Let's Go To Court! - 4: The West Memphis Three & The Corn Flake Brothers

Episode Date: March 13, 2018

WARNING: The audio in this episode is rough. What can we say? We were young(ish), dumb, and thought we’d save a little money by sharing one microphone. Yeah. The audio quality improves drastically after episode 9.  In this episode, Kristin talks about the Kellogg brothers. Sounds a little bland, right? Trust us, it’s not. The Kellogg brothers fought each other in and out of court for years. By the time this story is over, you’ll never look at corn flakes the same way again. Then Brandi tells us about the West Memphis Three. She gets so into it that she brings us both to tears. The story centers around three teenage boys who were convicted in the brutal murders of three little boys. According to our super accurate analysis (don’t ever question us, kthanks) Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were convicted for wearing too many black t-shirts.   And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: The book, “The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek,” by Howard Markel “Will Kellogg: King of Corn Flakes” from the Foundation For Economic Education The book, “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs” by Chuck Klosterman The book, “A Secret History of Brands” by Matt MacNabb In this episode, Brandi watched the hell out of: “West Memphis Three Trials,” from  famous-trials.com The documentary, “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills”

One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts. I'm Kristen Pitts. I'm Brandi Egan. Let's go to court. On this episode, I'll talk about the Kellogg brothers' 10-year legal battle against one another. You'll never look at cornflakes the same way again. And I'll be talking about the West Memphis Three, the teenagers who were tried and convicted of the 1993 slayings of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Brandy? Yes, Kristen? Last week, Norman had some complaints about our sponsored portion of the episode.

He seemed to think it was unstructured and that we didn't know what we were talking about. Well, I never! I'm putting it all on you, so please step it up a notch. This episode brought to you by The Gaming Historian, I never. I'm putting it all on you, so please step it up a notch. This episode brought to you by The Gaming Historian, Volume 1, Blu-ray. Available at GamingHistorian.com for the low, low price of $20. Bam. Nailed it. Nailed it. Take that, Norm.

Okay, so you know nothing about this? I don't. I'm excited. We'll start with a little bit about both of them. John Harvey Kellogg was born in 1852. He was this extremely famous doctor, borderline celebrity in his day. And he became famous for doing all kinds of cutting edge things. He had these wacky ideas like, hey, maybe instead of showering once a week, we should up that up a bit. He had a lot of really great ideas that even today make perfect sense and we still practice. He was kind of practicing medicine at a time when people were like, well, you go to the

doctor once you've got a disease and then you try to fix it. But he was more on to preventative medicine. Like, hey, how about if we try to live well now so that in the future we don't catch these horrible diseases. Some things that he was, he advocated for exercise, eating healthy food, not smoking, which back then was huge. Cinnamon in the coffee. Shut up. was huge yeah cinnamon in the coffee shut up okay everyone today brandy made fun of me for putting cinnamon in my coffee first of all you were like what did you just put in your coffee i just never seen someone do it before i'm telling you lots of people do it lots. I'm telling you, lots of people do it. Lots of perfectly normal people. I like how you're getting very defensive about your cinnamon habits. Listen, it doesn't mean I'm a serial killer. So quit talking about it. He, like me, was very normal. He, again, was super into having

a proper diet. He was into vegetarianism. And we'll get into having a proper diet he was into vegetarianism and we'll get into this a little more because it gets kind of funny no alcohol no smoking vegetarian diet super high fiber low protein and he was a seventh day adventist so that kind of informed some of his thoughts as religion will so he was really well known for being the chief medical officer of the battle creek sanitarium in battle creek michigan and that was run by the seventh day adventist church and it was basically like a hospital and a high-end hotel all in one and tons of people came to this place amelia erhart, Sojourner Truth, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, William Howard Taft. Like this was the place to go to get healthy. Some more stuff

about John Harvey Kellogg. He was constantly learning, constantly coming up with new theories on how to live better, eat better. He was big on probiotics. He was big on drinking lots of water. He was big on probiotics. He was big on drinking lots of water. He was big on your gut health. Anti-sitting for too long. Great stuff. Some not so great stuff. Here we go. This dude was obsessed with masturbating. What? That took a turn for me. That is not where I was expecting this to go. And I realized as soon as I said it, I don't mean like he couldn't stop masturbating. He was a chronic masturbator. No, so he was obsessed in the sense that he thought masturbating was like one of the worst things you could do. He called it self-abuse.

Wow. Okay. That is the opposite of what I thought you meant when he said he was obsessed with masturbating. Well, that's on you. I mean, he had some real strict views about sex and masturbation and sexuality in general. So first of all, he was like, okay, sex can only happen in a marriage, obviously. Obviously. Well, but I'm about to take it to the next level.

So that's like baseline. That's like baseline, yeah. Normal. Religious belief type of thing. Yeah, sure, sure. Okay. But on top of that, he only believed that sex should happen in a marriage and only for procreation. Not just because you want to have some fun.

So, you know, his belief, you do not masturbate ever. And you only have sex with your spouse to procreate. Wow. Gotta do that to have a good time. Yeah. He sounds great. Some ways he advocated to help people stop masturbating. Pouring acid on women's clitorises

and circumcising boys and men without anesthesia. Holy shit. I want to say, just to be honest, that this stuff really doesn't pertain to the lawsuit. I just really wanted to put this in there.

You got so excited talking about the genitalia last week now you needed to branch it over into this episode and you know what if it's not in the lawsuit i'll just bring it up anyway from here on out it's all genitalia for christian that's right send all genitalia for Kristen. That's right. Send all genitalia losses. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. That'd be great. I mean, I've got, I've got one in mind for you. Oh, Loretta. Loretta Wallen. For some reason, when you first said that, I was like, I thought you were talking about a personal issue. No. I think I've got my own genitalia under control. Thank you very much. You never know. You need some acid. That will cure what heals you.

Sunshine, exercise, and acid on the Taurus. I do want to say this other thing, even though I only saw it on Wikipedia. So let's just hope this is not true. Let's pray to God. So obviously he did the thing like, oh, you can circumcise boys without anesthesia. That'll freak him out. Yeah. Let's pray to God. So obviously he did the thing like, oh, you can circumcise boys without anesthesia. That'll freak them out. Yeah. The other thing he recommended was if you were uncircumcised, like taking the foreskin up, sewing enough of it shut so that if you ever did get an erection, it would be horribly painful. Oh my God. Now let's pray that that's some Wikipedia bullshit. Somebody just made that up? Yeah. Oh God, I hope so.

I know. That is horrific. So I say that like, I know I'm talking shit on him, but he had a lot of great theories. He really pushed medicine forward. Right. But he was also, he was also super into eugenics, which is that creepy, you know, little three, don't make the best. Which was super popular in america for a long time and then um hitler really admired our eugenics stuff which like if hitler is an admirer of yours you gotta rethink your life

yeah like oh i didn't want to i didn't want a compliment from this man yeah so another thing he did get married and they had eight children but they were all adopted children it's rumored that he and his wife never i was gonna say that they never had sex right so at least he wasn't a hypocrite yeah practice what he preached i guess okay now this could just be me like i have a tendency to think everybody's gay but well yeah i mean i don't think you're out of line no i don't think you're out of line at all because in that time specifically this that could very much be his way of dealing with things that he in his religion and in himself found unnatural and so that was his way of coming to terms with

those feelings that is immediately where my mind yeah and really anytime anybody's too like you should never have a sexual thought i'm like what are your sexual thoughts me thinks you protest too much but someone else's opinion on this who um may be slightly uh better researched on this um it's Howard Markle the guy who wrote the Battling Brothers of Battle Creek which I checked out from the library yesterday I love it um so he did an interview on NPR and his theory was more like look he was a doctor he saw a lot of guys who had syphilis some really horrible STDs that at the time they couldn't do much for. So Howard Markle's theory is maybe that just freaked him out.

Well, yeah. Which... That could be too. Yeah, it totally could be. Or it could be both. Yes. Gay and freaked out by STDs. I mean, sure.

Yes. Makes sense. Okay. I feel like I've talked about him enough that's john harvey kellogg big time doctor very well respected blah blah blah anti-masturbation even though that has nothing to do with anything let's get it in there i am feeling embarrassed like this is the last time we're talking about this because it has nothing to do with anything. I just was fascinated. Eventually, John needed basically a business manager for the Battle Creek Sanatorium. So he turned to his little brother, Will. And John thought this would be, you know, such an honor

for anyone to do this job. But no one else really wanted to do it because it was just this insanely shitty job where you would have to do all kinds of work, all kinds of hours for like next to no pay. A little bit about Will. Will, as I said, was eight years younger than John. He dropped out of school at 13. A lot of people thought he was just dumb. And he thought it too. I think he really came to believe that he was just kind of this dummy who would always be under his brother.

Now, interestingly, he was nearsighted. Probably it was just that he couldn't see the board. Yeah. He just couldn't see stuff. And that's why it took him so long. It wasn't that he was slow. It was just that he didn't have good eyesight. Which makes you wonder how many people were in that boat. probably it was really common yeah yeah so john always treated will badly he

looked down on him thought he was stupid he beat him up but will went to work for john and eventually his salary grew to three dollars a day, but that sucked even then. So, like, I was like, well, were they happy with that? No, they were not. No. Will worked 80 plus hour weeks, usually more like 120. Wow. And he did everything. He served patients.

