Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 337: The West Memphis Three Part III - The Trials

Episode Date: October 20, 2018

It's conclusion time this week as we cover the trials of Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols, and Jason Baldwin, along with all of the infuriating judgements and insane experts that come along with them, plus the aftermath and their eventual path to freedom. 

Hey there, Ben Kissel here for Last Podcast Network. I want to tell you about my show A. Blinken's Top At. For more than nine years, Marcus and I have strived to present you with the most accurate and honest political podcast out there. In these turbulent times, it's our intention to unite the country with impassioned debate that reaches out to the rational Americans who find their voices more muffled every day. Every week I use my political science background, my experience running for office, along with my lifelong passion to stand up for the downtrodden, the wrongfully accused, and the invisible

man and woman to bring you news like you haven't heard before. Let's face it, traditional news has failed us. We promise to always tell you the truth the best we see it, and I personally guarantee to not be swayed by hyper-partisanship but be guided by facts. To listen, search A. Blinken's Top At on any podcast platform or go to lastpodcastnetwork.com and find it under shows. Hail yourselves, everyone. Now back to last podcast on the left.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. Why? Love your glades. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Are we going to do the congratulations?

Here we are. All right. Well, I want to say last weekend we had the honor and the privilege to go to Henry Zabrowski and Natalie Jean's wedding, I think the official name is now Henry and Natalie Zabrowski. Legally. Legally. I can't believe someone took your last name. You're a very lucky man, congratulations.

For me, Marcus, the whole LPN family and our fans across the world, congratulations, buddy. You nailed it and the wedding could not have been more perfect. That is incredibly nice of you to say. Thank you. Hail Satan. Thank you for the support that everyone's given me. All the listeners. I've got a lot of nice messages.

It's been really wonderful. I will say there is nothing as, I'm going to use the term boner killing as reading about West Memphis 3. Reading devil's not at a pool. Yes. Why did you do this on your honeymoon? We got work to do. Oh my gosh.

We got a whole show to do. And so I'm sitting there reading it. It's just like miscarriages of justice. I'm yelling at the book, Nat's there with her margarita and like sunglasses on being like, are you yelling at space again? I was like, you married. And then a DJ is like, we're celebrating a honeymoon, could Henry and Natalie Zabrowski come to the dance floor?

Miscarriage of justice. Okay. They can actually stay where they are. I did know this partially did this to help own Halloween and that's kind of what I want to do. It's being a part of it. Now, October, we can have a flagrante of celebrities. Oh my goodness.

Absolutely. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, everyone. I am Ben Kissel with Marcus Parks and we have the recently married Mr. Henry Zabrowski. Hey, man. Can you hear that? Can you hear those clumps? Uh-huh. Stallings in the stable.

Ah, I see. What's he gonna do now, man? But guess what, man? I still get it to grass every once in a while, stick my head through the fence. I don't know what any of that means, but I like it. All right. We are on to part three of the West Memphis three and this is going to be, it's going to be difficult to listen to as Henry alluded to when it comes to miscarriage of justice.

Yes. This is the conclusion. This is when this entire trial wraps up. So when you were out there celebrating at Halloween parties and trick-or-treating with your children. Right. Some people are not. Some people are on death row.

Did that ruin your time? Honestly, I think about it far too much because all I do is listen to Johnny Cash speak sing and it's usually about people on death row and then this story combined with that. That's all I think about. So as far as Jesse Miss Kelly's attorney Dan Stidham was concerned, the largest battle of Jesse's trial was lost before the trial even began. See Stidham had done his damnedest to keep Jesse's confession out of court, but he had failed miserably.

See as far as Dan Stidham knew, that confession was the only piece of evidence that the prosecution had on his client and for the most part, Dan was right. But concerning hearsay and bullshit, the prosecution came loaded. They had wagon loads of hearsay and bullshit. Yes. So when your defense attorney looks at you at the end of a trial and says, well, did my damnedest, that doesn't mean that you're walking home that night. When your defense attorney says, well, we sullied it.

We landed her in the harbor. Then you're like, well, the harbor is just life sentence without parole. Yeah. Yeah. Landed it. Blame the geese. See even though the cops had the confession, what they didn't have was an actual motive for Jesse being present at the murders.

Jesse said his part wasn't running and grabbing one of the boys, but he never said why he was there in the first place. So in order to wrap up motive, prosecuting attorney John Fogelman brought in Arkansas's best secret agent waitress, Vicki Hutchison. Great. It's gonna be a regular motto whore. Yeah. You know what that means?

Yeah. You know what, cigarettes make sure I don't fill out these jean shorts. Hey, all right. Not bad. You know, your Vicki Hutchison is suspiciously close to your Manson. Hey. You know, what can you do? Every artist has one story to tell.

Right, right. I think you just have the same voice for everyone with a flat butt. Yes. Yes. Interesting. It's an interesting, acting approach. It's true. It's true.

And Vicki Hutchison coming in as if just leading the cops to Jesse wasn't bad enough. She took the stand at his trial and danced on his grave. Vicki gave testimony on the S-bot about how Damien had picked her up with Jesse in the back seat, how they'd gone to a place where there were 10 or as many as 15 people. And then she left, leaving Jesse behind. And that was it for Vicki. I actually read the transcript of her testimony, and it must have taken about, I don't know, five minutes for both her testimony and the cross-examination.

All the prosecution had to do to scare this jury was mention Damien, allude to witchcraft, and say a goofy word that they didn't know, S-bot. Actually, that's also how Sephora sells a lot of their stuff, because I go there with Natalie. And all you needed to do was get a woman on there that looked like that kind of very intense lured makeup that's now happening, kind of that arcane sort of like future clown, as you know what I would put it, but like sexy. And then she would be like, this is S-bot mask, it surely peeled the ears off of your

brows. And all of the juries with the women on the jury would be like, aw. As far as actual forensics went, it had everything to do with Damien and Jason and absolutely nothing to do with Jesse. Microscopic fibers have been found on the victim's clothes that were quote-unquote microscopically similar to items found in Damien and Jason's house. And remember, this is Jesse's trial. The one at Damien's house was a green polyester blouse, while the one that matched to Jason

was from a red ladies' bathrobe. So unless these boys committed a triple murder wearing their mother's clothes, it didn't make much sense to bring this into trial. How terrifying would that have been if it was just Damien with the polyester blouse on being like, you never do the dishes on time, Damien, smash. You never take the trash out when I ask Damien, smash. Like fucking psycho. Yes, like that creepy character from that Snickers commercial where all the boys are

dressed up like the older woman, have you seen that commercial? No. It's truly traumatizing. I'm not sure how it got past the Snickers censors. We spent some time at the Dalai Museum this weekend and one thing that's very interesting is that you could see the direct line from Salvador Ali's commercial approach to surrealism and how it leads to modern day commercial advertisements. No kidding.

Yeah. Skittles. Old spice. See? I love it. Honestly, Marshawn Lynch made Skittles amazing for everyone, so I always like them. About the fibers, the prosecution screamed secondary transfer, meaning the fibers had gone from the blouse and robe to Damien and Jason, then finally to the close of the victims,

which is a pretty intense fucking journey. Okay. But it can happen. It can happen. But besides just that, macroscopically similar means just that, similar. These fibers weren't even close to a perfect match. All this means was that all these families bought blouses and bathrobes from the same Walmart.

Right. I don't even think this town had a Walmart. I think we're talking. Yeah. It was right across the bridge from actual Memphis. That's why it's called West Memphis is because it's right across the bridge from Memphis, Tennessee. And so they had the Walmart in Memphis, Tennessee.

Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. But I'm sure they had a Super Walmart. Oh, I don't think Super Walmarts are even around that we can't read with you. I don't know. We don't know for certain. But it's like the way they marketed Bushwick as East Williamsburg since all of us deep,

deep into Brooklyn. Well, anyways, the fibers, they didn't even need to come from the same items. Those kinds of fibers were used in a thousand different pieces of clothing. But the most glaring thing here is neither the green nor the red fibers. The most glaring thing here is that none of this had anything to do with Jesse. This is all about Damien and Jason. And yet it is being used in Jesse's trial because of the confession, right? Because they had nothing whatsoever on Jesse himself.

And again, as we went into on the last episode, watch the footage of the confession, listen to it. They led him down the entire path. They created the story for him. So when we say confession, put those little air quotes over it. It's mostly if you read the Devil's Knot because if you listen to the recorded testimony, it is the 30, 30 some odd minutes of after they had drilled him for hours. So when you hear him, he has a stumbly story put together, but you don't hear the five

other confessions that he's done around that first major confession that you see him change details. You don't. We don't see the pre convention. We don't see all of that talk. The hours of them piecing the story together with him, essentially leading him on. And this may be edited out or maybe not edited out, but can you say grilled instead of drilled him for hours?

Because I was just, I, it really took me to a place that I didn't want to go to. It's grilled. Grilled. I tell you what, because if you go stumbling around in some of these like hotel on demand stuff, never click on the, never click on the title, Jesse's confession, because it is graphic. All right, Mike. I did this.

I'm sorry. Well, Fogelman's last plan witness was going to be yet another Damien centric testimony, but it didn't pan out because it was found out once again that the witness had been 100% lion. Before the trial, a teenager named William Jones had told his mother that Damien had gotten drunk after the murders and had bragged that he'd raped the three boys and killed him with a knife. I tell you what, you don't brag about that.

You brag about catching a four foot bass. Not surprisingly, the mother bundled him up in their car, drove him straight to the police station and made him film a statement and was though William was just trying to sound cool in front of his mom. Also 35 K hung over all of these people's heads. It's still that money driving them because these, these poor people, it's their, they're in desperate shape. Yeah.

So they, I mean, like, I feel like that's a factor that's like looked over quite a bit where it's just being like, that money is like a gigantic telltale heart. Yep. Now Damien hadn't told this kid anything and by the time William had gotten to the station, he didn't want to fess up to his mom that he was lying. So he just went along with it and he kept up the facade until it was just about time for him to testify before he finally admitted to lying. He didn't want to get in trouble.

He didn't want to get in trouble. That's, that's all it was. So the last person the prosecution brought to the stand was local witch hunter, Jerry Driver. There for the sole purpose of saying he'd seen the boys walking around together a couple of times. You know, he shows up looking like Max von Sydow from the exorcist with his full demon hunter regalia and a crossbow anointed with holy water and being like, does anybody need

holy water? I have extra here in these high sea packets. I definitely picture a Van Helsing like character for sure. Well, Driver said that he had first seen the three of them walking around together, quote unquote, around November 15th, 1992, and that they were all wearing long black coats and carrying quote unquote, staffs. Wonderful. Walking sticks. But he cut, but he made sure in the testimony to say staffs to make sure to give it that

extra little occult edge. You know, did anyone ever stop to ask, why are you like stalking three teenage boys? Like, it seems to me like he's the real creepy one here. Mm hmm. Well, yes. Well, you know, he was working into the name of Jesus Christ, the almighty power of our Lord. He had jurisdiction to go anywhere except backstage at Disney World.

That's very, very tight. Well, you learned that on your honeymoon. And apparently Jesus Christ loves Oreo Speedwagon because I can imagine he blasted a lot of that while hunting these children. Oh my God, him just do it, not roll with the changes. Who's to roll with the changes? That's a good song too, though. Who did roll with the change? I can't remember who did roll with the change.

Was that Eagles? That's Eagles. Are we having another old man corner? But good. Oh, man, these kids are just walking around and he's, man, I could just see how proud he is. Oh, totally. In court, like sauntering in. Yeah.

