is nothing that those of you who've seen the documentaries don't already know about and haven't already fucking seen. And it's something that I would like to stop thinking about. But for the rest of you, this is going to be bad. Yeah. I thought it was actually good for the documentary to show the photos so you can really understand how horrible it is. Yeah. Yes. So as Steve Jones was walking on the shores of a gully at about 1 30 PM, he spotted a small, lace-less tennis shoe floating in the water. And as soon as he saw it, he radioed the cops and within 15 minutes, they were on the scene. Not knowing what else to do and desperate for an answer, a detective jumped in the water and started walking, feeling for more evidence. His foot hit something solid and slowly,

the naked body of Michael Moore unstuck itself from the mud and rose to the surface. When the boy was pulled out of the water, it was found that he'd been hogtied with his own shoelaces. The body was covered in small cuts and his skull had suffered severe blunt force trauma. After the body was found, the police taped off the scene and began searching the water. But instead of a body, the next thing they found were sticks conspicuously sunk into the mud. And when they pulled him out, they found the sticks had been used to sink the boy's clothes down into the muck. All the clothes on the missing person's reports were found saved for a sock and two pairs of underpants. But the most bizarre part was that the boy's pants had all been turned inside out

and were fully zipped and buttoned up. Fifteen minutes later, they found Stevie Branch downstream. He'd been tied the same way as Michael and also had blunt force trauma to the head. But it appeared as if the left side of his face had been mutilated. The last to be found was Christopher Byers and this one was by far the worst. When he was pulled out of the water in addition to the head trauma, his genitals were almost completely gone and numerous wounds surrounded the genital area. The last things recovered were the boy's bikes, which had been submerged in the gully, just as the boys were. And Steve Jones, who had stuck around the scene after finding the shoe, only had one thing to say. Looks like Damien has finally killed someone.

Oh my gosh. And that's where being the town goth goes from being a fun, contrarian position and an identity that helps you feel confident and allows you to have something to lean on in a chaotic life to making you guilty of murder. And that's also, I mean, that's the problem. When you have a conclusion before you have the evidence, all of the evidence is going to, you're going to use all that evidence to get to your conclusion. Like what happened after 9-11 when Dick Chaney immediately said it was Iraq and then we spent a lot of money making sure that that was true. But of course, it wasn't. Yeah, now we're getting 9-11 discounts and Adam McKay is essentially making a comedy about

fucking Dick Chaney. So we're automatically in idiocracy. Now it is very easy to judge the incompetent behavior to come from the cops here on the scene. But as Dale Cooper said, murder is not a faceless event here. It is not a statistic to be tallied up at the end of every day. And even though West Memphis was nowhere close to be in the idyllic community of Twin Peaks, the deaths of these three eight-year-old kids shook these cops to the core. So I do have some sympathy for what they must have gone through. I think it's very interesting the way the devil's not portrays the finding of the bodies, because this is where I think the trauma on the townside sets in.

First of all, the way they are found, the bodies are stuck in the mud. When one of the detectives jumped into the gully, his feet immediately got sucked into the bottom of this ditch. And so you're seeing it's like it goes up to his ankles and they were saying they were not dressed for water search. So they're just in their normal clothes. And as they're going through, they see the shoes just kind of stuck in the mud. This next scene is that detective gets down on his hands and knees in a gully with the mud going up to his elbows, crawling through it, looking for a body and kicks it. So you're basically, this is incredibly traumatic. You pull a body that sucks out of the mud. It is in a very, very profane and graphic position

with the wrists tied to the ankles by shoelaces in a way that doesn't, because it's not like normal hog tying. It's some weird improvised hog tying. Well, it's like the, what is it? The left wrist is tied to the right ankle and the right wrist is tied to the left ankle. They're tied back. And so they're forced in this position that you see in the pictures, if you look at Jeffrey Dahmer's, the crime scene photos, when you see the guys arched back, it's the same thing. And then these bodies have to be put on the bank. So you basically watch, it is a fucking circus. So I think that they experienced a great deal of trauma, just the police, just in those moments. Then that, that was like the emotional gunpowder that allowed

the rest of their satanic panic idea, their whole train of thought. That's where it fucking set off. Yeah. It was my understanding that he was looking for the shoe, trying to grab the shoe, actually stumbled into the water and then was walking and accidentally kicked up the body. Yeah. So he stumbled upon, can you just imagine that? Yeah. And the body slowly rising to the surface. It's horrific. Well, even though, you know, these guys do deserve sympathy for what they had to go through, mistakes were made that had dire consequences later. Oh yeah. It took nearly two hours after the boys had been pulled out of the water before someone thought to call the coroner's office. And when the coroner arrived, fly larva had already started appearing