He chased lunatics who got loose. Okay, this is where I was a little bit confused before so i was i always associate sanitarium with like a loony bin yeah okay well you didn't mention loony bin you said hospital like club med you know type of thing so i thought i was wrong but there it is partially i i assume okay i assume they had kind of a mix of people. Anyway, continue on. I was embarrassed that maybe I had the definition of sanitarium wrong in my brain. You should be very embarrassed. Because I can rattle off the definition right now. I just choose not to.

So the other tough thing that Will had to do was he had to take all of John's wild ideas that he was always coming up with and try to make them profitable and make them good for business. Another gross thing that Will had to do was, so John the doctor was obviously very obsessed with bowel movements. And he thought, you know, a proper bowel movement was an indicator for how healthy you were. You know, a proper bowel movement was an indicator for how healthy you were. You know, this is funny that you mention this. Because when I was a kid, whenever you would go to the nurse, the first question she would ask was, when was the last time you had a bowel movement? And I always thought that was the weirdest question. But in the medical field, apparently, they're just obsessed with shits.

She only asked you that question. No! they're just obsessed with shits she only asked you that question no my life has been a lie no you're right though yes it's gross but like they always say you should have the s-shaped poo which you know if i ever do man that'll be a hell of a day but they do say it's it's a huge indicator for health whether you're getting enough good nutrition blah blah how many totino's pizzas you're eating like they can tell so john was obsessed with bowel movements as a lot of doctors are um but he was so busy so what he would do this is so fucking gross he would go have a bowel movement

then he'd send will in to go look at it and take notes because you know like he was too busy oh my god i know i know so that's just like that just that is not worth the three dollars yeah i need six i said that just because like there are a lot of stories I could tell about their relationship. But man, I think that says a lot. That says a lot. Absolutely. On to a little bit more about the vegetarian diet. John had this theory that exciting foods and drinks led to sexual arousal.

You're eating too much meat. You're eating too much spice. You're going to have to masturbate. You're eating too much meat, you're eating too much spice, you're gonna have to masturbate, you're gonna have to have sex. The best way to stop that is to eat really bland food. Okay, so that was his theory. So he served a lot of really bland food in his sanitarium. Now another thing that was going on at this time. So, we're talking like late 1800s. Around this time, if you had a little money for breakfast, you would eat fried eggs, bacon, maybe some potatoes. Do you have a pear in your mouth? You're not just excited about these eggs and bacon?

My mouth was watering at the thought of eggs and bacon. No, I think I had a cat hair in my mouth. I don't these eggs. My mouth was watery at the thought of eggs and bacon. No, I think I had a cat hair. I don't know how. We only have three animals in this house. So at that time, a really common breakfast, if you had any kind of money at all, was like fried eggs, potatoes, bacon, usually cooked in lard, you know, really unhealthy. Sounds delicious. Delicious, but yes. But unhealthy for us. Yes. Or alternatively, you might have porridge or mush. Yeah. But the crazy thing is, even though that sounds disgusting, like making that took forever. Women would have to wake up insanely early, start the fire, put this stuff on for

hours and hours, boil it down, and then, you know, you'd have maybe a more nutritious meal, but, you know, definitely not tasty. In 1894, the Kellogg brothers start trying to make cereals, which would really revolutionize things, because all of a sudden, this, you could have something healthy that wouldn't take hours and hours and hours to make it just come in a box boom you're done they took out some wheat dough one night they boiled it they pressed it kept working at this but nothing ever really worked out then one night will the younger brother left the dough out overnight just as an accident which changed the texture of it quite a bit and so when he rolled it out the next day it flaked up delicious so john the older brother was like oh let's make

this into crumbles but will said no no i think people will really like these flakes they're crunchy people will enjoy them they serve them to the people in the sanitarium and they're like, this is amazing. We want more. Yes. A cereal is bull. Yes. John went out immediately and got a patent for flaked cereal, which is such a very John thing to do. You know, he's the doctor. He's like, okay, let's, let me get credit for this flaked cereal. Will started selling it, I think maybe like in kind of like a mail to order way and, you know, just to patients who were there. So he was making a nice little profit, but nothing crazy. And Will started to see like, hey, there's some promise here. People really like this stuff. This could change the way Americans eat breakfast. I want to, I want to really take this and run with

it. I want to do a great job with this. But John didn't like that idea. So they start arguing back and forth. John said that business sounds way too risky, which it is. Yeah. And, you know, he had some other reasons, but my personal theory is that he didn't want Will to have any independent success. Oh, yeah, exactly. Will was upset, but he felt really trapped.

And this makes me feel so bad for Will. So I'm just going to read. This is from an article from the Foundation for Economic Education. It's a really good article. And it says, The high risks and his lack of self-confidence still held him back. I am lamentably ignorant ignorant he wrote his son the competition in the business world is such that people with good educations are usually those

who succeed besides he was over 40 years old he resented his brother but stayed with him anyway i know i feel terrible for him yeah like all his life he's all he's dumb and then he comes up with this just kind of mistakenly falls into this amazing thing and then he doesn't even feel like he has what it takes to yeah kind of bring it to the world i think that's what makes it sad for me it's one thing for people to tell you you're stupid yeah it's a whole nother thing when you believe it absolutely you're like no it's a whole nother thing when you believe it absolutely you're like no I can't there's no way I can do this yeah and I hate my older brother but I'm old you know he's saying I'm over 40 I'm done yeah it honestly it makes me think of like a typical abusive relationship where you feel like I want to leave but i'm too scared to leave no one else

is gonna want yeah yeah it really is it's a different take on that but yeah it is very similar undertones yeah that's rough so will felt like he had to stay but at the same time they kept fighting and what they really got into a huge fight over was sugar so john the doctor was anti sugar anti-salt anti all that but will was like you know what would make these things taste better some sugar so and i didn't write this down but i think i think what happened was at some point john went out of town he was constantly going over to Europe to kind of study the latest medical technologies and while he was out of town Will put some sugar on the cornflakes and guess what people enjoyed that were they great god you know I wondered when you would come up with a terrible joke

so tony the tiger stepped in he's like will get confident you know at this point will's getting a little more confident he's getting ready to kind of get the hell out of this sanitarium. When the Battle Creek Sanitarium burned down in 1902, Will kind of made a deal. He's like, look, John, I'm going to help you rebuild this. Then I'd like to leave for good. And Will had worked there for 22 years at this point. Mm-hmm. So here's how Will left.

Will asked permission to start his own cereal company he asked his brother permission then he bought the cereal company from john because you know john the battle creek sanitarium was selling their own foods at this point including cereal so he bought that from john and he also gave john money plus stock in his new company so i mean did it the right way yeah i mean he didn't just take off he really tried to make things right i think it's become clear which side christian is i am slightly biased uh toward will big will fan here not so so much John. Although I am glad he convinced us all to shower regularly. He did some good stuff. So now it's 1906 and Will has his own cereal company and it's doing great.

And he starts to kind of realize, maybe I'm not such a dummy after all. You know, all this time at the Battle Creek Sanitarium doing all these different types of jobs, he became a pretty good businessman because he'd done a lot. So he starts to focus on Corn Flakes because that's the cereal that everyone loves. It's where he's making the most profit. So he kind of goes all in on Corn Flakes. He puts his signature on every box to show authenticity because there were a ton of other imitators at the time. There are so many lawsuits about this cereal. It's unbelievable. And he had a really tough go of it at first because grocery stores didn't want to carry this new product. So he got really creative. One of the things he did

was he sent coupons out to customers saying, here's, you know, go into your grocery store and ask for your free box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. So they'd go in and the grocery store would be like, oh, we don't have that. And so it was kind of a reminder to the grocer, like you need to carry this stuff. People are asking about it. Another really creative tactic he used, which I think this is like, this is weird and so funny. This is from the foundation for economic education article he took out ads in new york publications saying wednesday is wink day in new york and so the idea was it was this ad targeted at housewives telling them to go into their grocery store go up to the grocer and wink at him on this specific Wednesday and then they'd get a free box of cornflakes and he sent out you know info to grocery stores that were like hey look if

somebody winks at you on Monday or Tuesday don't do it but on Wednesday you give out as many boxes and then all of a sudden it became this huge success yeah which i have to wonder how john felt about that because that i mean if you're anti-masturbating anti-sex you probably anti-winking it's a pretty risque thing i mean and this was like 1907 yeah i don't know that i'd go into my local i don't think i'd do it now i would feel really weird. I'll just pay for the cornflakes. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, over time, Will became really rich and boxed cereals swept the nation. People loved them. He became pretty well known, but he stayed really humble. He gave away a lot of his money to charity. He was just kind of doing his thing and happy to be on his own.

Was John happy for his brother? I'm going to go with no. No, no, no, no. John was super jealous. For decades, he'd been the famous Kellogg. And he still was the famous Kellogg, which is so irritating. Like, he was incredibly famous, way more famous than Will, but just the fact that Will was getting a little bit of success, just John couldn't handle

it at all. John accused Will of writing his coattails, of ruining the Kellogg name that he'd built. And John basically went around saying like, I'm the real Kellogg. You know, I'm the one with the right to this name. Here's where it gets shitty. You ready? Like I said, for years, John had been creating his own cereals. But he'd always marketed them under the name Sanitas or Sanitarium Foods. And I think the reason for that was like, at that time, it seemed kind of as unethical for a doctor to promote, you know, be too self-promoting.

