RedHanded - Episode 261 - West Memphis 3 - Part 1

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

This infamous case is part Stranger Things, part courtroom drama. When the bodies of 3 young boys were found, battered, sexually mutilated and hogtied with their own shoelaces in a local creek, the finger was pointed in the most 80s direction of all… Satan. Or more specifically, at three teenagers accused of being in a witches’ coven, and in league with the devil himself... 2022 LIVE SHOW TICKET LINKS: https://redhandedpodcast.com   Sources: The Devil’s Knot by Mara Leveritt Docs: Paradise Lost and West of Memphis https://famous-trials.com/westmemphis/2287-home https://famous-trials.com/westmemphis/2236-chronology https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/local-regional-news/2022-06-23/judge-rejects-new-evidence-testing-in-west-memphis-3-case https://www.jivepuppi.com/dale_griffis.html https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/10/13/Juror-misconduct-alleged-in-murder-verdict/28341287001195/ https://knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2018/hidden-damage-solitary-confinement See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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lied to you. We said we were not doing any more shows in the UK this year. That was a big fat stinking lie. We are going back on the road and we're actually going to the continent. We are doing shows in london manchester edinburgh and in dublin and then we are also taking ourselves off to scandinavia helsinki oslo and stockholm and then berlin so if you are in those cities please grab your ticket absolutely

tickets are on sale today today friday the 26th of August, tickets went on sale today for everybody generally. So if you want a ticket, I would highly recommend that you get it now. Because they are going to go. Our shows always sell out. I don't know if you know. But they definitely will sell out, guys. I'm not fucking with you. So if you want to come, if you and your friends want to come, buy your tickets

now and just do it. And we'll see you on the road because we've got a fucking great case. It's going to be so much fun. And we'll see you there. Hooray! got a fucking great case it's going to be so much fun and we'll see you there hooray that's it link is in the episode description buy your tickets pay i'm sruti i'm hannah and welcome to your thank you bonus episodes thank you yeah episode zur you you. Yeah, episode zur. You really, you did us dirty, guys. We did ourselves dirty because we could have picked something else that you've chosen. But no, we thought we'd keep it honest.

And violate the democratic process. How dare you? I am nothing if not a stickler for democracy. So here we are. You picked it. Anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about, obviously this year we won, yet again, second time in a row, the Listener's Choice at the British Podcast Awards 2022.

It was incredible. You made our years. It was just fantastic to go and win again. And we promised you, if we won again, if you voted for us to win again, that we would do the episode or episodes of your choice and that we'd also jump out of a plane the plane bit is coming yes we're waiting for our latest recruit to join us so that she can

properly film everything so that you can have a really good close-up look at the fear in my eyes i'm being pushed out of a plane i'm not jumping out of a plane without getting at least one tiktok out of it it's got to happen so it is. We're going to do it probably next month because she's starting very, very early next month. But until then, you have this to tide you over. This is what you asked for. This is what you've got. And it's a fucking hell of a case. Hell of cases. Yeah. Yeah. One of those ones that as true chroma aficionados, you've probably heard 700 bajillion times. A lot of celebrity interest in this particular case, Peter Jackson especially.

Oh, yeah. But you haven't heard us do it. No. So... Let's do it. On the 5th of May 1993, three families in the small town of West Memphis in Arkansas noticed that their eight-year-old sons, Stevie, Christopher and Michael, were missing. The boys had last been seen riding their bikes around the local area.

They had all been told to come home before dark, but hadn't. The most obvious place to look for them was Robin Hood Hills, a thick patch of woods which lay just outside of the town where all of the local kids played. But the air that night, and I can only imagine what a May Arkansas night in the woods feels like, was so thick with mosquitoes that the search party was forced to wait until morning. That's an intense amount of mosquitoes. Yeah. To

call off a search party for missing eight-year-old children. I think they still looked elsewhere, but they were like, we cannot go into the woods because we are just like getting hit in the face with mosquitoes. So the next day at 1.30 in the afternoon, a local man named Steve Jones called the police department. He'd spotted a laceless trainer floating in a drainage ditch that flowed through Robin Hood Hills. When the police arrived, one officer climbed into the muddy sludge, and soon he discovered clothes matching those that the boys had been wearing when they'd vanished. The clothes had been pegged down to the bottom of the creek by long, sharp sticks. As the officer continued to drag himself through the mud,

he soon discovered the bodies of eight-year-old Michael Moore, Stevie Branch and Christopher Byers. It was a scene beyond anything that these small-town cops could have imagined. And I can say that confidently, because doing this podcast for the past almost six years, we've seen a lot of shit. We've seen a lot of horrible shit. The pictures of this crime scene are some of the worst things I've seen. Yeah, obviously we'll go into how the boys were discovered literally in a few seconds,