in the eyes and nostrils, which greatly confused the time of death. Furthermore, the bodies had been sitting outside covered in plastic and 90 degree Arkansas heat, which accelerated decomposition even further. Then there was the matter of who was questioned, how they were questioned, and why they were questioned. Now obviously, the parents of the children were beyond devastated. And I'm sure the investigating cops, they shared that grief. However, I found a study that looked at child murder stats over a 32 year period. And that study found that over half of all child murders are deliberate acts by their parents. Cops are supposed to put when a kid comes up dead, cops are always supposed to immediately

look at the parents. And as awful as that is, the stats bear it out. And if you want evidence of that, watch Selma Blair and Nicholas Cage and Mom and Dad, because they definitely show what parental rage looks like. But also, most people are murdered by people that they know, especially murders of, especially murders of passion, like that kind of shit where in a moment of anger, when you accidentally kill somebody, or in that anger, you do purposely kill somebody, but then afterwards you're like, holy shit. But what immediately threw them was the, was the tying of the arms to the feet. I think that immediately they have this whole like,

some psycho did this. And so they are not going to go and go after the parents, even though what if one of the parents is a psycho? Yeah. And while the parents were indeed questioned, none of the early interviews were recorded. Now this oversight, which could have uncovered a very fishy alibi concerning a man named Terry Hobbs, who we'll address in part three, that oversight became more and more of a problem as the years went by. Then there was Mark Byers, father of Christopher. Now, even though he was eventually exonerated, both he and his wife were police informants. And Byers was a known small time drug dealer, making a retaliation murder a possibility.

Just know this, if you're going to go down the rabbit hole that is this case, right? Because, again, Marcus is on 50 hours of solid ass work, the kissles working on this show. I'm fucking, I did fucking watching the docs and reading all the books and looking at stuff. There is some really fucking murky shit about the, about the, the drug cops and narcotics officers mixed with Mark Byers. All of this kind of like, because the people that were involved on the narcotics side that ended up being involved in the murder investigation, because of Mark Byers involvement of being the stepfather of one of the victims, they were also under investigation, which is a whole other side quest of this whole story. That is, if you look at that, it makes things a lot more

difficult to discern, like what's going on here and who got what out of this, who was benefiting from the murder of these children. And Mark Byers is going to play a large role here. If you want to know what Mark Byers looks like, just think of the villain from last action hero. He looks very similar to him as I'm watching that. He looks like Tom Noonan. A little bit. Yes, he does. Yeah. And, you know, while Mark Byers, you know, role in the West Memphis drug world is suspicious, and while there was some evidence to link him to the crime, it must be said that as far as the Paradise Lost documentaries go, Mark Byers got a raw fucking deal. Yeah, dude. You gotta be sure, you gotta make sure not to become the enemy that you hate. Yeah, throughout the first installment,

it's hinted that Byers is the real killer. And in the second, they all but come right out and say it. Right. And both do as much as they can to let out the rope for Byers. It is really unfortunate that the second Paradise Lost documentary smears Mark Byers so fucking hard. Right. And it shows this whole, which is why we're not necessarily, you'll see as we're going to go through this entire series, we're not going to try and find who the killer is, because you can see how that sort of ad hominin attack on somebody simply for being a fucking troubled weirdo. Like, because honestly, he was just a troubled, fucked up guy that had some criminality in his past who ended up like, he was just all mixed up and then destroyed by this case. Yeah. That made him extra weird.

And then you could show how easy it is from behind the lens of a documentary using editing. You can make anybody look like a psychopath. And I don't know how much we'll get into detail in the next episodes, but he was haunted. He was taunted. His life really became a living hell after Paradise Lost, specifically part two. And they put him in situations that made him look really bad. Yeah. And of course, he's emotionally, extremely damaged. Yeah. And I'll totally admit, like for a bit, I got a little swept up in this. Of course. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people who watch these, like, got swept up in this. But in doing this, I and the filmmakers and everyone else who gets swept up in it, we made the exact same mistake that people have made with the West

Memphis Three. Right. You know, Mark Byers, as he said, he's real fucking weird. He is a weird, weird dude. He loves being on camera, even in the face of his son's murder. He plays up his emotions to the point where they don't even seem real. And more than anything, Byers, I mean, he's the type of dude liberals look at the exact same way that conservatives look at Damien. It's that exact same superficial just look at him bullshit. Like, of course, of course, that fucking hick was the one that did it, except it's, oh, of course, look at these, look at these people out here in Arkansas. Just look at the type of, look at the type of person that he is. And tell me honestly, if that's the type of person that would murder a child, then I'm going to go ahead and say he absolutely is.