I mean, it still kind of is. But once Will started to make headway in the cereal industry, John started selling his cereals again, this time under the name The Kellogg's Food Company of Battle Creek. Hmm. Yeah. After Will had already bought the whole thing and done all this money in advertising. I mean, that was his big strategy was to pour a ton of money into advertising. And all of a sudden now his older brother is back on the scene putting Kellogg all over his cereal boxes. That pissed Will off for all the reasons that I just

stated. But also because he bought that cereal business from John. So he's just sitting there quietly seething. Then in 1908, John told Will that he was going to trademark the name Kellogg. Wow. Yeah. That is messed up. That's not right at all. Yeah. Hmm. He also told Will that he planned to change the name of his company from Sunita's Nut Food Company to Kellogg's Food Company. John then said he wouldn't do any of that though if Will would give him $500,000 worth of stock in his company. He already gave him stock in the company and he bought it from him. No, Will don't do it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is just, the nerve of this guy is unreal. And you know, he was very disingenuous this whole time because he

was like, I'm going to trademark the name Kellogg because there are a bunch of quacks out there. And there were quacks out there with the name Kellogg. But the reason he wanted to trademark it was because he was being really shitty with Will. Right. But John maintained that he wasn't doing anything shady. He said that the contract that they signed in 1906, where Will bought the cereal company was about specific grains and he's like I'm not using those specific grains in my cereal so you can't get mad you know you that contract

was very very specific I'm you know I'm doing this other thing over here bullshit yes yes yes wow I was like I bought the cereal company you're making cereal you're putting the name kellogg all over it yeah who's riding whose coat tail yeah exactly you jerk also john always dressed in white and had a big white mustache which makes me think of colonel sanders yeah anyway that's just an important aside yes that will be i can now yeah i'm gonna picture him like the crispy colonel crispy colonel yeah you know like the kfc commercials where they have like the different colonels so the crispy colonel is george hamilton who's very tan so well he did like his sunlight yeah see okay yeah john also said by the way take your name off your cereal boxes

people are mistaking you for me oh nice he sounds like a really nice guy oh it gets better so much better so this is from the book the Battling Brothers of Battle Creek. Basically, at this point, Will went off. He wrote John a letter that said, For 22 and a half years, I had absolutely lost all my individuality in you. I tried to see things with your eyes and not do things as you would do them. Then it goes on to say, Were it not for the fact that I am under obligations to the stockholders of the Toasted Corn Flake Company, I want to assure you that in my present state of mind i would sell out my holdings in battle creek

and try some other climate wow yeah he at this point wished he could just walk away because it just wasn't worth it yeah you know i i really don't think he was in it for the money i think he just wanted to do something that he could be proto yes that was something that was his and not go take notes on some other dense bowel movements. Yeah. Oh, the other thing I forgot to mention. In those 22 years that he worked at the sanitarium, John made Will call him Dr. Kellogg the whole time.

Okay, now. Yeah. Yeah. What a dick. Fuck you. So meanwhile, Will's pushing back, but John's still selling his cereals and claiming that Will's signature on the cereal boxes is confusing customers and it's harming his reputation, which was just bullshit. That is bullshit. At one point, Will went to John's house to try to hug it

out. And he was like, look, let's not have a legal battle. Let's not do all this. We don't need to make this ugly. A legal battle will be embarrassing for both of us. We're brothers. He offered John, like, can we do a cease and desist? And Will offered John even more cash and stocks for just a cease and desist. And John agreed to it until it came time to sign anything and then john backed out so by that point will had finally had it he was like you know what let's go to court gave me so much pride to write that it's so meta so you know i i love this because finally after all these years all this

bullshit he's gonna stand up was like you know what you're threatening me with lawsuits and all this stuff i'm taking you to court now yeah so august 1910 oh my god my cat is licking her butthole 1910. Oh, God, my cat is licking her butthole. She's taking it very noisily. Does this qualify as self abuse? I'm willing to bet that Dr. Kellogg would say yes. Should we take her out of here? Yeah, she's fine. Okay. Let her do her business. You can stare at her. You're no John Kellogg. You're not going to put an end to this. In August of 1910, Will requested an injunction and the judge denied it saying, hey, that injunction could bankrupt

John. We need to hear all the facts. There's not going to be some quick decision here. So, okay. So Will's side in this case was John is deliberately confusing customers. He's taking advantage of all my advertising of my established brand, and he's trying to kind of pass his stuff off as mine. And he also gets a little dig in here and there. He goes, John's cereals are not as good as mine. They are not tasty. And part of it was he didn't add any salt.

He didn't add any sugar. He didn't have the crunch quite right. He was like, look, people are going to go in to a grocery store. They're going to see that Kellogg label. And they're going to think it's mine. And they're going to take that home. They're going to eat it. And they're going to be like, this is disgusting.

I'm never buying this again. So Will was like, this needs to stop. John immediately countersued Will. And he said, and this was a good legal argument. He was like, I'm the real Kellogg. I'm the one who established this name. He comes to court with this huge list of celebrity patients, a list of all the important lectures he's done.

And again, I hate to say anything that John did was right, but that's a really good legal argument for who owns this name. Well, the celebrity. Yeah. He said, I'm a respected physician with an impeccable reputation all over the world, which was true. When people think of Kellogg, they think of me. Again. Yeah, true. Also, Will is dumb.

He said, Will really didn't have much to do with creating the cereals. He's just writing my coattails. Bologna sandwiches! He made the cereal! Maybe by accident accident but he still did it that was his accident and you know i think he also pointed out probably that he was the one who had the patent for flaked cereals because you know will was the one who who did that but john ran out without the patent yeah i knew that was gonna come back bite poor will and his little behind little butt little vegetarian but poor guy this again comes from the book the battling brothers of battle creek john and will were very different on the witness stand as you might imagine i love this will told his legal team hey if you want to get under John's skin and make him look bad, just question

his credentials. Just, just, you know, ask him some questions that make it clear that you're not that impressed by him and you don't think he's that great. And he will lose it. Yeah. Turns out Will knew his brother pretty well. John was really easy to fire up. The author of this book said that, you know, at times he was really brilliant on the witness stand, but he was just kind of a bad witness. He was too caught up in himself. Will, on the other hand, was much more calm. And he used the strategy of, I don't know.

Even though he had a really good memory, and it's clear he was full of shit, occasionally he'd be like, oh, I just can't remember that. I do not recall. I do not recall. Which, I've been thinking about that, and it's so funny because I always get annoyed with, oh, I don't recall, I don't remember. I get annoyed with that kind of evasiveness.

But at the same time, reading about it, I'm thinking, that's a strategy that someone who is totally full of themselves can't pull off. Exactly. Because they would never be willing to say, Oh, I don't know. I'm not sure. I can't remember because they're, yeah, that would be below them. Even if it were the truth. Absolutely. It's funny, because it made me think of all the times I've done media training for people. And one of the hardest things to do with someone who is really good at their job, really confident and a great communicator is to get them in an interview to be comfortable saying something to the equivalent of, I don't know, or let me get someone who can answer that question for you. Because the worst thing you can do is not say, I don't know or let me get someone who can answer that question for you because the worst thing you can do is not say I don't know the worst thing you can do is give someone the wrong information the other thing that Will did in his testimony was he said look we created these serials in

partnership we were working together it's just that John got all the credit it wasn't that I you know wasn't there or didn't know what I was doing it was we were working together. It's just that John got all the credit. It wasn't that I, you know, wasn't there or didn't know what I was doing. It was we were working together. In 1911, they settled out of court. And Will let John name his company, the Kellogg Food Company, but never display the name on cereal boxes. He also allowed John to put John's signature on his cereal boxes, but only in a really tiny type and not on like

the front or back of the box, only like on the side or the bottom. Will also paid John $10,000 and let John sell back all the shares of his company at an inflated price. He also let John sell a version of Corn Flakes internationally. In exchange, John agreed that will's company was the quote sole and exclusive owner of the trademark kellogg's on prepared food products so i i read that and i think so will just bent over basically oh my gosh yeah absolutely you know he kind of he did get a backbone he sued his brother but then when it came down to it he was like god can we just be done yeah like you know just just let me be the sole and exclusive owner of this trademark for foods and we're good you can have like everything else oh my gosh so you would think that john would be satisfied with that yeah you would be so wrong

after they've come to this agreement which again is so fucking favorable to John. Shut up, John. You know, right. John created a new cereal. Oh my gosh. Bran flakes. Aimed at curing constipation. There are slogans that keeps you moving. Some of these ads, I looked at some of these ads. They are really funny. Yeah. Anyway. Um, so he borrowed a page from his little brother's book by leaning heavily on advertising um which is interesting because his brother was so dumb yeah and of course he put the name catalog on the outer label which was like the one thing he wasn't supposed to do and john felt totally fine doing this and his logic was, our settlement was all about cornflakes, not bran flakes.

So what does Will do? Will's like, all right, I'm going to give you a taste of your own medicine. And I love this. So instead of, like, fighting this or doing, you know, fighting this in kind of the methods he'd used in the past, instead, Will immediately released four different types of brand cereal. Just to be like, thank you. Yeah. In your face.