And then he said that he had seen them together, quote, unquote, after that, but didn't elaborate any further. His testimony was also ridiculously short in and out. So he saw them walking and then he saw them after that. Yeah. That's the testimony? He saw them walking together with staffs. Don't forget, they were all wearing black, they were all wearing long black coats.

They had staffs and then he saw them again after that. Okay. You know, if you listen to our Necromancy episode, staffs are easy to acquire. Sure. You go to them at the time, Spencers was like, you could go to, they had that station at every poor, poor mall. Yeah. At least had one, maybe two Spencers.

Oh my gosh. I was just up at the Spencers recently in Illinois and it's incredible. Yeah. I think I mentioned that already. I don't think you did. I didn't mention that. You didn't mention that you went to Spencers in Illinois. I went to Spencers gifts and they still had that naughty section in the way, way back

and they still got the same shirts, the Marilyn Manson shirts, Snoop Dogg shirts. It was like being in the 1990s, I just felt right at home. Is that your idea of romance with Brooke where you sit and you just press the little ball and you make the big fat man's pants fall down? And you look at shot glasses that say, I might be over 40 but I'm still flirty. So along with the confession, what I just said, that's all that the prosecution had. All the stuff that we just mentioned, that's all the prosecution had. And again, this is Jesse's trial.

This is Jesse's trial. Yeah. And as far as what the defense had, the cards were stacked against them before the trial even began. I mean, first of all, these guys were in way over their heads and they absolutely admit to that. They were young and experienced on a national stage and as we said, stymied by the judge at every turn.

Yeah. I have a really hard time understanding the judges, where he's coming from. I don't know, I don't really understand his perspective. The devil's not plays it out a little bit, but it seemed like he got a pretty intense hard on for Damien Eccles early and they don't really directly, there's no quotes from him, but is it all just because of his behavior, because of the way that he acted towards the victim's family and the way that he acted in court? And he's a hyper-religious guy, which is so common that completely corrupts the entire

justice system. He's one of the most biased judges. He's like Roy Moore, demanding the Ten Commandments be allowed in the courtroom still. Yeah. I mean, I think it does have a lot to do with him just looking at Damien and saying, that kid needs to die or that kid needs to go away forever, whatever I can do to help put these kids away. I'm going to do it.

Just for example, let's just talk a little bit about what was allowed and what wasn't allowed in Jesse's trial. So the defense tried bringing in Warren Holmes, who was the guy that pegged all the polygraphs that Durham had taken as total bullshit. But the jury didn't get to hear him, because the judge didn't think that his testimony was pertinent. But it's not up to, is it up to the judge to decide that? Yes.

It's absolutely up to the judge to decide what the jury gets to hear. I mean, that's part of the whole point of the judge, is to decide what the jury gets to hear and what the jury doesn't get to hear. But also, you have one side saying the polygraph is the most important thing in the world, and then you have the other side saying it doesn't matter at all. And then all of a sudden, you're in a different alleyway of thought of two people yelling about these tests, which is kind of, I guess, what legal teams want. They want everybody lost in the fucking details.

But it seems like no one gave a shit about the polygraph tests. They just glad that they were just happy they heard a confession. Yeah, you kind of need that. So you have a prosecution and a defense. Yeah. You know? And the same thing happened with an expert on false confessions, because Stidham, he could say that Jesse's confession was coerced, but he couldn't get an expert to support that

conclusion because that would require psychology. And if you'll remember, Judge David Burnett didn't believe psychology had any place in the courtroom. Yeah, and it certainly has no place in relationships either. I agree. So in other words, Stidham and his partner, Crow, had nothing besides a few alibi stories that the prosecution quickly tore apart because there was no concrete proof that Jesse was where Jesse's defenders said he was.

I will say in defense of Crow, he's great on Mystery Science 3000, a really funny guy, one of the better gumball machine actors out there. That's Tom Servo. Yes, whatever. God damn it, Giselle. You know, Crow has like a show on this network, right? I know. Of course I know.

You're in trouble all the time. A horrible owner, out of bed business owner. Movie Sound with the Mads, go check it out. Do I need to start taking pictures of where I am like five times a day and just setting them in a big mass text to like prove that I am at places? I think that's what Instagram is for, so I think you're all right. Instagram, I never thought of it as an alibi machine. Of course it is.

Wow, that's a great idea. It should have been called alibi machine. You know what, instead of when Crow were able to put forward, what little they were able to put forward, I mean, when the verdict came after only a day of deliberations, the only person surprised here was Jesse Miss Kelly. He was found guilty of the first degree murder of Michael Moore and the guilty of second degree murder in the cases of Stevie Branch and Christopher Byers. Jesse was sentenced to life in prison without parole along with an extra 40 years for the

two second degree murder verdicts. And it was a first degree for Michael Moore because that's the kid he confessed that he brought back, right? Yes, that's the kid that he brought back because Jesse never said that he killed any of the kids. But because he went and brought Michael Moore back, that's why he got a first degree murder charge on that one. And this is when you really saw the first vitriol from the Byers family in the documentary

where you see Mrs. Byers, her hatred must have been, I mean, what a haunted looking woman. And then Mark Byers, who ends up being the whole center of the second Paradise Lost documentary, his pontificating was pretty rough. It was. And it was a little theatrical and slightly over the top, makes you think the director may have prompted a little bit of that activity. But you can only imagine that their hatred form is matched by their grief. You know, I feel so...

I have so much sympathy for the family. Oh, they're all fucked up. I mean, they must have been obviously devastated. And as Jesse Ms. Kelly was being taken from court to prison, little switch just flipped in his brain and he confessed yet again using a brand new story, all to the cops who were driving him there. Now, there's a lot of speculation as to why Jesse confessed yet again. Personally, I think it's because someone pretty much immediately told him after the

verdict that if he testified against Jason and Damien, then his sentence will be reduced, which is true because Burnett had said, like, I'm not going to pass down final judgment until Damien and Jason's trial begins. It was all set up for this. It was all set up to get him to flip because they needed him to flip in order to have anything on Damien and Jason. It's not an accident that they took someone who did have some issues mentally and they isolated him in his own trial.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And going into the verdict, like I said, like Jesse was surprised. He thought that he was going to be all right because all they had was the confession and Jesse knew that the confession was a lie. So he's like, yeah, that's all they got. Like when the prosecution arrested, he's like, oh, shit, that's all they got. I'll be out of here.

Let's wrap this thing up. Right. And also, if you'll remember, like Jesse never did have too tired of a grasp on the who, who with the criminal justice system. He didn't even know what a lawyer was. Right, right, right. No, he didn't have a lot of grasp on a lot of shit. Yeah.

He's a sweet boy, scrappy, and like he was a hardcore dude, but he got a short man's attitude, but there was no reason, oh man. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think that that's a massive red flag that probably should have stopped the trial right away when he doesn't know what a lawyer is. Yeah. I mean, I thought you were going to say it was because he was five foot two. No.

So I think after the verdict, Jesse talked to the first law enforcement officials he was alone with. And those were the cops who were driving him to prison. And I think he hoped that the faster he talked, the faster this whole nightmare would be over and he could finally go home just like the cops had told him the night he was arrested. But his story kept getting more badass every single time he told it. Yeah. And just like this new confession, completely different story from any of the ones that

have come before. And again, this one was rife with misinformation and inconsistencies. This new confession said that Jesse had been drinking a bottle of Evan Williams bought by Vicki Hutchison when he ran into Damien and Jason. Evil Evan make you do dastardly things. Evan Williams, as far as the cheaper Whiskies go, it's one of the better ones. It really is. Weird.

Weird that you think that. I don't think that's, it's a terrible whiskey. Oh my, there's much Canadian mist. Yeah. I'm on Ben's side. Oh, Canadian, Canadian mist is the worst. My goodness. And so after the three boys met up, they smoked a couple of joints to the dome and proceeded

to get drunk in Robin Hood Hills. Hell yeah, it's at the devil place. And after getting a good buzz, they saw the three little boys off in the distance and decided to mess around with them a little bit. So Damien took the lead, popped out from behind a tree and grabbed Michael. And when the other two boys attacked Damien, Jason and Jesse jumped out and started beating the boys with sticks until they were unconscious and then things got out of hand. Jesse said Damien and Jason took turns raping the boys, then Jason castrated buyers with

a locking knife, which of course sent blood gushing everywhere. After that, Jesse said he left with his whiskey bottle and broke it in disgust on a cement slope near a highway overpass on his way home. That's his second story. Right. So that's his second story. I tell you what. That's where they should have had him right there.

They know there's no way a 16-year-old would have smashed an entire handle of Evan Williams. If you've got a hold of that, but honestly, again, we'll get deeper into the occult testimony and all of the bullshit they tried to surround Satan with and the idea of magic ritual. None of this has anything to do with magic ritual. No. He's just going so over the top that it's got to be real in the minds of the prosecution. He did this. There's a couple of things here.

He had to put himself at the scene because the other stories, he would say up to a point and then he said, and then I ran home and I ran home immediately because he kept trying to get himself out of it by like setting him up. He's Ross Perot. What? Well, he's just, he's got a very high voice and he does, and I told him, get him boys and I not ran home as soon as I could and he did that again and again until finally he knew he had to say he saw the whole thing and said that they did it.

He had nothing to do with it and that's, so it ramped up. So following this confession, Dan Sidham ran and told prosecuting attorney John Fogelman all about it. So Fogelman went down to the overpass and questioned, lo and behold, he found a broken ever Williams bottle. Oh. The place where all the truckers hang out? No way.

Look, that's crazy. That would never be there. Let's see. What do we got here? We got some, we got some water bottles full of piss. More of those. We got some empty Snickers wrappers, broken Evan Williams bottle. What was that last one?

Now to the guilters, the fact that Fogelman found a broken whiskey bottle underneath an overpass near one of the busiest interstates in America is proof positive that this was the real confession of Jesse Miss Kelly. I was just snooping around this ashtray and I saw so many cigarette butts. Cigarette butts and an ashtray. And put this man in a death row chair. But even if we set aside the fact that they're so excited about an old broken bottle of cheap whiskey underneath an overpass in Arkansas, let's take a look at some of the other problems

with the story. First, the knife doesn't match the prosecution story. If buyers was castrated by a locking knife, as Jesse just said, then the knife found in the lake couldn't have been the weapon used because that was a combat knife. Second, there was almost no blood at the murder scene, which goes against what Jesse said. In fact, the boys didn't even have mosquito bites, despite the fact that the woods were so thick with mosquitoes the night of the murder that the search had to be called off. And what's interesting is that, but I will say it's interesting that there was no trails

in and out to drop them off. This is a part of the weird area where piecing together these murders are impossible. There are gaps in information that like all of this is going to be conjecture from either side. We have no clue how the hell they got there. It doesn't seem like they were murdered there. If we were going to really believe that they were castrated and they were cut up with knives and they were tortured, you'd think that there would be some remnants of it and then that

the cleaning then would also be obvious, which it wasn't. And I have to say this about mosquitoes. There's only one defense for mosquitoes. Do you know what it is? Dying. No. They protect the rainforest. Because you can't inhabit it because it's so filled, parts of it because it's so filled

with mosquitoes. So in a way they do some good stuff. One good thing. Wow. Very fern gully of you, Kissel. We'll talk about mosquitoes a little bit later on in this episode also. And third, and this is probably the most important part, the boys had not been raped in any way whatsoever.