Absolutely is. And I'll tell you what, I also spilled my juice in my Lexus this morning, and I had Fernando clean it all up because he had, I told him, it's your job. And I said, if I kill the waiter, it's also your job to clean that up. Oh my God. Well, that's very difficult. Also, Damien, Damien Eccles also did something that he later regretted and apologized to Mr. Byers for when he was walking through, he told the media Mark Byers did it. Yeah. And Damien Eccles later wrote Mr. Byers a letter apologizing saying, I did to you what they did to us. Yes. And so they have since made amends. Yeah, they have. And, you know, and Damien also said in the second paradise loss when they were talking to him in prison, he also said, like, yeah, it was Mark Byers. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, just came right out multiple times and said it, but he did, he did apologize. Yes, he did. Very much so. And we'll get to Mr. Byers kind of going 180 as well. Yeah. And Byers, the filmmakers, they exploited the fuck out of this guy. I mean, he had mental illness. Like they actually offhandedly mentioned in Paradise Lost 2 how many fucking medications this guy was on? Yes. He was on Xanax. He was on Zoloft. He was on two different powerful anti-psychotics. And plus he had addiction problems. He had a drinking problem. He smoked weed all the time. And that's not even mentioning his brain tumor. Right. And a part of it is vilifying people on medication, which we've talked about endlessly on this show. And we've dealt with personally,

I know Marcus has dealt with it. Very much so. This idea that just because you are medicated that you're bad, that there's something wrong with you or it's just like, technically he was doing correct. Yeah. Making sure that he was taking care of himself. But obviously he got out of hand on camera, which is very easy to take advantage of. And I have seen this firsthand, the stigma against prescription drugs. You know me, opioids, all this kind of stuff. I think there's a fine line. But when it comes to heavy psychotics, if you really do need them, don't let any stigma stop you from taking them. Because the bad thing is when you don't, look at Richard Chase, if you want an example of a person on medication.

Yeah. And also, I'll say I've been on medication for bipolar disorder for 13 years now. And it's doing me a world of fucking good and wouldn't be doing this show right now without it. So just remember this, ladies and gentlemen, this is Marcus saying. So do you want to see him off of prescription drugs? I don't think so. Admittedly, with buyers, there was actually more evidence for him being the murderer than there was for the West Memphis three. And we'll get into all that later. But as we know, just a scant bit of evidence does not a murderer make. Now, suppose the point of all this is that while the cops did investigate buyers more than other parents, buyers wasn't the only parent who should have been looked into. Then

there was the matter of Mr. Bojangles. The restaurant? Yeah. Yes. Really? Yes. Because that's why I did notice when the beginning of, in the beginning of The Devil's Knot, there was like, there's a map of West Memphis. And the first thing it was like, before I started reading it, it was an arrow towards the Bojangles in town. I was like, is this just like their impromptu city hall? Is that why this is important? Well, we rent out the party room for most court cases. It's actually going to pretty good deal free apps. It's a problematic name. Is that correct? Bojangles? Is that? I don't think so. No, okay. No, no, no. Mr. Bojangles, you know the Jerry Jack Walker? I know the song. I know the song. He danced for you, Ben, in the old soft shoe.

Oh, absolutely. Well, I hope he has, yeah, I hope he has hard shoes for walking. So at around 840, on the night of the murders, a call was made to the West Memphis Police Department from Bojangles Fast Food that a bleeding black guy entered the restaurant and hid in the bathroom. He'd left by the time the cops had arrived, but there was plenty of blood for a sample. Scrapings were made that night, but were quickly lost. Oh, brilliant. And this is only important because a hair belonging to a black dude was found at the crime scene. Very interesting. And it's possible that at the very least they could have cross-referenced, you know, the DNA eventually, because it was 93, DNA wasn't like a super