Exactly. So John nearly shat himself. Little poop joke. And he filed a restraining order against Will's company. What? Yes. Oh my gosh. Which just, can you believe this man? Right. Yeah. So trial started in 1917 and much to John's chagrin, the judge found for Will on every single point. Good. He dismissed all of John's claims and ruled that Will's company was entitled to all of the profits that John made off of cereals for the previous decade. Oh my gosh. The judge told John to stop putting the name Kellogg's on his food and that the name Kellogg, when it came to food, belonged to Will.

So there were some little exceptions, but this was a huge win for Will. And I can't believe that John even thought he would win. Right. I mean, it shows how arrogant he was. Are we done? I'm guessing no. So John was pissed. He took this to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Oh my gosh. Just before Christmas 1920, the eight-judge panel voted unanimously in favor of the previous court's decision. In addition, the court also ordered John to pay all of Will's legal bills. Wow. Huge. They had done so much. And so now, now John had to pay a ton of money. But trying to be a nice guy, Will told John, hey, don't worry about paying me for the profits for the cereal you've sold over the past 10 years. Like, we're square. And John didn't have a ton of money, actually. He was not a great businessman. He was just famous and had a lot of money coming in. But yeah. So Will tries to do this really nice thing for his brother. What does John do? John was pissed that he would even that he would basically even say that

yeah and so he immediately wrote him a check for the full amount and um he said he paid everything so that will would have quote no excuse for pestering me further really pestering me so after that you know the that legal battle went on for almost 10 years yeah after that they barely spoke in the book it says that will didn't like it when other people talked badly about john but he loved to do it himself been there it's called having a family that's right so there was just there was a ton of bitterness there because anytime they did speak will always wanted a third party present just to witness it you know just to kind of yeah yeah i don't blame him at all just to kind of close this thing out, both brothers lived a really long time. I think both of them made it to their 90s. Wow. Yeah.

Turns out that diet worked out pretty well. Two years before he died, John wrote Will a letter asking for forgiveness. Wow. Yeah. He praised Will's talents, said Will had better judgment than he'd ever had, and he wanted to make things right he wanted to make amends oh my gosh are you ready for the sad part oh god i know so you know he he finally does this letter yeah his secretary who'd been taking it down for him

because you know he was a frail old man at this point she didn't like the letter she thought it was kind of embarrassing and beneath him and weak yeah so she sealed it up put it in the back of a drawer somewhere i never sent it never sent it john died a couple years later you know thinking that will had gotten the letter and just didn't forgive him. Oh, no. Then, seven years after that letter was written, somehow someone found it, and they sent it to Will. So at this point, Will is blind. He's kind of on his deathbed, too. Someone reads him the letter.

And I couldn't really figure out what his reaction reaction was to that I couldn't find anything yeah but he died a few years later after falling into a coma oh my gosh that bitch of a secretary here's the thing and I you know I'm I know we're supposed to be experts. I'm not really an expert, but like, John, John had kind of a history of writing letters that seemed nice.

Yeah. And so part of me wonders how sincere. What was he trying to get out of it? I hope it was. Yeah. Maybe, maybe I'm just being awful right now. Um,

well, because maybe, maybe it's possible. I hope it was. And maybe I'm just being awful right now. Well. Because. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. I'm just kidding. It's possible. I choose to believe that he's finally come to his senses. One would hope. Like, once you've lived that long and you look back on your life, I'm like, why did I do that to my own brother?

Yeah. Yeah. That's really sad. It is really sad oh it's funny like i feel like we talk about a lot of really tragic stuff and no one died here i mean there wasn't any horrible violent death it's just it's really sad it's sad that for almost 10 years first of all they'd had this horrible relationship yeah then for like almost 10 years, it was like John was just doing what he could to be awful to his brother. Exactly.

For no reason. Just because he didn't like the idea of another Kellogg having success. Wah, wah. Wah, wah, indeed. Yeah. That was a good one. I'd never heard of that. I saw a drunk history on it oh nice i can't remember if it talked about the legal battle but it was just like

the story of those two brothers is just unreal yeah and so what's funny is i was thinking about like oh god will was so much better than john you know blah blah because like the other thing was will was this huge philanthropist he gave away tons of money wow but at the same time john john did so much for medical not i mean yeah yeah if you if you just think about convincing people to shower that's what i was about to say like that's huge yeah and like oh maybe we shouldn't eat bacon all the time yeah that's a big deal we should up the brand yeah have a poop every now and then okay this is the story of three eight-year-old boys who set off on a bike ride around their hometown of west

memphis arkansas the next afternoon their bruised and mutilated hogtied naked bodies were pulled from a stream setting off an all-out effort to find their murderers this is also the story of three out of the mainstream teenagers who would become known as the West Memphis Three. I got a lot of this info included here from famoustrials.com. So thank you, Professor Douglas O. Linder for that awesome website full of amazing info. Yeah. All right. This is a rough one. I, I hate this one, but I love this one. You know what I mean? Yeah. Ready? Yeah. Oh, God. Are you okay?

Yes. Okay. On the evening of May 5th, 1993, the police in West Memphis, Arkansas, received three calls within a 90-minute period from three different parents reporting their young sons missing. The first came from John Mark Byers. He reported that his son Christopher was last seen in their yard at 5 30. The next came from Dana Moore

who said her son had ridden off on his bike with two friends around six o'clock but had failed to return for dinner. The third came from Pamela Hobbs who who said she hadn't seen her son, Stevie Branch, since he left for school. The news of the three missing eight-year-old boys resulted in a search of the Robin Hood Hills, a four-acre wooded area nearby where the boys would often play, though that search uncovered nothing that night. At eight o'clock the following morning, the police began a more in-depth search for the missing boys the crittenden county search and rescue team canvassed all of west memphis focusing heavily on the robin hood hills as it was reportedly the last place the boys had been seen despite a shoulder to shoulder search of the area searchers found no sign of the missing boys this was a four acre yeah kind of a wooded area just kind of like off to the side of town west memphis is um not what i would call a

rural area but it's a suburb for sure and it's um it's kind. Below the poverty line, lots of trailer parks and lower income housing type of area. Just before two o'clock that day, Steve Jones, a juvenile parole officer, saw a boy's black shoe floating in a muddy creek that led to a drainage canal running through the Robin Hood Hills. A search of that ditch located the naked bodies of the three missing boys. They were hogtied with their own shoelaces, and their clothing was found nearby. All of the boys had various lacerations to their bodies,

though Christopher Byers were the worst. His face was severely bludgeoned, and his genitals had been mutilated. Oh my gosh. By buyer's death was caused by this mutilation while the other boys deaths were caused by drowning meaning that they were thrown hogtied into the water while they were still breathing oh my god they're eight years old eight years old so this is interesting this happened in um like 1993 so we would have been right around that same age at that time yeah so these boys were our age police believed that the boys were

assaulted and killed at the location that they were found though experts would later opine that the lack of blood here proved that it was merely a dumping ground um it was in a ditch it was in a ditch but there wasn't a it wasn't like a deep area it was like a creek but the mutilation alone would he bled out from that that's how he died so there would have been to die there would have been a ton of blood. Yeah. And there's none here. Word of the mutilation quickly spread and rumors that the killings had been some kind of satanic ritual quickly followed. Following the discovery of the three boys, a witness came forward and said she had seen Damien Echols walking with another boy on the edge of Robin Hood Hills between 9 30 and 10 p.m. on the evening of May 5th and that they were both covered in mud.

Prosecutors would later argue that the murders took place at this time, though the medical examiner would place the time of death between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. Hmm. 18-year-old Damien Echles was well known to authorities in west memphis he had spent time in the juvenile detention center for shoplifting and had recently spent time in a psychiatric hospital for severe depression they knew him to have an interest in witchcraft and suspected he was involved in satanism he wore a lot of black yeah that's what that's code for because wasn't the early 90s wasn't that kind of when people had this panic well that's exactly what i was gonna say so really like satanic panic really was more in the 80s but like

there was definitely satanic panic still happening here i'm thinking it's you know because it was was definitely satanic panic still happening here i'm thinking it's you know because it was a you know kind of not a city area it was kind of things you know kind of trends lag behind there so it was the satanic panic was still very much in effect in west memphis when this when this crime took place okay he also listened to metallica which was like the devil's music to the people in that town. Yes. Between May 7th and May 10th, Damien Echols was interviewed multiple times about his involvement in the murders. Each time, he denied having any involvement, provided an alibi for his whereabouts, and even agreed to take a polygraph. Investigators heavily focused their questioning of Damien

on his religious beliefs. He told them that he was a practicing Wiccan and that his beliefs centered around the power of the earth and nature and that Wiccans do not believe in God or the devil. And how old is he again, 13? No, he's 18. 18, okay, gotcha. And how old is he again? 13? No, he's 18. 18. Okay. Yeah.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So Wiccan to police officers means he's an evil sorcerer summoning, you know, murdering eight year olds. Absolutely. On May 10th, without any legal representation present, Eccles sat for a polygraph test. Of the 10 questions asked, the polygraph examiner ruled that in his opinion, five answers were indicative of possible deception.