Now I'm terribly sorry for going into this, but when a person dies, the normal muscle tension in a body relaxes and that goes for the anus as well. Don't ask him how he knows. I don't want to look at the books. I don't want to see your websites. I don't want to find out from Carolina. I don't want to know. Can we just plow through this information please?

Sure. I mean, everyone's anus dilates when they die. I love that kid's book. I love it. I don't. Can we just? My goodness. It's just a fact.

That's a cold fact of death. That just happens. Right. Most of us shit ourselves when we die. Then when you add damage from being submerged in water for up to 18 hours, things start looking pretty gnarly back there. And even though the supposed rape of the boys became a central part of the narrative, nobody not even the incompetent medical examiner saw any evidence of rape whatsoever.

And when Jesse was confronted with this, he said, oh yeah, they's going to do it, but then they didn't. Okay. I will say this when you poop yourself after death. I'm going to call that my final joke and I'm just going to have to die with a smile on my face. I'm just slowly shooting up into a thumbs up and like, the last noises you make. And the thing was, the prosecution was completely ready to take this new story to Damien and

Jason's trial. And Jesse was ready to go too because as far as he was concerned, it wasn't just his life on the line here. The authorities have been telling him that if he didn't testify against Jason and Damien, they were going to get set loose. And if they got out, the first person they would visit would be Jesse's girlfriend Susie and they were going to get her. God, it's so corrupt.

But what convinced Jesse to stay quiet wasn't any sort of threat at all. It was actually his father. And this is actually, I mean, a little hokey. Okay. Jesse, Ms. Kelly Sr. told his son that if he lied, he'd have to live with that for the rest of his life. But if he told the truth, if he ever did get out, his name would be clear and he could live a decent, honest life.

So the day before Jason and Damien's trial was set to begin, Jesse, Ms. Kelly withdrew his agreement to testify and he told the man to fuck off. All right. But that didn't mean the prosecution didn't have anything at all on Damien and Jason. It's just that they had very little. The confession had already leaked. Everybody already knew that it had happened. So this idea that we're going to delete it from these people's minds, we're not Tommy

Lee Jones, hiding all of the evidences of whatever crimes he's done over the years. From the machine that they gave him during the filming of Men in Black. Men in Black. Yes. Absolutely. And in a small town like this, there's no way you don't get a polluted jury pool. There's no way. Yeah.

Yeah. So the prosecution, they had the aforementioned fibers. They had the people who had seen a muddy Damien the night of the murders. They had the softball confessions. They had a surprise witness and they had the knife along with the medical examiner's testimony. And Mr. Bojangles was still in town giving people five dollar coupons. Really? In order to get a full biscuit meal, it's only biscuits.

And at the Mr. Bojangles biscuit meal, it is six biscuits all held together by cheese. I love that for five bucks. Yeah, that sounds amazing. Six biscuits for five bucks? You got a customer for life, sir. I'm moving to West Memphis, I'll see you later. I know the got-get by Mr. Bojangles. And so for the people who are more skeptical, I understand that softball confession was

so stupid. So dumb. There were a lot of dumb mistakes that Damien Eggles made. Well, that's the thing, is that the prosecution's gamble was that the biggest piece of evidence for both Damien and Jason's guilt was sitting in the courtroom right there with them the entire time. They figured as far as the jury was concerned, they really didn't need much more than just Damien himself.

The devil's not really spells out how much people did not like Damien. Right. People did not like Damien. He came off really, really badly. It basically helped organize an entire field of people that with the first things that they had heard that these kids were murdered, the first person they thought of was Damien. All of these guys named Damien because they didn't like him. He thought he was better than all of them.

He dressed in black even though he only dressed in black because it started because a girl told him he looked good in black. Right. And so now I can feel like the same bias is still playing out. I think a lot of the guilters out there who believe that they are guilty, a lot of it is just that you don't like Damien Eggles and you want a solution to the problem. You want the killer to have been caught. And Damien Eggles just looks like the guy that would be delivered to you if you were

to make a sim of the person that murdered these boys. And that was by Damien's design. He didn't want to be liked. As all of us grew up in towns, or not so much you, Henry, but Marcus and I grown up in small towns, you want to get out. Yeah. And the only way that you can get out is if you actively don't like the place. Yeah.

So you kind of have to do that to motivate you to go out to New York or wherever you want to move to. Yeah. You get from the city that doesn't sleep. Yeah. Subways are my teachers. And the streets were my books. Honestly, no.

We were just in the town where you went to high school. Yeah. Real mean streets of St. Pete out there. I will say. Palm Harbor is different. St. Pete's is a nice sleepy town. Yeah. The worst I saw was like a scabby dude at a fucking subway.

And that was it. No. High school, that was a different story. The waves were my lovers. And my lovers were sea turtles. St. Pete's is actually such a nice town. I'm hanging out with Kevin Barnett from Round Table of Gentlemen. Thanks for everyone who's listening to the backlog on that.

Apologies for some things that were said, I'm sure. But people seem to like it. We walk into a bar. Former Governor Charlie Christ is just right there. Amazing. So that just shows you what kind of town St. Pete is. Not exactly a danger zone. Well, during this entire time, between the interval, the arrest and the trial, Damien

was not doing well. No. He tried overdosing on antidepressants. He tried starving himself to death. And he was only sleeping about two hours a night. And on top of all this, Damien's girlfriend had been pregnant this whole time. And she'd given birth right before the trial began. So Damien, he's trying to plant a wedding on top of his murder trial.

And were you trying to plan a wedding? Just saying all of that. Like, I just got like a twitch in my fucking eyebrow. Yeah, you tried to plan a wedding, and I mean, all we're working on is the podcast. Can you imagine a murder trial? I mean, we have all the projects in play. Yes, I know. But for the sake of stuff going on, it's not as much as a death row trial, is all I'm

saying. No, of course not. But also, the thing is, the directors of Paradise Lost also set up that whole media brunch where he held the baby, and he did all of this. There's many things that kind of also happen in there that they try to flip it a little bit, try to make things like cool look Damien's with the kid, but it ended up like horrifying everybody. Yeah, it's like instead of saying like, oh, look, look how sweet he is with his child.

It's more like, get that fucking child away from that monster. Yes, yes. You know, like, it didn't, it did not work at all. It backfired. And the horrible thing was, that was the first time he'd ever held his child. Yeah, no, it's fucked. The whole thing's fucked. His whole life got fucked horribly because of goth circumstances.

Meanwhile, Jason, he was just trying to keep his head down, ducking numerous efforts by the DA to testify against Damien. Prosecution approached him before the trial and said, look, we'll give you 40 years if you testify against Damien right now. Jason said, no, because it's a lie, and it's not the right thing to do. Then during the trial, they approached him again, saying they'd give him a deal that would have him out in 10 years. Which is why they paired their trials together.

Again, all of this was about getting Damien eckles. They put them together to put heat on Jason to say, see, now you're being treated like a Satanist, too. All of the evidence that can be used on Damien can be used on you, too, because it is both of your trial. So why don't you pop yourself out of it with a fun little side quest trial by flipping on Damien, but Jason is like the most impregnable of all of them. Yeah.

But his integrity is, I don't know if I would have it. Well, this is not the first time he saves the day either, and I'm sure we'll get into that. It really isn't. But, you know, Jason, like his lawyers, they tried to get him to take it. But to this, Jason, I mean, he said he couldn't do it, even if they said they'd let him go right that second. He said it's a lie.

It's not right. I can't do it. Right. And it wasn't just that Jason thought lying was wrong. He also thought that there was no way that he was going to get convicted. And the biggest irony of the case, Jason thought that there was no way that his God would let something like this happen. Right.

So contrary to what you might think, the prosecution didn't start the trial with the cult angle. Instead, they built up to it by emphasizing as much as possible just how brutal these murders really were in excruciating detail. And here, finally, is where we can properly address the assistant medical examiner in charge of this case, Dr. Frank Peretti. Oh, yeah, this guy, Regretti Peretti, is one of the worst of these group of clowns. Right. Definitely got nicknamed Spaghetti Peretti.

There's a lot of things that go with Peretti, so he probably had some problems in middle school. See, the first thing to know about this is how the position of medical examiner relates to the court in Arkansas. See, in the vast majority of the country, the medical examiner is an independent, impartial body. But in Arkansas, and this is one of the last states in the union where this is true, the medical examiner's office is an arm of the prosecution, meaning that someone who is supposed

to be totally objective actually works for the department whose sole job is to put people away. And so Lady Justice in Arkansas is doing yoga and just really bends to one side to stretch out. It's very interesting because I could see why. It's like a person that, you want justice to be brought, right? All of us believe in the idea that we want the Justice Department, the justice system, all that's supposed to make sure that things are fair and that those that have done crimes

get prosecuted for them and are put in jail. But if everything in your court system is built on just putting people in jail, it's like people deserve a defense. Say whatever you want about defense attorneys. I'll tell you what, with whatever I go down for whatever it is that the government pins on me. Taximates. I cannot wait.

Without a doubt. Taximates. Very easy. Very easy. Very easy. Very easy. We'll see what my money says in the Caymans. I'm certain they're having a wonderful time, Margaritas on the beach, but it's a part of

it's like, I hope I have somebody fighting for me. Of course. No matter what the fuck is happening. No, defense attorneys have saved a lot of lives. There's a lot of people who are innocent on death row. They estimate right now it's anywhere from 1% to 1.5% to 2% and that's a conservative estimate and if that is the case in prison, if just 1% of people are innocent, that's 200,000 people.

That shows the power of money and we'll see how the power of money ended up helping them once they were in jail by watching the staircase again and you see the kind of money that dude can just pour out for his defense and he's got like eight experts and all of these lawyers and they're making fucking produced videos and they're doing all, there's so much. That's the other part of this that's very unfair is the fact that they had no resources. Yeah, the idea and a public defender is not really reputable a lot of times which is quite unfortunate. These guys tried their hardest.

Yes. I mean they really did do their best but the second thing to know about the medical examiner position in Arkansas is that it does not need to be board certified. The test is only a formality and in the case of Dr. Frank Peretti, he'd already failed it twice by the time he testified in this trial and he had opted out of taking it a third time for quote unquote personal reasons. Oh, like I'm too dumb? Is that a personal reason to just opt out of something?

It's very personal. I hate science. I mean it just, I mean I don't know what happened. I woke up the other day, I realized I want to play the flute but I still have this job. You know, it turns out I'm actually a horrible driver, I'm gonna opt out of this driving test, I'll take my license, see you later. See Peretti, he was competent enough to muddle his way through like run-of-the-mill murder cases.

He was actually said that like his autopsy work itself was exquisite, it was just his conclusions that were all wrong. See Peretti had two jobs when it came to his testimony in the West Memphis 3 case, be as graphic and horrifying as possible when talking about the murders and showing pictures of the bodies and connect the knife found in the lake to the wounds on the victims. He said that the scratch-like wounds that the boy suffered could only have come from a knife with a serrated blade, dragged down their skin to inflict as much pain as possible. There were no clean cuts to be found like you'd see with a straight-edge knife until

you got down to the castration. Basically he made the boys out to be Cenobites. Yes. Yeah. And Fogelman doubled down on that, even going so far as to whack a grapefruit twice with the edge of the knife during his closing arguments and saying, look at that, just to drive the point home. Right.