strong thing just yet. Right. But in the future, it could have been possible they could cross reference that hair with the blood and they could have seen like, okay, well, maybe it's the same guy here, but they lost the sample. See, now this, I just don't understand. And maybe you guys can tell me a little bit, how the hell do you lose the sample? Don't you just go and you put it on this wobbly tray? Like, how does that happen? Mr. Bean. Yeah, Mr. Bean was, okay, well, that makes sense. Now, I'm not saying definitively that one of the parents or the men who came to be known as Mr. Bojangles is the killer or part of a killing team. Excuse me here, Mr. Marcus. My name is Frederick Bojangles. I'm a representative of Bojangles and we want to say we would like to frown

upon the use of this possible suspect and be named Mr. Bojangles because it does not reflect the opinion of Bojangles. We just feel that people should eat the chicken. Absolutely. The point I'm trying to make here is that there were very specific lines of investigation that the West Memphis PD could have taken but didn't. And from the very beginning, the words of Jerry Driver and Steve Jones carried some weight in both the community and in the police department. It seems first though that the lead investigator, Detective Gary Gitchell, treated the whole satanic thing as a very unlikely third option. Gitchell. Gitchell, huh? Yeah, oh yeah, buddy. He looks like a two. You know who he reminds me of? He reminds me of the bad city dude from Ghostbusters 2.

Gary Gitchell, he also sounds like he was born like with a kangaroo patch but in his lip just made for chewing tobacco. That's my chew pouch. So Gitchell held a press conference concerning the murders and gave three options. It could be someone the kids knew, it could have been a stranger or, and you mentioned this almost offhandedly, it could be gang or cult activity. And even though the first two were the much, much likelier options, the third was the better story. And furthermore, it made the most sense to a lot of people and not just the town but the state. Now again, this isn't true for everyone in West Memphis or even in Arkansas, but in that part of the world, the devil is a very real presence in many people's lives.

He is not a metaphor, nor is he a story meant to scare kids into being good. Satan is real and he is out to get you at all times. I got into a lot of trouble, I got into a lot of trouble growing up one day when I said I don't believe in Satan. I was sitting in the context of I don't follow Satan and my father was like, we had multiple focus on the family meetings about how Satan is real. And that probably led me to sort of be fascinated by the occult in general. Also, this is Satan, I mean, obviously a very real force in there. And as soon as those word got out about the bodies, right, because they were trying to keep the information about what happened to these kids as tight as possible. But as soon as any information about the way

these kids were found, the entire neighborhood, all of West Memphis, they all jumped on it, this was done by sighting us. It had already started in the court of public opinion that there were cult members out there because no one would believe that a family member would do this to their kids. But unfortunately, statistically, that's normally who does these crimes. So basically, everyone just channeled their inner Mr. Plum from Clue and was just like, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I mean, because these people, they couldn't imagine a crime this bad could be done by a human. Like to them, it's a supernatural crime. This is something that a human being cannot commit without Satan behind them. It's just so crazy how serious it all was,

because I go back to one of my favorite records of all time, which was the Tenacious D album. It's not a mockery of Satan. It's sort of, it's much more humorous of a concept. It's strange to think about how serious they were. Yeah. But Gary Gitchell didn't seem to be one of these people to take it so seriously. For him, the cult angle didn't ring true. On the other hand, he also didn't have a fucking clue where to start. So he just started taking stabs in the dark. Someone had pointed out that American soldiers captured in Vietnam had been tied up like the little boys. So cops combed files at the local VA to see if anyone local had lost a penis in Vietnam. And I tell you what, guys who lost their penises in Vietnam, they don't really like bringing it up.

No. And thank you for your service. It seems to be a real sore spot for them. Yeah. Well, the one thing I do understand is the pain that the Cult of Heaven's Gate went through. I disagree with them, but my goodness gracious. And then, really sticking with the penis angle, the cops checked out a guy who'd been arrested for doing sex change surgeries without a license. Well, I will say, I don't like government overreach. I don't think you should need a license to cut people's hair. But when it comes to sex change operations, you want to go to the school for that? Just a little bit. My main focus, my medical practice here is turning inies and outies and hooters into shooters. My, are you a licensed doctor or are you just

reading a menu from Hooters? I'm not a pussy. I don't need a license. Okay. All this was made even worse by the fact that the medical examiner's office was beyond incompetent. And we're really, part three is when we're really gonna get into how bad the medical examiner's office actually was in this case. It is sickening. It's one of those moments that you just find yourself being your father when the packers are losing. You just scream at the television, knowing no one can hear you, but you're just like, what is going on? And then naturally. There's a lot of that in this documentary series where you just go, what? As far as the ME's office went, it took damn near a month before Detective Gitchell got to even look