Polygraphs are bullshit. Um, you just wait. So Pam Eccles, who's Damien's mom, told police that her son could not possibly have been involved as he was home with her the night of the killings talking on the phone with his friends says there's no way he could have been there i know where he was he was at my home he was with me yeah in the meantime vicky hutchison a new resident in the West Memphis area, and her son were making statements to the police. On the day that the bodies were discovered, Vicki happened to be at the police department taking a polygraph exam to determine whether or not she had taken money from her employer. She brought her eight-year-old son Aaron with her and he was such a distraction

that the detective was actually unable to administer the polygraph. Aaron happened to be a playmate of the three little boys and while he was running amok in the police station he mentioned that the boys were killed in the playhouse. When pressed by detectives Aaron claimed that he had witnessed the murders committed by Satanists who spoke Spanish. Oh my. Yeah. What the hell? Yes.

Aaron's further statements were wildly inconsistent, and he was unable to identify any suspects from photo lineups, and there was no playhouse at the location Aaron indicated. A police officer leaked portions of Aaron's statement to the press, contributing to the growing belief that the murders were part of a satanic rite. Which, oh God. I understand, like, hearing what happened to those three boys, you think, okay, there is something.

Unnatural, like no normal human could do that to an eight-year-old boy. Not even just a standard murderer right this is absolutely yeah so then on june 2nd 1993 vicky told police that she knew damian eccles through her neighbor jesse miss kelly and that two weeks after the murders, she had traveled with the two of them to a Wiccan orgy where a drunken Eccles bragged about killing the three little boys. They gave her a polygraph and determined that she was being truthful, and so now they had their first real suspects. Later, Vicki would admit that her testimony was completely fabricated to avoid charges in her theft case and to attempt to claim the reward money for the discovery of the murderers. Oh.

Yeah. So that's how effective those polygraphs are. Well, have you heard the guy who invented polygraphs is now adamantly again yes there's a fascinating podcast that i can't remember what what it is but um i think it was a this american life i interviewed him i mean it just yeah never take a polygraph yeah so convinced by the polygraph results that they now know who the killers are detectives brought in jesse miss kelly for questioning jesse miss kelly was a 16 year old boy who had an iq of 72 which puts him like borderline developmentally delayed like he had a ninth grade education yeah um and dropped out of school at that point and

so with no legal representation or parents present they tell jesse that there's a 35 000 reward for information that would lead to a conviction and that they have reason to believe that he has information about the murders oh god they gave him a polygraph they're like fucking oprah at this point you get a polygraph and you get a polygraph and you get a polygraph it's fucking ridiculous can't you just picture some like really smug detectives well i'm gonna fire it up absolutely yes so in his polygraph he denied both participating in satanic rituals and having anything to do with the murders the polygraph examiner told detectives that he was quote lying his ass off and they submitted jesse to hours of harsh questioning in all jesse was questioned for almost 12 hours on june 3rd though only 45 minutes of interrogation was recorded of course and those 45 minutes are

fucking terrible so you can't even imagine what happened in the other 11 hours and 15 minutes what what do you mean by terrible so he very clearly has no idea yeah has no information about these murders so they ask him you know okay what happened the day of the murders and he says um oh at nine o'clock that morning um damian Echols and Jason Baldwin called me and told me to come to Robin Hood Hills and that we're going to kill these kids. And they're like, oh, at nine o'clock in the morning, huh? And he's like, yeah.

And they're like, okay, so what time did you kill the boys? And he said, oh, we killed them at noon. And they're like, oh, well, that couldn't be because they were in school at noon. And Jesse Miskelley goes, well, I don't go to school and they go right but the boys do and he said oh no the boys skipped school that day oh gosh and they said no you know that's not true it happened after they got out of school right and so he's like oh yeah so it happened at three o'clock and they're like no don't you think it was starting to get dark out when it happened and so finally like they just keep feeding him this

information and then they tell him like they ask him about the tying up the boys and he says yeah the boys were tied up with uh rope and they're like no it wasn't rope what else could it have been and so he just is like guessing at things and finally they feed him the information that they were tied up with their own shoelaces because i'm sure he thinks i'm gonna tell them what they need to hear yeah and i'll go home yeah so which is basically what they've been telling him just tell us you know tell give us the information tell it we know you know we know you're lying tell us the information and you're free to go yeah and he doesn't know any different maybe get 35 grand exactly and into a kid that has nothing that sounds like i mean the most amount of money he could probably

imagine sounds great to me right i know right i wouldn't turn my nose up at it so yeah so they're just like giving him like he clearly knows nothing um he says that the that he watched damien eckles rape the boys they were not raped there was no sign of that like just different things he clearly has no idea any information ultimately he implicates damien eckles and jason baldwin along with himself jesse recanted his confession almost immediately. Sure. And later said this of the detective's course of behavior. I kept telling them I didn't know who did it. I just knew of it what my friend had told me. But they kept hollering at me. They kept saying they knew I had something to do with it. Because other people had told them. They hollered at me until I

got it right. So whatever they was telling me i started telling them back but i figured something was wrong because if i had killed him i'd have known how i did it i mean it's just horrible this poor kid yeah oh it's like so hard to there's uh footage of you know his confession and stuff and it's just horrible to listen to i mean it is it is so clear that he has no idea yeah they're just trying to get somebody because these murders are horrible everyone's horrified they're trying to get somebody absolutely so that night police arrest damian jason and jesse and charged them all three all three of them with capital murder on august 4th 1993 judge david burnett presided at a pre-trial hearing in

marion arkansas burnett ruled that miss kelly should be tried separately from eccles and baldwin so that they could introduce jesse's confession um he ruled that it couldn't be used in the trial of Damien and Jason, but that it could be used against Jesse himself. And so he got his own trial. Now, why did he think it couldn't be used against the other two? You know, I don't know specifically, but something about how it implicates them without a lot of fact behind it. And so.

Bullshit. Yeah, pretty much. Okay. So the defense argued that it was obtained over under coercive circumstances and the judge basically dismissed those claims. And then in another pretrial ruling, Burnett concluded that all three defendants would be tried as adults rather than juveniles damien was an adult he was 18 at the time but the others were 16 and 17 so all of them would be tried as adults okay on january 18th 1994 jesse miss kelly's trial began um in arkansas a jury of seven men and five women were selected, and John Fogelman gave the state's opening argument.

He told jurors that while they might find errors and discrepancies in Jesse's confession, they were largely explained by Miss Kelly's efforts to minimize his own role in the killings. He said, I think you'll find that he lessened his own involvement, he said i think you'll find that he lessened his own involvement but that the proof is going to show that this defendant was an accomplice to damian eccles and jason baldwin in the commission of these horrifying murders dan stidham representing jesse said the prosecution of his client was the result of tremendous pressure for arrests in the case and the damien eccles tunnel vision had led to this um and that that tunnel vision existed from day one

yeah he argued that jesse's so-called confession came when interrogators broke his will and scared him beyond all measure yeah i mean I mean, absolutely. Yeah. The prosecution called the three little boy's parents to testify. They introduced gruesome pictures of Stevie, Christopher, and Michael's bodies and called a crime lab expert to testify that a fiber on one of the bodies was microscopically similar

to a fiber from a bathrobe at jesse's home this was similar yes this was the closest thing they had to physical evidence linking him to the crime oh good that's all they had microscopically similar so does that mean like somewhat the same material yes may could possibly be you know the same color could possibly be, the same material? Yes. Could possibly be, you know, the same color, could possibly be maybe the same material. Yes. One fiber, microscopically similar. To a bathrobe. Mm-hmm.

Okay. The defense called an expert on coercion to the stand, though most of his testimony was ruled inadmissible as the judge ruled that it was based on opinion and not fact. The judge stated that it was the jury's job to determine if Jesse's confession was involuntary, not an expert's. Oh, well. Okay. I'm somewhat with him there, but at the you've got you have to be educated on exactly and that's what to do exactly and that's what this this was this um witness was to testify and say you know these are coercive tactics this is what happens to lead somebody to give

an involuntary um confession yeah and this you, is what I believe may have happened in this circumstance. All of that was deemed inadmissible. And so the jury didn't hear any of that. Which is so dangerous because I feel like we're learning more about false confessions now. Yes. But for the longest time, people were like, why would you say you did it if you didn't do it. That's just crazy. Yeah. Oh, my God. Jesse did not testify in his trial. The jury deliberated for only one day before returning a guilty verdict. Jesse was sentenced to life plus 40 years. Oh.

Life plus 40? Plus 40 years. Yep. Oh. Two weeks after the verdict in the Miss Kelly trial, jury selection began in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where the trial of Damian Echols and Jason Baldwin would take place. Only the day before the trial opened,

Dan Stidham announced, Mr. Miss Kelly has made the decision last night that he is not going to testify against his co-defendants. Without Jesse's testimony, the state was left with a thin circumstantial case, but it did have a helpful ruling from Judge Burnett denying a motion filed by Baldwin's attorney asking that he be tried separately. Prosecutors could hope that the evidence tying Eccles to witchcraft, as well as some damaging statements by Damien,

might lead to a jury's conclusion of guilt by association in baldwin's case because for jason baldwin they literally had nothing tying him at all other than he was damien's best friend that's how he got dragged in and by jesse using his name so this is something that's interesting too jesse and, or I'm sorry, Jason and Damien were best friends. They lived in the same trailer park. Like they knew each other for years. They did everything together. They had matching tattoos on their knuckles.