I'll tell you what, all I see is breakfast. What do you see? I'll see the heads of boys just slashed at them. Yeah. Mary, you're fucked up. It's a strange day for the jury when they got little plastic plates and a little plastic fork before the prosecution makes their final case. In Peretti, he made sure to drive home the sexual angle as much as he could, neglecting

to say that in his professional opinion and in the opinion of three others that the boys were not sexually assaulted. He just made sure to say over and over again that the condition of the bodies could point towards that possibility. Okay. And all of Peretti's findings were backed up by a forensic textbook written by a guy named Vincent DeMeo. And Peretti even bragged on the stamp because he was on first name basis with this guy.

And he actually was. Yeah, man, I'm on first name basis with Bruce Springsteen. I call, I refer to him as Bruce all the time. I say, me and Bruce were hanging out, but maybe I was listening to him on my iPhone when drinking a bunch of Captain Morgan sitting on a park bench, but at the same time I was spending quality time with Bruce. Right. Right.

And if you're in Atlantic City, he's singing about it, you know? So literally he bragged, like I bragged about reading a book for the Pizza Hut book club bookit because he just read a book and it was just like, I read this one. Well, no, I wasn't ready. He's like, this is all the things that I'm telling you. I got all this from this textbook right here, this forensic textbook, like I am an expert. Look, look, I'm smart. I read a book.

I read this book and I got all this from this book and not only did I read this book, but I know the guy that wrote this book and he knows my name and I know his. I read Michael Jordan's biography and I swear to God, my layups got better. It's like if you committed a horrible crime in St. Pete during the wedding weekend and you said, me and Charlie Chris were hacking this woman. So when the documentary West of Memphis was being made, the filmmakers decided to go and actually speak with Vincent D'Ameo himself, the guy who wrote the textbook. They gave him all the autopsy reports and all the photos from the West Memphis 3 case and

after looking at him, D'Ameo surmised that Peretti had no fucking clue what he was talking about. Hey, D'Ameo, what are you saying? Me? Magnetic Peretti? You're wrong. You're talking about buddy. You're my buddy.

Come on, buddy. Well, D'Ameo said that there was nothing in the photos or the reports to indicate that any of the wounds were actually caused by a knife. He concluded that all of those cuts and some of the bruising was done post-mortem by animals. Okay. This is where some of my favorite parts of the entire documentary series are done is talking to the animal experts in the way they speak to and how they talk about animals and what they do to dead bodies because a part of it is that if you believe that they

use that serrated knife to slash horizontally down the bodies in a way that did not even truly break the skin, if you look at those injuries, you'd have to like, what is wrong with those people? That's not how you use that knife. Yeah. So here's where we're going to get into some of the very harsh realities of life and death in relation to our place in nature. See when a person dies in a wooded area, it isn't just flies and such that take charge.

All sorts of animals come around, from possums to cats to dogs, to raccoons, to couts, all kinds of shit, but these boys were found in the water and that particular area of Robinhood Hills had been known for years as Turtle City. And especially during that time of season. Yeah. It was turtle season. Yeah, May. May is when turtles are at their hungriest.

And I tell you what, there's nothing more fascinating than sitting watch the bustling city of Turtle City and that's me, Robert Turtles, an expert on turtles and what they mean to society and what they do to dead bodies because I tell you what, I love a turtle and I'll pet a turtle, but I won't want to be dead around a turtle because they do bad things to birds. I believe that in the documentary shows it. The man who loves turtles is quite fascinating. Oh, yeah.

The makers of West Memphis 3, they went and visited this absolutely out of his mind turtle breeder. Well, he wasn't out of his mind. I thought he was. No. Yeah. He was out of his mind. Okay.

I'm going to talk about what he actually does with the turtle. Yeah. Coach, he kept saying like, come here, come look, come look at what a turtle can do. It's like, turtle, they're vicious when it comes to turtle, oh, it's turtles eat their body. I'll show you. He ate it out of meat and the all of the documentaries are watching him, he sticks his hands to the water and just goes, oh, no, there's a person who works with him is holding a turtle,

the turtle, he has the turtle bite his arm and then the guy starts to bleed. He says, no, no, let it go. Yeah. I mean, he was he was a hero. He was trying. He's like, no, and then he was in the look and his face, he was like, he's like, yeah, He was on camera. Yeah turtle bifur camera He knew he was on camera

He was definitely toughen it up and then he compared we're gonna do it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely man now The thing is is that like I gotta be a little Suspect of all this because it's more look at that evidence, but look at that Honestly, but when the turtle breeder allowed a snapping turtle to bite down on his arm The wound the turtle left behind looked almost identical to the wounds seen on the boys. Yes Here's there's also other animal experts where there was this one guy I remember he's like you'd be surprised what animals do to a dead body a raccoon Well a raccoon will chew the eyes out of a child a dog. I will show you a dog

I will bring a dog out. I will get a corpse. Don't ask me how I'll get a corpse and I'll bring a dog in and show just how how much a feast a dog can make out of a corpse Oh cool great. Thank you And it is unfortunate to be a pig because they're the closest to the human body and they are always used in these experiments dead Of course, they get tested on quite a bit Yeah, and all the scratches on the boys that were supposedly made by the serrated edge of the knife Turtle claws turtle totally matched up But the most disturbing part which is actually somewhat of a comfort if you think about it was the castration

See a lot of scavengers they go after the fleshiest parts of the body first like the lips cheeks tips of nose and the ears For example, if you die alone in an apartment with a cat The corner is gonna find that these are the first places that your cat has chosen to eat Dogs will wait longer cats will immediately start chewing at your nose Although I did read a story recently where the cats did not eat the corpse and they must have been I don't know They were very nice cats. It must have been they must have been full And Stevie Branch Michael Moore and Christopher Byers They had wounds in every single one of these spots and concerning Christopher Byers

Dimeo determined that his worst wound was most likely done by a turtle But definitely postmortem. I want to point out as well all the squirrels in the forest They're just eating nuts squirrels never did nothing wrong to nobody. No love a squirrel No squirrels are absolutely among the animals that will eat a body Well, if there's not enough nuts a squirrel if you're dead for I'm gonna say 45 minutes kissle in an embankment Out in the middle by the to where the truckers go a squirrel is gonna be up your fucking asshole In a second looking for looking for for anything looking for your sweet sweet beer filled organs Yeah, honestly, I go to skinny Dennis quite regularly my favorite bar here in Williamsburg and I have a lot of peanuts

Yeah, so it might be a must be like this is an old country with a for squirrels to be like good You know Well this conclusion that animals were responsible for the vast majority of these boys injuries This wasn't just Dimeo's conclusion after Dimeo reported his findings Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh who were the producers of West of Memphis They used a big old chunk of their Lord of the Rings cash and hired six more forensic experts to look at the evidence as well And they all came to the same conclusion. Thank you Obviously this all came out after they'd already been convicted of these crimes

But it's very interesting to see again if they had had resources then. Oh, yeah I mean at the time of Damien and Damien and Jason's trial back in 94. I mean nobody cared enough nor did anybody have the kind of Money to do all that work. I mean there were no documentaries and Eddie Vedder He was battling ticket master at that time So he had no idea what the hell was going on and that time it was literally just the man named the ticket master That you could go to in front of stadiums and he would wrestle multi-mortar. You call me daughter I like wrestling down to the ground. Well, honestly, thank God for the celebrities getting involved in this case and Peter Jackson I mean, all of us are Lord of the Rings fans huge Lord of the Rings. I'll tell you a little bit with our ticket money

I love what they do. That's what we did. That's how we helped out. I don't know I have every one of you who saw any of the Lord of the Rings movies or you went and saw that terrible King Kong movie Or if you saw the Amazing Dead Alive way back in the day on VHS like we all did then you Contributed to the West Memphis threes defense. So now you don't have to do anything. Feel good Let's thank our celebrities because without them I mean, I don't know what we do if I didn't have Jennifer Lawrence describing to me what voting was I would just be shouting at the city hall. I would just be like, how do I how do I make a president? Yes

Well, if you want more information on voting abling its top hat has been covering the house and the Senate very exciting stuff very exciting But because nobody cared back then the bad lazy tunnel vision science One out because it was the story that the prosecution wanted from their medical examiner And god knows how many cases in arkansas over the decades have met the same fate so hard so so sad I mean that that when I finally realized that like what it means to have a medical examiner be a part of the prosecutor's Office and how these two how these people can form a narrative together like it's in a chill down my my spine It's such a conflict of interest. It's totally crazy But dr. Frank paredi was not even the most misleading person in the trial

That distinction laid with michael roy karson Carson was a gas-huffer with a head full of acid Who just happened to be in the same juvenile facility as jason baldwin in august of 1993 Who's essentially the bus driver from the simpsons? All right So karson testified under oath that jason had openly bragged about the murders Saying and this is a quote from michael karson's testimony Okay, shut up shut up shut up shut up dude shut up. Okay

He sucked the blood from the penis All right shut up man shut up And the scrum and he put the He put the balls in his mouth Yeah, dude. He did that dude. I didn't think we're being it. That's Accurate that's actually that's 100 accurate and that's really not that far off from what he actually sounded like in the trial

Exactly. He's like kind of he's kind of leaning back a little bit. Yeah. He sucked the blood for the penis and the scrum He put the balls in his mouth. Yes, and this is taken as 100 percent serious testimony. Yes, see michael He'd kept this supposed knowledge all to himself for five months It was only when his own legal troubles had started him out that he suddenly remembered that a suspect one of the biggest murder trials in his state's history He'd confess to him and say what you want about people who do a lot of acid or people who huff gas at any opportunity They can get they can hold a secret That is that's a certain that's for sure. Yeah, and when they asked Carson on the stand why it took so long for him to come forward He said it was because he saw on tv. How sad the families were he said quote

I have a soft heart. I couldn't take it. I'm kind of like spider-man that way Of course just like almost Everyone else whose entire career wouldn't be ruined if they admitted they had lied or were wrong about something in this case Michael Carson recanted completely He'd apparently heard about all the details from a counselor at juvie who knew all about the case This counselor had decided for whatever reason to make small talk with a gas huffer about it

So the counselor was just like okay now i'm the patient you're the counselor What do you want to know? I mean he again it's all of everybody is Everybody's just saying the same rumors to each other And building upon the stories and there's the the leaks coming out of the police department out of the prosecution Which at a point seems like it's on purpose. It does seem like they are Letting all this information go and they're building this gigantic trial I mean so it's because we saw with casey anthony right where it's like casey anthony it worked for her Because they figured out how to flip it in the room

Where it's like she'd already been where this was the exact opposite They came in with a total idea of that these boys were guilty already. Yeah, and this isn't even a leak at this point This is a full-on the dam is broken. I mean this is a flood Yeah, and of course like as soon as the counselor told this kid all this shit He immediately used it to his own advantage because the counselor told him five months after jason had already left And he's like, yeah, you remember jason Baldwin's here. Yeah. Yeah, this is everything that was going on in the case And then so this kid was like, hey, I know something about the case. You want come talk to me Oh, yeah, could you maybe make all those robbery charges go away?