at the written autopsy reports. Think about that for a second. You've got a whole team of cops that are trying to solve a triple murder without knowing anything specific about the autopsy. They didn't know for sure when the kids died, how they died, what condition their clothes were in, if they'd been sexually abused, what was going on with that hair that had been found, nothing. They had nothing. And they, you're talking this, you watched the show 48 hours and they talk about how like in 48 hours, how much it goes away in a homicide case. You are sitting here, you've got three what appears to be mutilated boys that you have to deal with. It is, you are the focus of the nation. The medical examiner is just not coming back with

shit. So you're trying to, how do you figure out a line of questioning if you don't even know how the fuck they died? But if you don't know when they died, how do you begin? What do you do? And so he's just, I sort of feel for him, for, for Gitchell. At a certain point. At a certain point. Up to a certain point. Yeah. Where he's trying to like, he's just trying to piece it together because you're also dealing with these hysterical families that are all wanting to catch this motherfucker. And the West Memphis population is going to start popping off. Yeah. You know, all Gitchell really had was what he'd heard through the grapevine. And that grapevine was getting pretty fucking long and tangled. And rumors were running rampant. Not just all over the town,

but all over the country. I didn't realize that's what the California Raising Song was all about. They heard about a triple murder and through the grapevine. Yes. And then they were very controversial. Very controversial fourth verse that was cut out of that for the commercials. Okay. See this triple child murder had not surprisingly become national news. And as time went by, people started getting more and more antsy and a hell of a lot more bloodthirsty. And some of them, the only answer for these horrible crimes was Satan. As I said, it took most of the West Memphis police department a while to come around to the Satanist angle. But one who took to it immediately was Detective Don Bray. Bray was friends with Jerry Driver. And Bray was one of the guys who considered

Driver the most knowledgeable man in the county on all things related to occult crimes, mostly because Jerry had attended a few seminars and sounded real fucking confident when he talked about it. Oh, of course, no one ever comes back from a seminar with disinformation, misinformation, or anything like that. Driver also, for some reason, if you look at a picture of him, he is completely bald, but somehow it looks like he has hair. It's like his scalp is gray. And to me, that is magic enough. Unless he did get that hair from a can. And he's just like, well, I've heard sale that magic is just undiscovered science. You know those chia pets? Now you can actually put that on your head. Driver put it in Bray's ear that these kids,

named Damien Eccles and Jason Baldwin, not only maybe, but probably were the perpetrators. And that opinion was reinforced by a call from a local pastor who said a bunch of kids at the Lakeshore trailer park were out there worshiping the devil. They were listening to cheap trick. I know. What just thunderstruck me? And one of those kids at Lakeshore had even written the number 666 on his boots. And the name of that kid was Damien Eccles. Pretty dope. So due to the opinions of a pastor and a former airline pilot turned witch hunter, the cops had a focus for the cult angle. Damien was first questioned by Steve Jones and a detective named Sudbury less than 24 hours after the bodies were found, although no notes were made of this

meeting. This shit, none of these people documented half this shit. It's insane. No one talked about it and these poor people were just oh my god. They were railroaded immediately. Well it's just the laziness that bugs the hell out of me when such important things are on the lines of just three people's lives and trying to solve the murder of three others. And this is when the shit really starts. At this moment, this is when the injustice and when the railroading really starts to ramp up for these kids. So two days after that first talk, the cops swung by Jason Baldwin's trailer and Damien just happened to be there. Because remember Damien and Jason Baldwin, best friends, attached at the hip. So these two kids, without their parents' knowledge

and without a lawyer present, were grilled on Jason's front lawn about a triple homicide. That's perfect. And of course Damien, who didn't take it the least bit seriously because he didn't think he had anything to worry about, gave him a bunch of smartass goth kid answers. Yeah because he was like there's no way I can be found guilty of anything. I didn't do this. So it doesn't matter what I say here because I'm innocent. So I'll just say shit and tell this fucking cop exactly the way me and my coven stand. And that's one thing when you read his personal bio too. He's totally upfront about that. He knows. Probably didn't do myself any services with that you know. Yeah I mean he told him the crime was a thrill kill. He said the penis