They said evil, so. Bad choice, guys. Bad choice. But they didn't know Jesse Miss miss kelly he was an acquaintance they knew of him they were not friends with him they just knew who he was and you know maybe had overlapped it you know things before imagine yeah oh my god yes so this guy they barely know yes oh so john fogelman addressed the jury first telling them the state would prove through scientific evidence and the statements of these defendants that they caused the deaths of michael moore stevie branch and chris byers representing jason baldwin paul ford argued that

jason baldwin only 16 when he was arrested, was not a troublemaker. He took care of his younger brothers, getting them to bed and in the morning getting everybody dressed and fed to catch the bus and go to school. That's the kind of person Jason Baldwin was. Ford argued that his client was in court only because police had disregarded statements and the physical evidence. You'll see that this evidence that they have has been twisted and manipulated and distorted in order to make the pieces of this puzzle that they want to build fit together. And you'll see that from their own witnesses. Lastly, you will see from their own witnesses evidence that will show that Jason Baldwin is innocent.

Scott Davidson, attorney for Damien Echols, used his opening statement to address one of his biggest concerns, that the jury might find his client guilty because of some of the strange statements and actions in his past. He's not the all-American boy, david observed davidson observed he's kind of weird he's not the same as maybe you and i but i think you'll also see that there's simply no evidence that he murdered these three kids what do you think of that i think it yes to the jury he does he looks weird he's not like them he wears black he um he changed his name to damien that's not his given name um he has a tattoo that says evil he listens to rock music but that doesn't mean he's a murderer no i i um i think that was really smart it is yes always better to just be like hey here's this thing yeah you and i can agree is totally we can agree he's weird yes that you and I can agree is totally weird. We can agree. He's weird. Yes. But that doesn't mean he did this horrible thing.

So the prosecution focused largely on their perceived belief of Damien's involvement in the occult and satanic worship. Detective Ridge testified that during his interrogation of Damien, he'd made observations about the mystical significance of water and noted that three the number of boys killed was a sacred number in the wicca religion ridge also testified that damien acknowledged reading books by stephen king a fact ridge thought was strange um uh okay Um, uh, okay. Like, one of the most famous authors? Yes, because he writes about dark material. And no one reads it.

No, surely not. Stephen who? Stephen, have you heard of him before? No. Oh my God. Yes. Further developing its theme of of a cult related motive fogelman called damien's former girlfriend deanna holcomb to tell jurors that damien wore all black and carried knives sometimes in his

trench coat pocket an officer who conducted a search of damien's home testified that the search turned up 11 black t-shirts 11 black t-shirts I have a fucking closet full of black clothes how would that not be embarrassing yeah to go say on a witness yep so yeah so yeah my evidence yeah 11 11 black t-shirts and then he also said he found a book called never on a broomstick which they you know believed was about witchcraft and they found the skull of a dog in his room okay well that is fucking weird i agree it's absolutely doesn't make him a murderer yes it is really weird the prosecutor also asked judge burnett to take a judicial notice that there was a full moon on may 5th according to the almanac a request the judge found appropriate um wait a judicial judicial notice what does that mean i don't i don't know what it

is like no make no make a little make a little note there that there was a full a full moon on may 5th when when the boys were murdered yes okay so delving into the matters of the occult took center stage when calling uh dr dale griffiths a cult expert from ohio griffiths testified that the number three was one of the most powerful numbers in the practice of satanic belief when asked on cross-examination whether the number three might also have special significance in the Christian belief system, obviously alluding to the Holy Trinity, Griffith said, I cannot make that statement. What? Yes.

Father's going to be a ghost. So this guy is a nut. And they really, the defense actually did a really good job of kind of poking holes in him because he is a doctor um an expert in cult matters of the of the of cults and the occult is he an expert in the way that we are experts right yes absolutely so he is a doctor he has a phd in this from a male like correspondence course he never took any classes yes 100 and yeah he made he filled out a flyer sent it in mailed him 50 bucks or whatever and now has a certificate saying he's a doctor and an expert yes no yes oh my god yeah yes so the defense then opens their case with pam eccles who told jurors that her son

spent most of the night on the phone um and was at home with her the whole time he was speaking to two girlfriends of his that lived you know uh i think they lived in tennessee okay which is just over the state line so then damien took the stand when asked about his interest damien replied skateboarding movies talking on the phone and reading. Damien also explained his interest in the Wicca religion, testifying that it was basically a close involvement with nature. I'm not a Satanist, Damien insisted. I don't believe in human sacrifices or anything like that. Damien was asked to read excerpts from his personal journal.

So there were like two quotes. There were two quotes that the prosecution had like kind of singled out and so this is i only wrote down one of them but this is the quote life is but a walking shadow it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing do you know what that quote is from no No. It's Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream. Oh my God. Did they know that? I don't know.

So the other quote that they had him read were Metallica lyrics. Oh my God. Well, I'm thinking like of the diary entries i had that i wrote myself right um my god yes you could make a case that i was in absolutely asked why he was why he kept a dog skull in his bedroom damien replied i don't know i found it and i just thought it was kind of cool um asked why he had evil tattooed across his knuckles. Damien had a similar answer. I just kind of thought it was cool, so I did it.

Question about why he always wore black. Damien responded, I was told I look good in black and I'm really self-conscious about the way I dress. God, this poor kid. I know. I mean, you think about like, why does any 18 year old get a tattoo yeah i thought it was cool it looked cool didn't think i'd have to i thought it'd make girls think i was cool like i mean really yeah the defense sought to present damien as a teenager who might be different than most

in west memphis but not as someone they should fear eccles denied having any having anything to do with the deaths of the three boys testifying i'd never even heard of them before till i saw the news um asked how he felt about being charged with the murders he said sometimes angry sometimes sad sometimes scared yeah it's just that's exactly that's exactly how you would feel yeah what kind of question is that yeah like anyway okay the defense's final expert was robert hicks a police training officer with expertise about satanic crime hicks testified that he knew of no connection between sexual mutilation and the occult uh he also told jurors that we do have

empirical evidence that listening to metallica music does not lead people to commit crimes there'd be a lot more crime yes um the defense rested without jason baldwin testifying their jason baldwin's team their um their kind of strategy strategy was to kind of fly under the radar like you know yeah not bring a lot of attention to him let him just kind of blend in and so he never testified and that he didn't his defense didn't make a lot of waves during the trial. How do you feel about that? I think it's kind of a bold strategy. Yeah.

It could pay off or it could. Yeah, it's a gamble. It is. It's a real gamble. But their thought was they have no evidence that ties him to anything. So we're just going to sit here and not say much yeah um in closing arguments the prosecution said we have presented a circumstantial case with circumstantial evidence and it's good enough for a conviction oh i hate that it's we're telling you it's circumstantial but you know what what? It's good enough. I hate that closing argument.

I think that's terrible. Yeah. I guess that's part of that other thing of like, let's state our weakness right off the bat and say, don't worry, we're fine with it. Yeah. You can feel good about convicting both defendants. Oh. The defense told jurors that having weird stuff in your room doesn't mean you're a murderer and asked jurors to take the blindfolds off and see the case how it really was. Yeah.

The jury returned their verdict the following afternoon. Oh, my. Both boys were found guilty of capital murder. Jason was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And Damien was sentenced to death in prison without the possibility of parole and damien was sentenced to death oh my god yeah i didn't realize damien got the death sentence oh then something amazing happened in 1996 hbo premiered the documentary paradise lost the child murders at robin hood hills The documentary covered the trial and gave an in-depth view of the defendants

and the families on both sides of the case. And people were pissed. Do you remember watching this? Oh my God. I do too. Blue-eyed fucking mind. Like, seriously. People were outraged.

A movement began. A belief that the West Memphis Three were wrongly convicted grew and a website dedicated to freeing them was established. Celebrities even got behind the cause, calling out the major injustice that had been carried out on these boys who just didn't fit in. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Johnny Depp, and Natalie Maines of Dixie Chicks got behind the cause. They raised money.