Yes, they have leverage in this kitchen in this case The only leverage he has is this information and he just used it Yeah, and even though michael carson got his shit together and now of like Begs for forgiveness. He feels so fucking terrible because he was a fucked up kid He's huffing gas doing acid all the time. Do we know where the uh, where the Wm3 are at the forgiveness on this? I actually don't I have no idea. I have no idea Yeah, I have I have no idea where they stand on forgiveness as far as like this kid and vicki hutchison goes who also asked for forgiveness Yeah, uh, but the thing is about the testimony. Is it it gave the prosecution the specific

Blood and guts it needed to throw at the jury concerning damien and jason because now you had a kid that just said Jason told me that he had cut off the penis and sucked the blood from the penis And put the little boys testicles in his mouth. So now you have the medical examiner that said like, okay, this is How the boys died? Here's a picture of the boys. Here's the picture of the boys dead This is how they died. This is the knife that was used then you have this carson kid coming in and him saying It was jason sitting right there that told me that it was the two of them that done it So now those two things are together only thing that the prosecution needed now was Why right? Yep. What is the motive here?

And finally on the third week of the trial they rolled it out satanic cult behavior again Satanism is just about getting ugly men laid And hot women power over the world But that's what that's what it's for you're not going to this is it they don't Do this in ritual behavior. They don't they don't do they don't do this They don't suck the penis in the balls and a part of that is but they might suck the penis in the balls But not the blood from the penis in the balls

I don't know what they're doing in the balls in order to get the semen. Oh my goodness. All right, semen must be gotten either way Yes, okay Satanism is about the explicitly asked for consent Yeah, and it's the it's the horror show You are just rolling out all of these horrible fucking details That is what is keeping the jury on the ropes That is why they are now at any point willing to accept anything if they believe that these little boys These poor little boys have been murdered and castrated and left for dead in this ditch

And they were carved up with the knife and they're saying it like of course They're gonna believe that satan is involved that it's some kind of cult like you've now got them to a point Where they'll string up anybody and this narrative though. This has been going on for years in the country Some some people benefited such as kiss even though the most corporate band of all time Oh, yeah, somehow still was considered knights in satan service according to my mother Um, but that so this has been this is sort of a climax almost of the satanic panic movement It's a big part of it I mean and this was the prosecution's plan the entire time you show them all the horrible shit

And you have these people spend two weeks saying why why why who would do this? Why would they do this? Why why why? And their their minds are going and they've been getting fire and brimstone shit in their head for years And they think like well the only sort of person who could do this would be an absolute monster And then fulgerman comes in and says like guess what you're right They are monsters and now i'm going to show you how and the way they set this up when you watch the documentary You know usually the jury is supposed to go with Um, uh, if there's if there's a shadow of a doubt if you think one percent of their story might be

Wrong in a death penalty case you have to acquit I just feel like their brains were like if there is a one percent chance that this is real We gotta find him guilty. Yeah. Yes Now even though judge bernett had said he read a book on satanism in preparation for the trial He was quoted in court as saying quote Now, I don't know what an occult is. It sounds like something bad, but I'm not sure what it is It's an it's an instrument like an accordion. Um, uh, sir, I'll tell you what if they're playing it makes them gay And so the prosecution did their best to explain to both bernette and the jury quote unquote

What an occult is Starting with the cops who had first spoken with damien after the murders Fogelman asked one of them a one detective ridge. What kind of books damien read Ridge said that damien told him that he read anton levais and steven king And when fogelman asked if there was anything unusual about these types of books ridge said quote Anton levi is book of satanic rules and involvement Stephen king seems to be horror movies horror books. And if you're asking if I felt that was strange Yes, sir

I did and I should know because every morning I lick my deodorant just to see what my body tastes like So i'm a bit of an expert on the strain This is And and cars are talking in the books. I heard the cars are talking But can you imagine this in the car? Stephen king one of the most commercial authors? Yes, exactly Literally, this is like, um, who the hell made all those born Books, uh, I don't know. I don't know. I love them. What do you say in coons?

Dean coons I mean who cares it would be judging someone for the content that they consume is totally insane Well, what uh one of the jurors who eventually voted for guilt what uh, they said when they were talking doing the deliberations One of them actually wrote in big block letters up on the whiteboard. You are what you think Okay, that's the no The only thing they could have been able to rationally write is Stephen king does have problems ending the books So can we trust this child the stand was way too long his ideas are wonderful But his dialogue leaves something to be desired

Why what pray tale did he include wizard of oz as a part of the dark tower mythos? There's no reason for it. It is gilding the lily No, it does uh It's important to remember. Okay. I I just want to also keep riddering this like obviously These are our opinions and the stuff that we think of it's a things that we draw to Conclusion of upon reading and looking at this and try looking at all the things that play We are editorializing because it's our show But if you really think about how ridiculous this bullshit is

Oh, yeah, it just starts it just starts to make I've got a twitch like I'm getting a I get a twitch reading About it. Now. Mr. Kessel. Is it true you watched leprechaun one starring jennifer aniston leprechaun two Leprechaun when he went to los vegas and also leprechaun in space sir now no one even watched leprechaun in space But now you said you did And then after that they talked about all the stupid goth kid shit The damien had off-handedly told him all the shit about the power of the penis and such You know all the stuff that was grilled out of a miner in the front yard of his buddy's trailer without any sort of Warrior present right and the defense they argued all that should be totally inadmissible because the manner in which the information was obtained

Right, but judge bernette said that the police reports and the investigations were not the subject of this trial They kind of are though. What was a subject of the trial? You fucking oh, I wish I could slap your mouth What was a subject of the trial to judge bernette That was the phase of the moon Which was deemed fully admissible because on the night of the murders may 5th 1993 a full moon shined down on west mimphis arkansas So this conservative judge does not know what an occult is but is really into astrology

Here's the thing that was one of the main points of occult expert dale griffis phd Griffis was a self-proclaimed expert on the occult from tiffin, ohio Who was brought to the stand by the prosecution to give his opinion on whether or not? This was an occult slang remember We are also self-proclaimed experts on the occult and do you want us to be an expert witness for your trial? And in this case the phd stands for pretty hot and damning Hello, all right, come on. There it is. Wow. Wow. Are you are you hiring writers? Hey, no, no

And the reason why dale griffis had even heard of west mimphis was because a year earlier before the killings had even occurred Dale had gotten a call from a concerned citizen named jerry driver About some mean old kids carrying staffs down at the trailer park Griffis said that his experience included a 26-year career in law enforcement Of which i'm not throwing into doubt at all. He was in fact deputy chief of the tiffin police department And he did bother many people about the prevalence of occult crimes because you know how it isn't tiffin, ohio It's a hotbed of the meddling of satan and the fates of humankind Tiffin, ohio, we're the final battle of armaged

We'll take place. Yep But his main qualification in his mind was his doctoral degree from columbia pacific university columbia university columbia pacific university Oh, oh, okay, as well as his consulting practice about satanism. He was a satanism consultant Okay, and like what was that did he tell people what shade of black to wear? Like what is they what is a satanism consultant exactly? Honestly, it's better to have a red base black than a blue base black because you don't really because Black lights fuck with a blue base black

Well, the fact you know that all right, it doesn't matter. I'm a satanist consultant I am I have the same level Of expertise that he does Well, griff has he'd even written four books. He wrote the investigation manual for non-traditional groups A primer for law enforcement on non-traditional groups Runes glyphs and alphabets. Oh alzutra. Yeah, and the four faces of satan. Oh, what are those? confused It's all emojis. Oh, I see the crying laughing one

The frowning one and then the one that's all red and mad Thing is though Columbia Pacific University was a non accredited correspondence college that was shuttered by a court order in the year 2000 and is now represented visually on google by a picture of the founder with his cat. Hello. My name is patrick Uh, my name is patrick tomlton I am the director of columbia pacific university and this is my first phd student here mr. Muffins Who got a phd and making biscuits on my belly? That's actually tough for a cat to do

But still despite the many protestations of the defense Judge bernette allowed griffus to testify in the area of the occult and this is after bernette denied both A polygraph expert and a false confessions expert and jesse's trial because he didn't consider them pertinent Okay, so okay, so this guy he went got a degree from a university that's not accredited mail order mail order university What was the name of the guy who uh has who failed the test two times? Uh paredi paredi he failed the test two times and these are the only expert witnesses other than the person who loves gas and the waitress Yeah, yeah, it's unbelievable. Yeah You know you're talking about the dream team the dream team. Yeah

So fogelman started off by asking griffus if there was anything occult wise to the claim that jason had sucked the blood from the penis of One of the boys on may 5th during a full moon and griffus said Absolutely. Yeah. First of all may 5th is only a few days after may 1st, which is not only henry's birthday Oh, but it's also belting and it's also only a few more days after Varper just knocked and these are both occult holidays That sounded both mysterious and evil in the context of sucking blood from a little boy's penis It's not about doing that. It's about seeing girls and see through shirts and it's about dancing drunk in a field And again if it's a few days afterwards

It's not on the day So if it's not on the day the ritual does it make any fucking sense? Yeah, you would do a build-up to the full moon But mostly that is about your that's like a interpersonal life Forces waxing and waning. That's what you're supposed to do in corresponding to the moon Nothing to do with like again, but also what's the ritual for? I It seems like the satanic version of octoberfest. Yeah, you're correct. Okay, you'd be close to that. Yeah, thank you

Now here's what it's for It's for the blood Because griff has said the younger the individual the more pure and full of energy that the occult practitioner believed the blood to be So they probably drank it and maybe took some home to drink and bathe in as well And they did it for power But they did it while damien eckolds lived with his entire family in two rooms in a trailer He brought he bathed in the blood of a child. How is it? Yeah, it's too ridiculous to be true. Yeah And from there they went to how the boys were tied up and this right here that the henry is about to

Read and I want you to read this verbatim because I want people to know Exactly what this guy sounds like. This is griffus's expert occult opinion On why the boys were tied up the way they were and this is straight from the trial transcripts. All right I'm just an everyman. Let me see if I'm swayed Well, you you would you would look in such books as quote-unquote ceremonial magic by uh, uh C-c-c-crowley and uh then from working uh in uh with that and looking at the way the people were displayed You know there to me appeared to be No other reason for that type of position

verbatim Judge I just have to ask What the fuck? Can I say a piece from uh seems to be a construction site like some type of rod Or some kind of hinge some form of some port of screw Fell off the top of the car sucks aside and has seemed to um well that there and this and was and whom and where Launched itself into the center of my skull without killing me

Giving me powers of perception Well, I don't know what that means, but Stephen King cannot end a book Well, then they moved on to the ages of the boys Griffiths claimed that the fact that they were eight years old was significant in a magical sense And now what we're going to do we're going to do a bit of a back and forth between Griffiths and Damien's lawyer And this is again totally from the core transcripts. All right Okay, now I was eight a factor because that is a witch's number. What's the significance of eight? Okay

In uh in Crowley's in uh in crowd in Crowley's work. He discusses that uh sex before eight or You lose the magical power Uh sex before eight or lose magical power. Okay, so that if the victims were all eight years old Then that wouldn't be sex before eight correct I said say eight I'm sorry not nine eight eight or before verbatim these are just words

Honestly, I thought he was just going to tell the joke about seven eight nine but God, so the jury they're just they must eat it up. But are they how do you even eat that up? What is what is this word? It's just wacky words. You say Crowley you say blood you say eight you say witch you say magical And they know they don't understand it, but they don't need to understand it because Griffiths understands it and let's go get even further into that show about how much Griffith supposedly understands Because Griffiths went on to say that this belief about the sex before eight He said that it's shared by the oto whom we know as ordo templi orientus