was a strong symbol of power. He said the killer probably wanted to hear the kids scream. Then he said the most dick thing of all. He said it was funny that the killer hadn't been caught and he didn't really care if they ever were. Sounds absolutely horrible. But you have to remember the worst the douchiest people that you knew growing up the thing that was fun to do was freak them out. Yeah of course and also there were you had me made some points if it was true that where we're going to find out is what the truth is about these bodies. But a part of it is that when you saw them upon first look that's what the profiler that a mind hunter was based on said the same exact thing. When you first look at the bodies you could see it does look like a thrill

kill looks like a sex murder and then someone did this for power. Yeah and then Damien started bringing up a cult stuff for just because these guys are saying you know they're hitting on they're giving them leading questions leading questions and Damien's like all right yeah I'll talk about all this shit. Damien said look for crystals and candles. He said the guy probably read Anton Levet and Stephen King and so on and so forth. Seriously if they really looked for crystals and candles every aunt would just be a suspect. Exactly and you look at it now with Instagram and all that shit where it's like which culture is just so normal now. Yeah it's so weird how much shit has changed in terms of having boots having six six six on it but like niece has that

stuff. Right and plus both boys had the word evil written on their knuckles which to us is just the type of dumb shit. We all dead when we were teenagers but to the Satan Squad this was proof positive that they were in fact capital E evil. I had a friend this dude Albert he had the word evil branded on his forearm with the goddamn coat hanger and he was one of the sweetest dudes I ever met. I mean it didn't make him a murderer it just made him a stupid kid without a hell of a whole lot of thought for his future. And if you think about it spelled backwards evil means live that means live evil. And there was one other thing too which became the most damning statement of all. See a couple of days before this front lawn chat Steve Jones had dropped

by to talk to Damien and Steve Jones wanted to know Damien why hadn't you been around because remember Steve Jones you know worked for the juvenile squad and Damien said why the fuck what I'd be around I'm not on probation anymore. Yeah that was just a pretext because then Steve Jones started talking about the murders and Steve just happened to let slip a couple of confidential facts that have been told to him by the medical examiner for whatever dumb fucking reason. I don't know why the medical examiner told him this shit just getting happy just getting hammered at happy hour. They all just kind of listen they all just kind of absorbed each other and they're all again they're bored and and everyone's desperate too. I think it's just

you're looking at a big old leaky shit. Yeah and I think a part of it too is these guys don't want to keep this shit to themselves they want to have somebody to talk to about it. Steve Jones was one of the first he was the guy that found the shoe and I'm sure the medical exam he wanted to talk to the medical examiner about it I'm sure the medical examiner told him some you know told him some shit like just to get it you don't want this shit to live inside your head right that's why we do this television that's why we do this podcast yeah so we don't have to just keep it in and I'm not sure if this is true or not but I'm sure a part of them found it to be kind of fun exciting like they got to be on the front lines of the war against not just a person against the

devil yeah I mean driver definitely yeah I mean I'm sure well I mean because once these kids were found driver's entire world view was suddenly vindicated and I will say this if they were 100 percent right if all of that was true pretty fun well the stakes certainly go up don't it in terms of your everyday life and driver he would always say this if he was something big's coming mm-hmm something's big like he is waiting for the devil to show up in West Memphis being like you think he's gonna go to West Memphis when he has all his followers and fun people and all the good times he can have in New York and in LA yeah come on man he's not going there first you might have also been referring to the recent construction of a Carl's Jr which is big for any

town to get well that's the that's the devil to mr. Bojangles and I wonder how much Bojangles is involved with the government this entire west Memphis 3 and maybe so maybe saw these child murderers as a subtle sort of like big mass marketing scam for full on john silvers I don't know so Jones told Damien about the genital mutilation which you know at that point damn your common knowledge you know like fucking everybody knew about the genital mutilation but a more specific thing was that the medical examiner had found what he thought was urine in the victim's stomachs and Jones brought that up to Damien told Damien about it so when the cops were talking to Damien and Jason and Jason's front yard Damien brought it up and that statement

would be used against Damien later as something that only the killers would know oh yeah Jones said I never said anything to him about I don't know what you're talking about right but yeah it was used against him later right and Damien then he willingly gave hair and blood samples like yeah fuck it here go take it and he willingly submitted to a polygraph test now the guy who conducted the test Durham he's not exactly what you'd call top of the class material no really now we'll get into Durham's fuck upry when we get to Jesse Miss Kelly's trial but let's just say there's going to be proof we're going to talk about later on that this man cannot be trusted plus when it came to Damien's test there were no records of his responses no records of the actual test itself