They did benefit concerts to like raise money for these kids um defense funds and like uh appeal cases and all of this in 2000 Paradise Lost 2 Revelations was released and it showed the people behind the movement working to free the three and raising money for the cause it also raised questions about the who the real killer or killers might be yeah um can you imagine if you did something like that and then you watch a huge trial play out right i mean yes oh so i remember watching this stuff and i've seen all there's three parts to this documentary i've seen all three parts but i just remember watching the first one and just like i had never heard of the case before yeah i just it was just on tv and

i just watched it and was like how does this happen yeah how can this happen like it blew my mind because there's no evidence there's no evidence that these kids were ever at the crime scene that they had anything to do with it and they're not only are they convicted one of them is sentenced to death yeah it's terrifying it's terrifying because then you think you wonder how many people are in this situation that don't have documentaries made about yeah and you wonder like how easily could this happen to me yeah so there was like a when the first one came out there was a little bit of criticism about how um damien eckles and jason baldwin acted at their at their trial they were pretty flippant and none of them neither of them seemed to take it very seriously and then the second one

they interview them about this and they ask them you know when you see your behavior on this like what are your thoughts on it and damien specifically and i wish i'd written this down but i didn't but he says something to the effect of honestly like i was just a teenager yeah who knew i didn't do this and thought if you didn't do it you can't be found guilty so i didn't take it seriously yeah yeah and yes if you didn't if you didn't commit a crime your automatic thought is well they're never going to be able to convict me of something i didn't do but it fucking happened yeah oh a major twist came in 2007 when dna found of the crime scene was retested and was found to not be a match to any of the three convicted boys yes so there was also hair found in a knot in one of the ties of the victims and it was tested in 2007 and was found to be a possible match to terry hobbs terry hobbs is the stepfather of stevie branch so here's where i need

to do like a little bit of clarification so it is a possible match to terry hobbs they cannot rule him out but it is also a possible match to basically like 1.5 percent of the population okay so that still narrows it down a shit ton yes it does um so for it to possibly be a match of one of the parents of one of the kids that's some pretty damning evidence yeah i'd say so this new evidence though failed to convince judge burnett that a new trial was justified so the three so he said nope not not enough and he said no new no new trial so the three appealed his decision to the arkansas supreme court oh my god on november 4th 2010 so like they're sitting there waiting three years go by the Arkansas Supreme Court finally orders a lower judge to consider whether newly analyzed DNA evidence might exonerate the

three then they got a little bit of a break and in early December 2010 the original judge Burnett was elected to the Arkansas State Senate. So he was replaced on the case by Judge David Lazor. He presided over the evidentiary meeting or evidentiary hearings mandated by this successful appeal. So new judge in place, not the original judge anymore. So prosecutors are scrambling now. They're like yeah we have to find a way to get out of having to retry this so a plea deal is put on the table

under the deal they have to admit it so under the deal um judge david laser would vacate the previous convictions including the capital murder convictions for both Eccles and Baldwin and ordered a new trial. Each man then had to enter an Alford plea to lesser charges of first and second degree murder while verbally stating their innocence. The Alford plea is a legal mechanism that allows defendants to plead guilty while still asserting their actual innocence. What? In cases where defendants concede that prosecutors may have sufficient evidence to secure a conviction. So basically it says, I'm pleading, I am pleading an Alford plea. Basically, I say that I am innocent, but I also say that I believe the prosecution may have enough evidence to convict me.

And so it's terrible. Yeah. It is terrible. You still are pleading guilty. Yeah. So under this plea deal, if they take this plea, they would be sentenced to time served. So they would serve the time they would be out just based on the time that they've served.

Jason Baldwin was reluctant to take the deal, stating that he wasn't willing to concede anything to the prosecutors. He truly believed that he would one day walk out of the gates fully exonerated. And under this, they're not exonerated. They still have, they're not exonerated they still have yeah they still have um they're guilty of murder on their records and i'm wondering does that does that deal mean that maybe they can't go back and sue the state 100 yes that is part of the deal they cannot go back and sue the state for wrongful conviction

yes i hate to try to guess at how i would be in that situation i can understand like you want to get out of prison as quickly as possible but at the same time it's like i'm not gonna give them anything yeah so he and that's exactly how jason baldwin was he was like i didn't do this i've maintained from the day i was arrested that i didn't do this i know that i can get out of here and i know that i can be exonerated and i am willing yeah to wait however long that takes yeah ultimately though jason took the deal this is uh this is the part that I told you about where I can't say it without crying. Not for himself, but for Damien, knowing that it may be the only chance they had to save his life. Oh.

Because he didn't have the time to wait to continue to fight this. He was on death row. And they could have decided at any time to schedule his yeah i mean it's fucking terrible and for somebody to have to make that decision when you believe and you know that you could be fully exonerated to make that decision to save somebody else's life Somebody else's life. We're both crying. I know. We're laughing.

I mean, what a place to be put. Yeah. And how old was he at this point? Like 20s? 30, 33. And yeah, you've been, that's your best friend you've been through hell yeah together yeah so so they take the deal i get why you always cry yes upon entering their alfred please laser sentenced them to time served a total of 18 years and 78 days.

And on August 19th, 2011, they walked free. So they left jail, but they were never, they're not exonerated. They are still convicted, convicted murderers.

And because the state has convicted murderers in this case they will not continue to look into who the real killers might be so let's talk about that oh my god the other possible suspects okay so the first one are two two guys ch, Chris Morgan and Brian Holland, were arrested in Oceanside, California. They had abruptly left West Memphis four days after the bodies were discovered. Morgan and Holland both took polygraph exams administered by California police. Examiners reported that both men's charts indicated deception when they denied involvement in the murders. During subsequent questioning, Morgan claimed a long history of drug and alcohol use, along with blackouts and memory lapses. He claimed that he might have killed the victims.

Okay. Saying he wasn't sure he couldn't account for all of his time and he believed he could possibly be involved california police sent blood and urine samples from morgan and holland to the west memphis pd but there's no indication that west memphis pd investigated morgan or holland as suspects following their arrest in California. They had their guys. Yeah. The defense actually attempted to call Morgan to testify at Damien and Jason's trial, but they were thwarted when Morgan's attorney announced in a hearing before Judge Burnett, from which the press was excluded,

that his client, if forced to testify, would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Of course, that's exactly what attorneys for Eccles and Baldwin wanted to have happen. forced to testify, would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Of course, that's exactly what attorneys for Eccles and Baldwin wanted to have happen. Prosecutors argued strenuously, though, that Morgan's taking the Fifth, which Morgan's attorney insisted related to pending federal drug charges against his client that might be vaguely related to the murders, which, what the fuck does that mean, would mislead the jury who would quite naturally conclude that morgan was hiding his involvement in the actual murders of the three young boys well i think that's the natural assumption when someone pleads the fifth

burnett ruled that he would not force mor Morgan to testify and said that anyone who mentioned his ruling to the press quote or anyone else will be held in contempt and I mean it mhm this is what the judge says yeah

ok so that's the first possible other suspect next Mr. Bojangles is this a joke no this is real so at 8 40 p.m on may 5th so this is the night that the kids are missing this is they there's an active search going on for the kids at this time west memphis police department received a call that a bleeding black man had entered the Bojangles restaurant, located near where the three bodies were eventually discovered, about 30 minutes earlier.

So a guy comes in about 8, 10, bloody, muddy mess. And he goes into the women's restroom. So they call the police. Officer Regina Meek arrives on the scene at 8,.50 and questions Marty King, the restaurant's manager, through the drive-thru window. Oh, come on. She was getting a boberry biscuit. That's all she wanted. Are you kidding me?

Serious. Through the drive-thru window. serious through the drive-thru window king reported that the man with muddy feet wearing a white cap and black pants and blue shirt had blood on his face and arm and appeared mentally disoriented but had left the restaurant a few minutes before the officer arrived when employees entered the women's restroom they discovered blood smeared on the wall the officer leaves the premises about 9 a.m without ever setting foot inside the restaurant so she drives cruises up to the window hey did somebody call for the police oh there was a bloody man here cool i'm not gonna come in i feel like see you

later okay in your research did you determine did she get food i did not. I don't know why I think that's so important. But to me, it just is like, she's not there to do a job. She's there for a snack. In one of the documentaries, she does, like, there is a little clip of her. She testifies at trial, and there's a little clip of her. And she said, this isn't my normal area of town. This isn't where I usually work. What does that mean?

That doesn't fucking mean anything. Do you know how to walk into a restaurant? yeah they have restaurants in the normal area of town so next day detective ridge and sergeant allen returned to the beau jangles to collect blood scrapings from the restroom wall unfortunately the scrapings were never sent to a crime lab to be analyzed and were later reported lost no additional interviews were ever concluded with bojangles employees about the incident oh my god um no other interviews were ever conducted i believe i said concluded but oh way over my head don't worry, so that's another possible, you know, weird happening. I wonder how much blood he was covered in.

Yeah, I don't know. Enough that it was smeared on the wall of the bathroom. Well, yeah, I mean, that's... And mentally disoriented. Yeah. And assuming it's just one guy, I feel like one adult could easily order around an overpowering child. That's just one guy um i feel like one adult could easily order around or that's just it you got three eight-year-old boys like you they just have to be scared of you for you to

subdue them they're not gonna do a whole lot i feel like no and you can mentally overpower yeah yeah okay so then this is the last you know kind of heavily talked about suspect mentioned it before terry hobbs so stevie branches stepdad and his friend david jacobi so terry's hair as we talked about was found in a knot in one of the ties david or a hair that could possibly i'll you know allegedly be his you can't rule him out though you can rule out 98.5 percent of the population david jacobi's hair was found on a tree stump just to the side of the ditch so this is it this is terry's friend and terry this guy is terry's's alibi that night. He says he's hanging out with this guy. Okay.