But Griffiths didn't say ordo templi orientus He called him ordo temporis originus Which I think a guy went a little a little bit latin translating I think that means order of the beginning of time, which sounds super cool Sure, it just sounds like people that are early all the time Honestly, I don't like early people making me feel late for being on time But the thing is is that nobody has ever heard of ordo temporis originus because it doesn't exist Yeah, either either Griffiths didn't know what he was talking about or he knows about some super weird shit going on out there

That isn't written about anywhere on the internet except in transcripts of Griffiths's testimony So you mean to tell me that Griffiths is the pitchfork of the occult? Let me just open up my book of nerd Oto, don't find it. This is like an old-timey nerd alert bell instead of in silence. It's like Well, I actually I got a theory about all this See Griffiths he said during his testimony when he was defending his credentials that he spent quite a bit of time in San Francisco and such hanging out with occult groups. Oh my god. He just sucked up He did something with the man and then he woke up. Yes. Oh, I don't know. Oh, that witch got me again

I told that witch man to not let me suck his penis. I do not want to be hypnotized. I'm supposed to be home with my wife Well, Griffiths, he's not really what you call a hip dude You know, you could see this dude coming a fucking mile away and this is like late 70s early 80s occult san francisco Uh, most likely Griffiths was probably just everyone's favorite guy in the occult community to fuck around with I mean, I'm sure they just told him all sorts of crazy shit because they knew that he'd believe anything they told him. Sure. We like Bineries we like Opposites against each other what it's a part of the the occult thinking what's fun Is to have a guy like this square around that you can joke on or talk and have because in a way

Not only does it sort of solidify in a weird kind of backwards logic that I like playing with It solidifies the fact that I am smarter than this person who's supposed to be the arm of the law and all things pure I keep him here essentially as my plaything and I lie to him We all do because he's sitting there taking all these notes and we're just having a blast with him It's also strangely It balances me out. It makes me feel powerful knowing that I can dance circles around this guy Who's sitting in the middle of because 1980s occult san francisco was fucking balling I wish I was there for that shit. That sounds great. Um, the kids of that generation seem to be real fucked up

Yeah, yeah, I mean as far as what they told him like later on in his testimony. He name-checked a cult called crytos Uh, and he said that they removed testicles so they could get at semen and that makes no sense Yeah, that didn't make any sense at all. What are you gonna do? It's like removing the worker so you can get some good, uh, that's like removing the worker so you can make cars How is that even possible? Again, this mate, this belies some of my ignorance and I don't want to have the audience To lose faith in my expertise, but if you just got balls and you squeezed them

Would come out of them like or does it gotta come out like no This is like in sixth grade. They talk about this stuff. I don't remember sixth grade. Yeah I don't know how come it's me. How do the semen's get born the boss deference. I think isn't that the thing because like You have too much coconut milk But the thing is that nobody's ever heard a crytos either, you know, and I've actually got I've got a book It's a really fun book. It's called cults that kill and I've put through it over the years It's a satanic panic book And when I was researching this I pulled it off the shelf and I opened it up

I was like, well, maybe there's something about kratos in here And I opened it up and the first page that I saw was a quote from dale griffis Really? Yeah, and there's I mean this guy was he was at the forefront of law enforcement saying that pretty much any murder that's kind of weird Uh is a cult related synchronicity but kratos not there like nothing did not exist So he's getting all of his positive reinforcement from this stuff too. He's getting published. I'm listening to him Oh, yeah A part of it is that I can see why he had he held sway over the court because he really was this the guy at the time

he was the Face of satanic expertise sure and you know what I have no doubt the griffis saw some awful shit at one point I mean, it's most likely he saw a pentagram or something similar somewhere at a brutal crime scene Like this shit got stuck in his head somehow. He didn't he's not griffus is not jerry driver Jerry driver made all this shit up, but griffus like he saw some horrible shit that turned him to this Maybe he saw the first starbucks go up on hate ashbury. Who knows? He's definitely not the expert that he claims to be like he doesn't he does not know his shit He's got himself all wrapped up in the worldview that just did not exist and still does not exist

So after the oto shit griffus went on to more numerology saying that the fact that there were three kids was significant because some think the beast Actually wrote six is three so three three three is really six six six Yeah, they just and then he rounded it all out by saying that the injury on the left side of the face on one of the boys Was significant because the whole right side is good left side is evil thing that all satanists Supposedly believe the whole median line of the body right side good left side evil. This is a court of law Why are they talking about this stuff? This is this is not evidence. This is nothing. This is make-belief Well, because that is because that's what I'm starting to realize. Oh, it's like when they make it their motive

They can do this right because then they have a legal precedent. That's what our friend Sina Ghaznavi who is the lawyer that I call with all my lawyer questions and when he says this stuff like that Is that if you set up this line of questioning that all of this stuff is admissible? Even though it is horseshit and I was talking to Sina at the wedding Um, he loves when you call with all your questions He loves it. Why did he pass the bar then if he wasn't gonna talk to his friends Well after that Griffiths went for Damien specifically. He used all sorts of quote-unquote evidence, you know from Damien's master of puppets poster

To Damien's book of shadows journal to just a fucking dog skull that he had in his room uh Judge we the jury find this got to be rock and roll And honestly, it's also this is you would be you would be hung from a gallows marcus if they looked at your fucking bullshit Just a second. Yeah. Yeah, they do not want to look into my office. Well, you're just interested in things There's nothing wrong with being interested in nothing nothing wrong at all You know and and to hear Burnett talk because I read the whole transcript of uh, Griffiths's testimony and to see Burnett try to wrap his head around as something simple as a metallic album

And he's like look at him. He's like, what is that math? He actually says, what is that math master puppet? Master puppet. What is master puppet? Yes, I watch it's a great while they just put on master of puppets for a second He would start shotgunning beers What music are they playing in the bars in this town? I'm sure metallica is being played. No, not back then Oh, I don't know man. Um, but did metallica ever uh make a statement about this? Dude, uh, actually the paradise lost documentaries are the only movies, uh, which metallica Ever licensed use of their songs really only gave them one song They gave them a sanitarium. Oh, they gave them a sanitarium fade to black and I can't remember what the third one is

but Unforgiven or at least it wasn't a large drum solo. That's all although. He's a very talented drummer. Yeah Honestly, you know me. I'm a ringo guy. So I don't know. I don't know after seeing him live the last time Oh, yeah, but they're that they had all night because I saw them the week before and they were really good Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah lars is notoriously like hey He's okay, but regardless. Yeah metallica. Yeah, they didn't use note. None of their songs were in movies until uh, I think it was mission impossible too. What if we do a thing where no one can hear our art Wouldn't that be fun? I think that's super rad lars. My therapist told me that it's very important for me to scream alone

Have your therapist get in touch with my therapist and we'll set up a meeting with our therapist Of things they put together all this shit to say that Damien was most likely involved in the occult his little stupid goth kid journal Metallica poster dog skull Uh, and but the thing is they still had to tie jason ballwin into this and jason ballwin was a little harder But they managed it What's about to follow and again? I want this verbatim just so people know how dumb it is. This is John Fogelman the lead attorney This is his exact reasoning from the trial transcripts as to why he thought jason ballwin was also an occult practitioner. All right

It is my understanding That part of the involvement deals with obsession with heavy metal music chains in forms of dress wearing all black And I believe the proof would show that he had 15 black t-shirts with the heavy metal thing And he had some kind of animal either claws or teeth. I think they said they were claws In his position verbatim What first of all it's weird that they're counting this kid's t-shirts and I cannot that is absolutely insane

That's insane. And that's how they I mean because that's the whole thing about jason ballwin. He's tacked on in this case He's they got him on t-shirts t-shirts. That is exactly what they got him on They got a ride to count the amount of black horror t-shirts. I have They would make me the king of satanism They would say like I was the grand conquistador of all evil because I probably have a hundred Horror t-shirts and to be fair. I don't even want to just wear black t-shirts But my body is sad and it's the only thing that works for me It's what johnny cash said later in his life. They're like why do you always dress in black?

He mentioned the death row stuff from prisoners and then he tacked on it's also very slimming So that's why I do it. I would love to wear a white shirt Yeah, and this shit was enough to brand these kids as satanic cult killers because of their apparel because they're apparel They didn't have a jinko in town. No Good lord and we're not saying that people don't use satan as an excuse to kill because you know We've already mentioned Richard Romero's once in this series and there's so many different crime scene photos of you know Dudes and ladies with pentagrams cut into their chest or in their arm or whatever But you know to bring another serial killer into it

Gary Ridgway sure as hell used christianity to justify killing 71 women over 16 years He even had a bug bowl first to point towards for inspiration ezekiel 1635 through 40 the murders are the problem not the faith of the murderer David burkowitz said a dog told him to do it The point here is that a pentagram doesn't make you a potential cult killer anymore than having a bible Makes you a potential serial killer Nice. It might make you pieces of shit It might make you a thief from those hotel rooms. Yeah, the gideons. Yes

So after grifis fogelman and davis brought in a couple of girls from the softball confession Had both of them tell their stories And that was it because remember jesse miss kelly's confession didn't come into this at all now the prosecution They tried to like judge the confession into the proceedings casually And they almost caused a mistrial in the process, but it was never at the forefront like henry said Everyone knew about it. And you know what judge brunette's the same fucking thing when they mentioned the confession in jesse and jason's trial The defense is immediately I call for them for a mistrial and brunette said there's not a person in this room that doesn't know about that confession It's the mistrial. Yeah, he's that but even before he's like there's not a person in this room that didn't know about this confession coming into this thing

So, you know, you're not allowed to talk about it, but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna call a mistrial It just seems like a conversation happening with a bunch of concerned fathers and they don't understand their kids Yeah, and they're trying to it just uh, I can't believe that this That dialogue was in a court of law to sentence someone to death. It's passed that they all became uh, they all became driver The entire court became driver They became this idea because Because of the nature of the way they live and the nature of these crimes They all got an inflated sense of self in my mind. This is obviously my opinion

But they have a uh an inflated sense of self where they looked at all of this mean like we are conquering the devil today Yeah, that's how that that's how that you flip it. You flip into this idea of this this very intense mythological battle When you really are like these no one's thinking about any of these kids They didn't think about the boys that were murdered and they did not think about damy neckles or james or jesse They don't think about them at all. They view them all as like they're all now pawns in this game where they have to defeat satan It's interesting. It seems to me a little bit after 9 11. Obviously the worst tragedy on american soil Um, but after that I was at the small town uh, monomony wisconsin

Everyone was on the front lines of the war on terror. Sure. It was something that was real in many ways But my friend got caught throwing his snowball. They charged him with throwing of missile And then he's in job interview after job interview after graduating They're like, what's this throwing of missile and he has to explain it's a snowball. Ah, and I mean it was It that kind of the the post 9 11. Yeah panic. It seems a little bit reminiscent to this Oh, yeah, no no no panics never change. It's always it's always the same and it's going to keep happening All throughout it's going to keep happening and you know until the sun burns out or until we all drown to death one of the two I look entertaining ourselves to death that book should be like given to people now

Everyone needs to read that that book this panic and extremism is why Why we are we are where we're at and it's only going to get worse until we stop looking to be excited And maybe just try to live a normal life and put a little bit of humanity in this story Which is why we side on this on the side of the the west memphis 3 Because a part of this if you just look at the human factor, they're the subtleties of it Like the idea of still getting remembering these kids are fucking 16 17 years old. They're kids They have no clue what they're talking about the victims were Their lives were cut short before they even got to exist. It's it's all very sad. Yeah, and damien 18, but