and all that remains of that day is a one page report that pretty much just says he did it wow yeah because he was he was already mouthing off who needs a paper trail huh right and the media didn't help either they pumped the satin angle as hard as they could yep and they just walking around talking to townsfolk one towns not one person said like yeah I saw a pentagram and spray painted underneath overpass over there and another one say like yeah I saw this dead dog over by his abandoned house you know it's all mutilated and all messed up and stuff and so on and so forth West Memphis is sort of like um like when I first lost some weight and women started paying attention to me more you know I mean like I kind of stuff like back in the all I kind of whatever like and you're

real open to whatever anybody says West Memphis at the time didn't really get a lot of national attention to have a fucking reporter showing up asking all the shit about satanism and again media never fucking helps because it's whatever puts asses in seats it's whatever sell whatever allows them to sell commercial space so like we see where we're at now they fucking pumped whatever was the most exciting thing into everybody's faces that essentially created a court of public opinion where by the time we get to who is being arrested for this crime they are only looking for satan totally media thrives off of hearsay off of gossip off of nothing that can be proven or disproven things that will never be admitted into a court of law media is one of the most corrupting things

when it comes to true crime uh go back to column by what happened with them they have they've really hurt our society when it comes to their coverage of true crime and other people were slowly starting to come forward with suspicious information about Damien as well a woman named Narlene Hollins worse well Narlene said that she saw Damien and his girlfriend Dominique walking at about 1030 on the night of the murders and Damien's pants were all muddy now here is where we'll address the first big piece of evidence the guilters put forward they say that Narlene took a polygraph given by Durham by the way and Durham found her to be telling the truth of course as we said with as we've said in the past all a polygraph tells is that that person believes

what they're saying and there's many ways to cheat it but if Damien like and let's even say that she did see Damien muddy sure if he was supposedly muddy from disposing of the bodies why wasn't he also covered in blood from what they think is multiple knife wounds and extreme genital mutilation and if the cult killed the kids somewhere else and changed only think people would notice three dudes carrying the bodies of three children down the street because none of them have had cars none of them could drive right and if you say he killed them changed clothes then sunk them in the wood mud wouldn't people notice walking around before that he was covered in blood and you know honestly Damien might have been walking around all muddy who fucking knows

but it's a hell of a jump in logic to think that mud on your pants makes you a child murderer i'll tell you what they were try know that mr bro jangles if he had anything to do it he would say well that's a telltale sign of someone who's covered in frosty and child covering mud this is a wendy's crime this is a wendy's crime dave thomas would never do something like that he'll do whatever it takes he was an orphan and he knew dave thomas knew what it took to pull himself out from being an orphan to being the head of the square burgers to be the first man to come up with the square burger with the holes in it you have to be i would say a horrible villain well i will say this in in defense of mr thomas you mentioned holes in the square burger my friends you're

talking about white castle as a matter of fact wendy's has a solid square burger and it's freaking made on a grill and it's made fresh and it comes with fresh pickles fresh lettuce if i was in a room with you right now if i was there in that room with you i'd fucking people i would people's elbow you until you were in the hospital well i love the wendy's burger come on well even though all this shit that they were saying about damien required huge jumps in logic that didn't stop the people of west memphis from edging closer and closer towards pinning it all on a supposed satanic cult the woman who would bring jessie miss kelly into the whole mess all on the promise of a little cash was a waitress named vicki hutchinson and we'll hear all about her and how her actions

led to the confession arrest and conviction of jessie miss kelly on part two of the west memphis three this is the it's the ron po peel of police work where they're like set it and forget it it's super easy we did it it's super fun super simple i would say remember this too with this case so we're we're now a toe in and we got days left at fucking a slogging through this case there's a lot of twists and turns do your own research too yeah and see it's a part of being like there are many people there there are many sources of information on the west memphis three it is a lot it's a good a lot of good stuff to get you mad one way or another and what's better than righteous anger yeah west of memphis i thought was a really powerful documentary it's like super sad it's