So, in 2013, what seems likely to be close to the true story of the West Memphis murders finally emerges in two separate affidavits signed by Billy Wayne Stewart and Benny Guy. The level of detail and overall plausibility of the stories told in the affidavit makes it seem highly credible even if they do come from a from an admitted drug dealer and a convicted felon so these guys are not you know yeah they're one was a one was a selling weed and the other was a convicted felon so they say and they both say these separately in two separate affidavits this is just kind of combined into one story on may 5th 1993 the day the boys go missing yeah full moon that's right noted um terry hobbs david jacobi and two teenagers from a local trailer park

lg hollingsworth and buddy lucas show up at stewart's west memphis home looking to buy some pot which stewart provided while stewart is selling the pot to the boys he noticed that hobbs and jacoby were kissing in a pickup truck across the street according to stewart it was pretty well known around town that hobbs was bisexual okay um what happened after Stewart sold the pot on May 5th was told to Stewart by Buddy Lucas in April of 1995 getting back in the pickup Hobbs Jacoby and the two boys drove around town and at that point um oh smoke they smoked pot and drank whiskey and then they headed down a dirt road by the blue beacon car wash which the blue beacon car wash is right by the robin hood hills area at that point

the four got out of the truck and were involved in some kind of homosexual tryst it was during this likely sexual activity that chris byers michael moore and stevie branch appeared on their bikes at the wrong place at the wrong time oh no stewart says lucas told him that terry hobbs screamed get them little fuckers terry hobbs then announced the boys had to be killed because of what they'd seen and hobbs and jacoby proceeded to do just that the boys clothes and bodies were gathered and dragged into the water and their bikes were thrown into the bayou. Shockingly, according to Stewart, when he tried to call the West Memphis police investigator in 1995 to tell him this story that had just been told, no one ever called him back. Wait, so, okay, I'm sorry if I'm not, I'm not keeping up here.

Yeah. So how did he find out about this story? They just told him? one of the teenagers that was there told him oh my gosh yes and so it like two years later and this kid like has been living with this and so he finally you know kind of spills the beans to this guy stewart and so he's like so it's been two years since the kids have been killed it's been a year since the guys have been convicted and so stewart's like well this isn't fucking right and so he goes to call the police to tell them what he's just been told

leaves them multiple messages nobody ever calls him back because they've already got their guys like why oh my god why would they bother so that that scenario is likely to be, is widely believed to be the most likely scenario. But why mutilate the kids, though? In the affidavit, there's a, you can go online, you can read this whole affidavit. Yeah. Go into more detail about how Chris Byers is the one that fought back. And so he, he's the one that fought back. And so he's the one that got it the worst.

And so the mutilation happened and whatever else oh my gosh um yeah so it's pretty fucking terrible um if you've not seen them i urge you to check out the paradise lost documentaries on hbo there are three of them they follow the case from the trial all the way to the entering of the alford pleas and they are amazing there you can watch them if you have hbo they're on the on demand like on there so you can watch them right now thanks for rubbing it in and i do it yes that's right so that's the west smith is three it's pretty fucking terrible i mean the the the great thing if there is a great thing about it is that the guys are out they're not they're

they're living their lives now but they lost 18 years of their lives for being kids that didn't fit in and see to me it's like you lose so much more than just those 18 years because oh absolutely what does that do to your mindset that yeah many of those important years of your life absolutely are spent with the whole world thinking that you did and even still now there are people that believe that the right people this is kind of interesting there so of the three boys the parents two sets of parents well two parents one um christopher byers his father was very outspoken john mark byers he believed very much that the three were the right people that they did it you know and he's completely changed his opinion now he he does not believe that they did it same thing with um

stevie branch's mom she completely believed that they did it and she's she has actually divorced terry hobbs yeah she's no longer she definitely believes he had something to do with it they're no longer married she believes that these boys were wrongly convicted she helped fight to to get them you know a new trial yeah but michael moore his parents believe that these are the right that yeah that damian and jason and jesse did it even at the sentencing so this i read this last night and this was really hard for me to read i read the um the court record of them entering their offer please i read like the transcript of it and this is something i didn't know but while it's happening there are two people a male and

a female that had to be removed from the courtroom because they're screaming out to the judge don't release them they're murderers and i don't know who those two people are they could be anybody but so there are people who believe that these are that they are that those were the killers that they have been you know erroneously released from prison i just don't know how you get there because i don't see any evidence of it i totally understand if you were the parents of one of those little boys or maybe related, you want to believe. Well, yeah, because you want to believe they've had the right person

and you want to believe that these kids didn't have their lives ruined. You don't want to believe that for the last 18 years you've spent hating the wrong person and that those people have also had their lives ruined. Yeah, and then somehow this horrible tragedy turned into an even bigger bigger exactly exact so i can understand their point of view i absolutely can i just yeah just looking at the facts looking at the facts i can't get to a conviction for these oh my god yeah that oh that is horrible but since being released um damien he actually got married in prison to um someone that was very involved and she actually it's a woman her name's laurie she um watched the first documentary became just overwhelmingly drawn to damien believed that she

should write him letters and started writing. They started doing this correspondence and they ended up getting married while he was in prison, while he was on death row. Now he's released. They live together. Like they have a pretty regular life. He does a lot of art installations and stuff like that.

They live, um, they were living in Salem, um, Massachusetts. And now I think they're living in New York City. But got the hell out of West Memphis. Jason Baldwin, he wants to become an advocate for people who have been wrongly convicted or people looking that need to be exonerated.

And so he's taking classes to hopefully eventually one day become a lawyer and be able to be even more involved in that and then jesse miss kelly he is he's the only one that stayed in west memphis he's still there and he lives kind of kind of under the radar he doesn't do the other guys have social media accounts and you can follow him um damian eccles has actually released a couple books. He did a book signing here in Kansas City down at the Unity Temple. So he had his book came out. He signed it. And then he did like a little gave a little talk on it. I wasn't I didn't go.

I wasn't able to go because I was in a wedding at the time and I had a bridesmaid dress fitting that night. But my amazing husband went for me and got me a signed copy of the book. So I do have a signed copy of the book and it's amazing. And he got to listen to the talk. It was both Damian and Lori were there. That's true love right there. My husband, he's pretty amazing. So they're doing stuff with their lives and, you know, they're not.

So, they're doing stuff with their lives and, you know, they're not, um, there is still a movement to get them exonerated. Yeah. And there's a petition, there's been multiple petitions asking the governor to pardon them. Yeah. But until this, so far, it hasn't happened. Wow. Because that's basically the only way to exonerate them is to pardon them. Okay. Or prove that somebody else committed the murders.

Which they're not really interested in doing. They're not really interested in doing. Prosecutors have said that they would look if some kind of new evidence came forward, they would consider it, but they're not actively searching for anything. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. How could you not say that?

Yeah, you have to say that. Oh. Oh. It is so dangerous in any line of work, but especially in police work and legal work, to not be willing to look beyond what you've assumed absolutely or to not be willing to admit maybe i made a mistake exactly which that would be really hard to do to admit oh shit maybe i put these kids away because of blind spots yeah tunnel vision Yeah, I don't know how you'd live with yourself. It's a good thing my job's not that important. Right?

Oh, shit. You'd not be responsible for that. No. No, that'd be horrible. Absolutely not. That burden. Yeah. Oh, my God.

This is dark. Sorry. This was dark. Sorry, I got real dark. Can we bring it up a notch here? I'd like to tell everyone why I'm upset with you. Oh shit. So last week, I just think this is so funny that like, oh, okay. No. So two weeks ago, Norman and I found this restaurant that we were really excited about. And let me tell you,

they've got great margaritas, bargain prices, half price appetizers, delicious nachos. The nachos were amazing. So last week after the podcast, I was like, Brandy, you want to go to this place? Half price appetizers, great margaritas she's like sure sounds great we get there and i had to shit all over it you were like this sound this place sounds familiar and you know not in a good way and i'm thinking like tax which, you know, okay. They're not up on their taxes. That's fine. No. The guy who owned the place, and you said this after we put in our order.

Like, he's been charged with two counts of rape. And, of course, Norman's, like, reading up all these articles, like, oh, it says he's no longer affiliated with the business. Bullshit. It's ruined for me. Even though it combines my favorite things, margaritas, discount, melted cheese, like all of it together. But then, oh, God, terrible. Ruined.

Sorry for ruining your nacho happiness tell you what lately a lot of dudes in hollywood have been ruined for me no shit no nachos i had to go and ruin your nachos i'm very sorry for doing that to you uh well you know i think the rapist is the one who needs to apologize. Alleged rapist. Alleged rapist. That's right. Alleged rapist. I don't need to blame you. Oh, God.

Yeah, it's all my fault, not the alleged rapist. Join us next week when we'll be experts on two whole new topics. Podcast adjourned. You know what people could do that would really help us out brandy what's that they could write us a review on itunes if they enjoyed the podcast yeah if you fucking hated it please don't leave us review don't tell anybody yes tell no one that you listen to it we apologize sincerely from the bottom of our hearts if you found us annoying and unknowledgeable. Unknowledgeable?

Uh-oh. Fuck. Is that a word? How about just dim? Dim. If you found us dim, please do not leave a review. If you thought that we were slightly humorous and my laugh wasn't super annoying please like us subscribe leave us a review and now for a note about our process i read a bunch of stuff then regurgitated

all back up in my very limited vocabulary and i copy and paste from the best sources on the web and sometimes wikipedia so we owe a huge thank you to the real experts i got my info from the best sources on the web, and sometimes Wikipedia. So we owe a huge thank you to the real experts. I got my info from the book The Kelloggs, The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markle, plus an article from the Foundation for Economic Education. And I pulled from FamousTrials.com and the Paradise Lost documentary trilogy. For a full list of our sources, visit lgtcpodcast.com.

Any errors are of course ours, but please don't take our word for it. Go read their stuff and watch those documentaries. Toodles.