Quick question some burning out or drowning. What do you want? I'm gonna go with uh as far as the overall extension Yeah, I'm gonna go with drowning because I think I could I'm a good swimmer. You're a pretty good swimmer But yeah, I'm gonna go for drowning as well. Okay. Yeah, because I want to see the sun explode I want to see the moment come. Oh, I'm just going like Yeah, it's only gonna watch the flame shoot all over. That's the thing is it takes eight minutes for it to get here So you could put on master of puppets and by the time master of puppets is over Yeah Well the prosecution

At the end of it all they had was a knife that might have been used in the crime found near a suspect's house And some dickhead who said that these teenagers were killers because they were in a weird shit But damien and jason's defense Wasn't all that great either for some Idiotic reason damien's defense team thought it was a good idea to put damien on the stand Not a good idea. Yeah, no damien. I mean he actually did okay considering I mean, he didn't mouth off he answered the questions truthfully

But you know, it's like when you when you don't mouth off to your dad, but you're rolling your eyes He's like, I know what you're doing. Like it was a lot of that. Like body language. It was yes It was definitely a lot of that But you know really all the testimony really did was give the prosecution a chance to make damien look even spookier in front of The jury, right? You know, for example, they trotted out this weird cipher that damien had done in prison when he was bored Using his name his girlfriend's name and the name of alistair crowley Of course that gave the prosecution talk about crowley again and all the weird shit crowley had done and said

And when they asked damien if he'd read any crowley damien totally could have just said no Instead damien said no But only because i've never been able to find any of his books if I could find his books I'd read it. Absolutely, but i've never been able to find any his books. So no, you know, this is west manfist It's not even the crowley part. It's the reading part, sir Yes, i'm just i'm not maligning the great people of arkansas and the defense also brought out damien's mom and cast a Little aspersion towards mark virus, but we're not going to get in all that Uh, but you know the defense they still damien's defense still ended up resting their case with a rational law enforcement officer

Who said that the whole occult crime phenomenon? Just didn't exist. It's just not there and that's true. It didn't exist. It's not there But that was it that was it at least they called someone. Yeah, and jason's defense was even shorter They only called one person See they thought that this was their case to lose because the only thing the prosecution had really said about jason Was that he wore a bunch of black t-shirts and he hung out with damien and that's true That's all they had on jason Honestly, what they should have done here is found an extra small shirt that jason used to wear as a child and say

If he cannot fit in this t-shirt that is doing that doing the oh jaylock I just I just can't even I can't get it on just got his belly button still exposed be like that makes it just 14 shirts So jason's defense they brought up an analyst to talk about the red fiber and the analyst said that He would have excluded jason's mother's robe as a source of the fiber found in the victim's clothing and that was it and after all that The jury deliberated for less than five hours before reaching a verdict It's never good when the jury is like we got it. When's the wheel on?

Is the wheel on at six can we wrap this up? Yeah, and this was far less time than what jesse's jury took Jesse took almost it took a day. These guys four and a half hours Jesus christ to decide someone's death. Yeah on friday. No, this is just to see if they were guilty or not guilty Right, right. Yeah on friday march 18th 1994 Damien eckles and jason Baldwin were both found guilty of capital murder Oh, following the verdict it took the jury two hours and 20 minutes To decide that jason baldoin would spend his life in prison while damien eckles would be put to death by lethal injection Good lord. I know you can't put a time limit on this stuff, but I just feel like a day

Just you know if you get to bring steven king into it again It's like if you can't watch the green mile right in the space of time then It's been a little bit more time. If you can't watch the John coffee for a second before you decide to sentence them to death Good lord. I mean, I don't think I could ever do it. That's probably why I will never be a juror on a murder trial I'm just so against the death penalty. Yeah, I can't imagine Sending this kid to death, but then after that came 18 years of waiting 18 Years and waiting waiting is a nice way to put it. It was it was absolutely horrendous

Yeah, I mean jason he ended up doing just fine by his own admission He actually said that he figured out prison pretty fast. He found a little nice little niche for himself working with computers Uh, jesse, he did okay as well. He got a tattoo of a clock on his head With jesse's tattoo is that it's just like I don't know if it helps or hurts His case because it's just like because they were like jesse What's with the tattoo of the clock with no hands on your on your head? He's like time Well, I think I don't know it is an interesting tattoo not the worst tattoo I've ever seen as far as prison goes It's as far as prison. It's just it looks

It looks like a like a bad yarmulke or something or not even like it looks it just looks it doesn't you just look at You're like, what am I looking at? It's a pretty good tattoo not even listening to anything I wasn't I found it so hard to listen to anything he was saying because I was staring at his fucking head And trying to figure out what is that? It gives him the sake the same weird hairline of do you remember george cloney during the er days when he had the Caesar cut It sort of looks like that but then he he shows you and goes time I know it's like I know man. I'm with you man. Well damien steinman prison

I mean these guys, you know jesse's getting tattoos and you know jason is working with computers But damien steinman prison was nothing but pure fucking Misery because they thought they they thought he murdered three children Yeah, so there's a couple of expert excerpts from his book life after death, which if you haven't read it I just highly recommend it and I won't read these things necessarily Exactly, but of course he talks about how you know the the the only energy directed at you is hatred rage disgust stupidity Ignorance and brutality talks about how that affects you and then he tells this story About how there was just a bunch of mosquitoes outside of this really swampy prison that he was staying at I believe it was varner

Security prison and he tells this story He says the entire ground is like one giant mosquito hatchery if you think you know what a swarm of mosquitoes is like Just because you've been camping or sat in the backyard on a summer night, then you're badly mistaken I've seen entire walls covered by blankets of mosquitoes every time you take a step a cloud of them rises from the ground I've literally cried in frustration more than once because the mosquitoes were such a torment My hands have been bitten so many times That they basically would swell up like sausages and every year the wall looks like an abstract painting because of the blood spots from the Slip from the smashed mosquitoes. So I'm just imagine that you're buried alive and a constantly attacked by walls and walls of mosquitoes

There was no sleeping and he goes on to say this continues all summer long It gets even worse when the when the mosquitoes discover they can breed in the toilets in the empty cells So it is horrifying. He also tells this story about his cell the first one that he was in he says he Uh, he saw a shape of a dead man on the wall and the shape was this man etched as kind of um What etched his body and pencil traced it? Yeah traced his body and pencil And he talks about looking at that And he could not erase it. He said if I erase that that's the last living memory of this person He said the next person who rolls into this cell they can erase it if they want to but he stared at that for years

The outline of a person who was put to death before him Yeah, and he was also like he was in solitary confinement for the vast majority of it He would he would may he wouldn't even get outside for an hour a day Like they would let him get into a room with a window above him that whole constitutional thing where they get one hour Guaranteed is dog shit. They take you 10 feet down a hall. It's just a slightly larger room maybe And maybe a basketball hoop maybe yeah or or nothing at all and they say that's your one hour activity Yeah of activity. He also talks, um, you know, he got his ass kicked from the security guards basically

Um, and he talks about how his teeth there is no dental care in prison And he says several years ago I was beaten by a pack of sadistic guards which caused nerve damage to several of my teeth Now the prison gave me a choice of living with the pain or having my teeth pulled out I've been in pain ever since they don't allow you to have any kind of dental surgery whatsoever So it's you pull them out or you live with the pain And that's what he had to do riding away alone for a crime. He didn't commit and I mean again read the book There are there's a few very lighthearted stories

One is about this dude who owned a pet rat that they nicknamed butterfly Because there was a rumor that he had butterfly wings on his left cheek and his and his right cheek of his butt And they say if you wiggled it just so it looked like a butterfly flapping its wings And that was that was the only thing because you gotta you gotta laugh because you gotta laugh And the guy hated it and sure if he wrote his Wrote his book about person to be like they called me butterfly Like it drove the guy nuts But um, if you just want to know what that true hell was like, please read that book

And I think it'll give you more sympathy for people on death row and again They estimate conservatively the the innocence project up to two percent of people on death row are innocent and up to Uh, two percent of people in in the general population are innocent and that is 200,000 people And I think that number is actually much higher I think it's much higher as well And that's the thing about the death penalty is like even if one person is innocent then it negates the whole process You know and there are plenty of people on death row who are 100 innocent and the other thing about damien's solitary confinement is Because his eyes

Did not see light. He has to wear sunglasses now 24 7 24 7 because his eyes cannot handle light Well, you have to train your eyes like anything else. It's not like a cool thing. Yeah, it's not yeah It's uh, and he can't see more than what two feet in front of him now He can barely see it all because you have to train your eyes to see distances You don't even realize you're doing it every day. Yeah, all he looked at was a wall Uh for 18 years got his ass kicked on a regular basis. Oh damn So even with the public support and the documentaries and the books and such

Appeal after appeal for the west memphis 3 got denied. That's because the person in charge Was still judge david bernett. Well, because the idea of to go all the way back for them to rescind after all this I mean that would mean that they've been wrong this whole time. Then what else is wrong about their court? Yeah, see for both Burnett and john fogelman This was a marquee case And they were the valiant men who put away the demonic damien eckles and put the child murders at robin hood hills in the past And there was no way in hell that either of them were ever going to give an inch

Especially when there were judgeships and senate seats to be had right and they put this in the past as well as the parents Who burnt down freddy kruger's house put freddy in the past. I think it kept on haunting. Yeah Yeah, I mean judge bernett. He wasn't even swayed when new evidence came to light in 2007 A hair that had been found stuck to one of the shoelaces used to tie up the boys Was properly tested against the dna of the west memphis 3 and it was found that none of them were a match and still Judge bernett denied a new trial. He wouldn't even hear the arguments and in fact refer to the whole case as quote Unquote something he had to fool with and the new evidence as quote unquote hoopla lock him up

See the arkansas attorney general's office They'd taken the position that there was no way that they could ever wrongly convict someone And that the only new evidence that should ever be brought forth in a decided case Was evidence that proved that they were even guilt here Why would you spend your own money to send your lawyer then to make you more guilty than you were? All right. I gave you some dnn my a defense attorney. Here's some dna. Go sprinkle it around the scene Just so that they know I did it Well, eventually the case was taken all the way up to the arkansas supreme court who to their credit

Talked to the ag's office like they were a bunch of morons and ruled in favor of the new evidence being seen Then in 2010 perhaps the biggest roadblock to freedom left Judge bernett was elected to state senate in arkansas hell. Yeah, and was replaced by circuit court judge david lazer I'm always glad the idea of like you just you just suck your way up the ladder Yes, that's my favorite part about the way our system works is that you're just mediocre enough until you're promoted Dude, I working in a corporate setting for nine months the amount of failing up that I saw just in that small amount of time It's phenomenal. Interestingly, uh, judge bernett democrat

Oh, look at that. Look at that. Oh Oh god Yeah, and another interesting coded to bernett's story Uh, he actually may not have been as unmoved by the new evidence as we might think He actually lost reelection in 2016 after introducing legislation the year before To abolish the death penalty in the state of arkansas. That was the hill he died on. Okay So with bernett out of the way a good figure of speech by the way for what he did that is true. Yeah Yes, but that's very interesting. I didn't know any of that. Yeah, I found that out like earlier today

Uh, yeah, he uh, he was he became a death penalty opponent And that was why that was why and he knew like going into it like arkansas this state now going against death penalty Uh, he uh, he knew that it was a big risk and he took it and he lost good luck. Good luck So with bernett out of the way a new trial was all but assured But it's time crept closer and closer It was obvious that the state of arkansas was not looking forward to being humiliated on a worldwide stage So in order to avoid another trial, they found a solution that Kind of sort of worked for everyone. This is one of the craziest things in uh criminal justice