extremely sad but it's got a happy ending it does uh but yeah i just don't understand how we leave the fucking uh the uh ipson gun on the wall with fucking having eddie vader there without him pulling out playing any sort of acoustic version of elderly woman behind the counter at a small store yes it would be kind of weird if like your favorite concert ever was the west memphis three benefit concert it looked like a great concert but the amazing thing about this and that this is like really uh must be said is like we just talked about the west memphis three for two hours and we talked about one of those guys for about three minutes he's not even a part of this story yet right you know these guys had a whole life before jesse miss kelly even came

into the picture and speaking of righteous anger you will have it in the next episode no in the treatment of that man yes um all right everyone well that was that was very informative my congratulations dance awesome so let's see what do we want to do first of all i want to thank everyone for giving to our patreon without you none of this is possible and we love you absolutely with all of our hearts and uh this week um henry and i had a chance to interview a guy named dallas sanye who was the producer of puppet master and uh bonehawk oh is it bone bone tomahawk yeah bone tomahawk fucking rules yeah and he also produced the bulk of the stone cold steve austin films oh so we had a great interview with him so if you

get a chance and you are our patreon subscriber go listen to that interview yeah and you guys can hear that interview and a ton of others if you uh give five dollars or more uh to our patreon uh per month we've got a ton of bonus content over there uh and uh another thing i want to say is uh we're coming out on the road we're coming out hard on the road uh over the next month or so do i have to be hard can i just be my regular is that a soft sell for legally you have to be soft okay okay you can't puff in this when you go out on the road would you not bring up my dog one time during the recording of this episode my dog for some reason became slightly dead dog was real hard well leave him alone the dog for crying out loud he's only 35 years old and dog here so we're coming

uh it seems like we've uh we're already either uh sold out or coming damn close to i think we sold out austin man you know just thank you austin yeah when we got the like in like 12 hours i don't even want it was like a thousand seats so like you guys are just wonderful so thank you guys it's pretty fucking great you guys are awesome and yeah austin's uh sold out watched in dc sold out uh and the other shows that we got and uh chicago is sold out as well can and a special note about chicago yes we did is a live taping it is going to be a special night i'm really really excited it's a far for we're putting together our own special we're shooting in chicago so calm and be crazy with us it's going to be a lot of fun that's going to be that's going to be a very unique

experience yes that show is going to be great and if you're there you're going to be able to see the behind the scenes of filmita special i'm not sure how this show maybe maybe starts and stops or something i don't really know but we're going to have a great time with y'all yeah it's going to be great we're going to figure it out yeah and we got two other shows uh we're going to be coming to dallas and we're going to be coming to oklahoma city all right uh but those two shows those shows are going to sell out like both the austin and chicago and dc have already sold out uh so dallas and oklahoma city are absolutely going to sell it as well so do not sit on this get your ticket as soon as you possibly fucking can and we cannot wait can't wait to come home can't come back texas

i it's going to be awesome i can't fucking wait to be back in texas i have a couple of thank yous i just want to say like i have to catch up to the thank yous i should give of stuff because people have sent us crazy shit in the mail and now we're we're organizing all of it i want people to know that we we are so touched when people send things to us it's kind of overwhelming but two people will just immediately say thank you to is at tomer kosher which is uh for tomer kosher beef sticks honestly very tasty yeah we just saw you eating one i just ate one and michelle duggan at heartbeast tattoo sent me a beautiful print of all of us in a heronimus bosh style oh cool setting which is pretty fucking righteous that's so sweet we absolutely appreciate everything one more thing

this is a big announcement side stories will be presenting this year's listener pastas so if you are a person that is right creepy pasta or wants to write a creepy pasta so we can share some icky spooky fucking horseshit for everybody on our network it's a please submit to side stories lpotl at gmail.com that is officially the new side stories email all right so you could email that and then we're going to read your your stories live and make them spooky make them spooky but also remember make them short be be brief remember something is not finished when there's nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away there's one word i got to say for that wonderful yeah and if claud wilson is out there send us another story i hadn't heard from you in a

while and a long time i haven't heard from claud no long ass time claud's claud's a good dude you always write and simon too if you're listening so where are they where are they some of our some of our old listener pasta mainstays guys send us on some stuff all right everyone creepy man all right everyone hail yourselves hail satan and i mean truly hail satan the lamp light give it the the people that are the giving us the the the illuminating knowledge that is the people that is the real saint that real idea of eluciferate honesty the jollo steen of satanists and they'll gain everyone magustalations tell me if you fucking want your life to be good i don't know if that's gonna work yeah that's a little culty yeah it's a little sorry i'm sorry honestly i'm sorry what so far