This is the kind of shit of why like if I was forced to be in law school I would never have made it because there's all of these rules. We're just like, what are you fucking talking about? Yeah, well arkansas went to damien jesse and jason with something called an alford plea Which is among the most confusing curiosities of the american criminal justice system When a defendant enters an alford plea and I think I got this right when a defendant enters an alford plea They are not admitting to the crime Nor are they saying they are guilty right what it means is that they are admitting that the evidence against them would be likely to Pursuaded jury to find them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt

So they are pleading guilty, but also saying that they are not guilty right So in other words the defendants are saying that they know the state could totally fuck them over Should they choose to do so despite the state knowing that the defendants are innocent But somebody's got to plead guilty here so we can plead guilty while protesting our innocence and be on our way And then they have their man. Yeah, it's absolutely fucking insane. It's insane But it's obviously, um, I imagine someone if we did get it wrong will correct us Honestly, because it's one of those things that I don't fucking understand it No, it's not you did it you understand it

So if somebody explain it better sure and we'll acknowledge it That's the best I could come up with not to be understood Yeah, this just maintains the state of arkansas has never put anyone on death row that was innocent never even imprisoned anyone that was innocent They maintain their innocence, but the state can maintain their guilt. That's it in a nutshell and it is a total The the amount of yoga you have to use in your mind to make this a plausible thing Well, there was a precedent I mean this all this went back to a case from I think 1964 when batman sued elford Yes, I remember that he said he touched me in the suit

And he said it doesn't count because I couldn't feel it feel it through the kevlar And I knew he was doing it But you know what happened is that I but then they also from what I understand they can't sue No for civil like first so they can't make money back from the state So in the case of the west memphis III if they were to take the deal They'd be out of prison that very same day But the thing was not all three of them were keen to take up the state on its offer Jesse and damien they were all for it because jesse's like I don't give a shit

What gets me out of prison as long as I get out and damien's like I'm gonna die if I don't get out of here So please let me out and I do want a little little correction jesse did request that he could stay in prison long enough to get the Hands Angel danis he said to me he could get the hands done for just a couple of jerks You don't need to do it anymore But jason He almost sunk the whole deal out of principle He wanted a new trial because he wanted to show the whole world just how bad arkansas had bucked up

He wanted to leave prison cleared completely and he was fully willing to risk dying there to do it But what eventually convinced him was damien If these guys lost this new trial jason and jesse they just go back to their lives that they've been leading the last 18 years That those nice little grooves that they had you know that they had formed over the last 18 years They just go back to that nice as nice as it can possibly as nice as it can possibly be in hell Yeah, they'd go revok they'd suck but they'd still be alive Damien wouldn't be if they lost that new trial damien would definitely die in the lethal injection chamber and so

To save his friend's life Jason bald one took the deal along with the other two and the west memphis III Finally left prison on august 19th 2011 Oh, and again had the rock stars known it was going to take 15 years I do wonder if they would have been so gung-ho on defending them But what can you imagine that you're you're in coughs. You're never walking you can't walk anywhere I have this it's a nightmare. I have all the time

And then I mean that I I have about being in prison for a crime I didn't commit but then one day you sign this piece of paper and you're free to go It is great and they're just in the world. It's the closest thing to being abducted by an alien. Yeah, because what the hell I mean 2011 compared to what was it 93 right 93. Yeah, the world has changed so much I mean unbelievable. Just try to explain kid rock Just explain how that got released meeting with the president What? No, we're not going to go into all the evidence concerning the other suspects in the case I mean, it would be highly hypocritical for us to do so plus we don't really have the time

So if you want to hear about all that like go watch west of memphis, you know, they do a pretty damn good job Align it all out completely But the thing is I mean what really matters here since damien jason and jessey entered an alpha plea This case is closed. Yeah, it's done. They technically got their man quote unquote quote unquote It's already done. They don't have to continue the investigation I mean even if the real murderer is right under everyone's noses as many people believe he is It doesn't matter because the state of arkansas has made sure that this case will never again see the inside of a courtroom As far as they're concerned the horrific murders of three little boys was answered by locking up three innocent teenagers

For 18 years then setting them free with a shrug Nobody will ever pay for the deaths of steve branch michael moore and christopher byers in any meaningful way All because the establishment would not and will not ever admit that they could have been wrong Happy halloween Oh my it is But I would look again, you know, I mean we we did a lot of research for this episode Obviously, there are massive gaps in the whole story. I'm going to say again. We don't know

What happened to those boys? We know some idea of what could have happened how they died We know technically the technical reasons how they died. We don't know how they ended up there We don't we don't know what happened. So yes, you can believe that any one of the various suspects Whether it is the any named of peripheral people or even damien jason and jessey that they are guilty You can believe this but a part of is that that is a story you're telling yourself That's a story you're piecing together with the evidence that it's put in front of you Which is what those lawyers did to convince that jury that those three were guilty in the first place I would submit to you to read the devil's not again because there's stuff that we left out because it's very very difficult

You would fall asleep while driving if you listen to it because it would just be an audio recording of the book Yeah, well, it's interesting the the author of devil's not initially a lot of the people that were friends with her We're like, why would you even do this like they're guilty and she went in with a very open mind? And that's why I think that book is so trusted Yeah, and you know and the we left out so much stuff. We left out all of the jury misconduct stuff of which there is Quite a bit like there's there's a lot of stuff that we like because yeah, we want you to go read the book We always want you to go and like support the authors that do like such fantastic work that you know makes makes this show possible But also a part of it is I am in the now in the bill cooper style, right?

You should read and obviously decide for yourself But I would say to you if you read the devil's not and you look at that book and you look at all the other evidence you could see that if I mean I would postulate if they didn't do it somebody did And it's it's just a fucked up tragedy because those little kids will never get Just yep, and those are those three children are real victims here And now we're the opposed truth kind of horrible society

Or this kind of idea that you are gonna go like now everything is revisionist upon revisionist upon revisionist So and now everybody's saying well It's like a whole new school of people re saying that west memphis 3 are guilty Mainly just because you just wouldn't even you don't even trust that you're not on a disc flying through space I don't know what to tell you like if we're at this level of not trusting anything flat earth or argument I'm saying it. I mean it's the opposite It's the the that people are you can convince yourself of anything if you decide that you are correct And it's important to remember of course. It's a fun contrarian thing to say like no

I think actually I think the west meant this through a guilty. Yeah, it's a yeah It's just it's a fun contrarian thing to say because there's you know a lot of the evidence like you can go through And you can say like oh this is bullshit and that's bullshit. No the logic doesn't work there I mean they do the exact same thing that we just did you know, it's just on the other side Yeah, just what they just they just flip it. I mean people are going to be arguing about the west memphis 3 until the fucking sun goes out Like we're there are three son of sam's all these things. Oh, there's so many things. I wish it wonderful episodes criminal justice Burkey-ass fucking waters man

And it's so like once we're waiting and I'm it's important to remember that that's what we've decided to do once you're in murky waters You're a fucking frog A bathtub from fear and loathing in Las Vegas with the lawyer hanging out on it and also I want to thank Research assistant Rachel shoe for her wonderful work on this and another thanks to Carolina for helping me out with all the false confession work on episode two Esquilis Andre Oh my god. Now you're doing it on purpose I honestly thought that he really thought he had it

He really thought he nailed it That's why I was so confident Not sundry sundry a school a school a squailer sundry. Yeah, thank you. Good enough. Good. It's great I want to do a couple of thank yous because I have them here in front of me. I want to thank matt vergas or verges I believe it is vergas He gave me an absolutely beautiful carved weegee board that i'm going to be putting up in the office Which is fucking killer his shit. I can't wait to see it. I'm gonna take a picture I'll put it on the goddamn instagram and also tarik and Caleb from the band intercourse sent me a pretty

Fucking badass looking album and an alien shirt that i'm excited to wear and I haven't listened to the album yet So i'm certain it's good And all right, and I would like to read a a short piece of fan mail that I got in the uh that I got in the mail Okay, good Marcus parks. Thanks for all the hard work you put into last podcast on the left It's amazing. My partner and I also enjoy pickle dinners So we stand by you. Do you also drink all the brine? My partner does finn gets horrible diarrhea, but he loves pickles so much. He does it anyway

hail guine finn porter All right, if we're gonna do that i got an instagram message from it. It's cat underscore one Um, and there's more but I don't want to blast him on instagram But he's talking about how they grew up. He's a hispanic male grew up in LA and how he has introduced the Podcast to his children to broaden their horizons. Oh, that's wonderful. All those all those good things are why we do it Yeah, thank you to the the the part the woman who sent an email to us through our patreon That said that she used last podcast as a way to connect to her to her teenage son who was going through a real hard time

It was a very very heartfelt email And we really I mean we really appreciate each and every one of you at listening to us and you know all just all this shit It's always overwhelming every week when we think about it. It's just so fucking cool. This is what we get to do Sweet satan offers so many gifts and it's the halloween. It's a halloween season. I feel generous I feel I feel like strong. This is the time when I'm my most engorged Well, uh, you actually yeah, you do look engorged. Um, all right Well and in to our yes, have a great halloween. We love you all very much. Hey all yourselves. Oh, wait. No, we got other shit You gotta tell us too. We got a whole bunch of other shit to do. Yeah, we got a bunch of live shows. We got to talk about some live shows

Yeah, dude, we're gonna be going. We're doing a big tour in november Uh, we're going to dallas. We're going to austin. We're going to oklahoma city All right, that's gonna be on uh, november 7th 8th and 9th 7th in dallas 8th in austin 9th in oklahoma city All those tickets are available over on last podcast on the left.com and we're gonna be coming in uh late november In early december, we're gonna be coming to indianapolis coming back to india. All right, uh, that's gonna be at the end of november I think that's the 30th, uh, and then we're gonna be uh in chicago taping our live show and that that one's sold out So thanks everyone so much, uh for cut for buying tickets to that one

Uh, but and I think austin might be sold out as well, but we still got tickets for dallas, oklahoma city and indianapolis But pick those up soon because a if the past is is any indication then those are gonna sell out as well Can we slowly drive past the flaming lips house in okc so I can say big fan of your work, sir I want a first spain. I'm gonna first name basis with wane. Oh, he likes some of my instagram posts That's that's very nice wane coin bulk of the series bulk of the series because it's serious. Um, and so you could follow Last podcast on the left and all of the Bullshits that are grinding us towards the grave at lp on the left. Make sure next week side stories We got the one and only

Dog meat. Oh, it's gonna be joining us. Yeah for some So creepy so crazy stories again. The listener pos is going to be very premium this year We have several hundred submissions. Great. We're pouring through them. We're gonna make some selections Um, it's gonna be fucking awesome Halloween's coming and next week. I think you'll actually be surprised by our episode sort of like a reaction to this story Yeah, a bit of a continuation. You know, yeah, it's it's not necessarily continuation, but you know, it's uh Take a look at the other side. We're gonna have jerry driver on I'm getting him getting him up out of his easy chair. He's putting on a shirt. He's coming to brooklyn new york

Everywhere he goes. All right, everyone. We love you. Thanks so much for listening. Hail yourselves. Hail satan Helgeen maghustalations hail me and Happy halloween And congratulations again on the marriage henry Ha ha ha ha ha ha It's possible for anyone

See you fuckers