but it really is quite horrendous. And because they're found in water, that always makes things a hundred times worse so so so pale it's horrific i mean there's no other word for it all three of the little boys were naked battered and hogtied with their own shoelaces their right hands were tied to their left feet and their left hands were tied to their right feet. So kind of like a cross. Their muddy bodies were covered in deep wounds with clear signs of head trauma, facial disfigurement and horrific evidence of sexual mutilation. Christopher Byer's genitals were totally gone and the area around the small boy's groin was punctured with savage cuts. Never have we come across a case more fitting of an

unbelievable dark crime drama than the one today. Or tonight, depending on when you're listening. It's quite literally a witch hunt, fuelled by murder, horror, the satanic panic, our favourite, power and political ambition. And it led to injustice upon injustice, suffered by six boys. So strap in and there's no turning back now. So to begin this story, we do need to talk about one of our favourite things, as Hannah said, here at Red Handed HQ, which is, of course, the satanic panic. Absolutely, we need its own jingle. Satan's trumpet.

Satan's trumpet. So I know long-time listeners, we've been here before, so we aren't going to do a huge like deep dive into this phenomenon yet again today. If you want to hear that from us, please go and listen to our episodes on Betty Ann Sullivan, Paul Ingram, the Fall River Cult, and of course, Anton LaVey. And I'm sure there are many more that I've missed out there. But just as a refresher, the satanic panic was a moral panic and cultural phenomenon that swept the US in the 70s and lasted well into the 2000s.

And I would argue, and we do in our QAnon episode, that it's never really gone away though, but that it simply evolved into another set of conspiracy theories, like the idea of a satanic cabal of paedophilic cannibals secretly running the government. And also, in my opinion, it has evolved into the moral panic and rampant finger-pointing we see today around things like cancel culture. But let's stick with the good old-fashioned pasto devil for this episode. A lot of what transpired in the months and years surrounding the murders of Stevie, Christopher and Michael can only be understood if you understand the satanic panic if you've watched the most recent season of stranger things you'll know what we are talking

about because it's obviously it's all like dnd based right so there is a obviously what's so great about stranger things is it's a different year every season so there's specific references to things that happened in that year and in the current season it's very satanic panic based there's a murder and they're like well he's playing dungeons and dragons it must have been him so it's i haven't watched it yet i'm going to i'm not a huge fan of the latest season but the first three are untouchable bangers okay but also i just think tiktok has ruined my brain so maybe i just don't have the stamina anymore so the satanic panic is the idea that the devil is very very real living amongst us and certain people are all too willing to worship him and do his evil bidding and also it coincidentally coincides with the end of the cold war because we

couldn't be afraid of the russians anymore it was also around this time that stranger danger was at the front of everybody's mind pictures of missing kids were plastered on milk cartons and the nation lived in a somewhat permanent state of fear that their children would be snatched away at any minute. And now here in West Memphis, that nightmare had come true and befallen three separate families. And one of the mothers in the West of Memphishevis documentary she was like as soon as he didn't come home i knew he was dead it's just heartbreaking when they discover the bodies and she's told i think it's pam branch stevie's mother the way she lays on the floor and starts oh my god wailing i'm actually getting a lump in my throat just thinking about it it is

so heartbreaking it's like these people know this is a real fear. They're living with this fear in their minds. And then the worst thing that they could have imagined has happened. But the sheer unimaginable brutality of the killings left most convinced that they couldn't be the work of any ordinary man. They had to be the work of someone in league with the devil. Chief Inspector Gary Glitchell, however, wasn't one of these people. He figured that it was a sexually motivated stranger murder, which, considering the evidence in front of him at that point, makes a lot of sense. Even though we do know that the parents of murdered children should jump straight to the top of any investigator's list, and I know that's horrible to say, especially when you see the reactions of murdered children should jump straight to the top of any investigators list

and I know that's horrible to say especially when you see the reactions of these parents when their children are found but we also know that they cannot be ruled out right but Gary Glitchell it seems just couldn't see how they could have been responsible for such a crime. I think modern police investigation, modern ways of thinking about this now, people would immediately suspect the parents. But I think we have to put ourselves back in the mindset of the people at the time. They would have been like, this is something satanic, or this is a stranger murder. That's what Gary Glitchell thinks, stranger murder. Everybody else, like normal non-law enforcement people are like, no ordinary man could have done

something so horrendous. It has to be demonic. They're the only two options that people are like, no ordinary man could have done something so horrendous. It has to be demonic. They're the only two options that people are sort of playing with. And yes, of course, the poor parents were completely devastated and with emotions running high in the town, in this small town. I think Glitchell kept his focus on outsiders. I think he didn't sort of dare go too close to looking at the parents initially. He did, however, immediately interview the parents when the kids had gone missing and then again when they were discovered. But these conversations weren't recorded, so we don't know what was actually said. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection.

Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. And this wasn't the only oversight, can we say? I don't know, man. Like, in this country, you can't not record after the Guilford Four. Like, it's baffling to me. Yeah. So, yeah, it wasn't recorded. Let's call it an oversight for now. But this wasn't the only one at the start of the investigation, because the police started fucking things up pretty much straight away. For example,

the boys' bodies were pulled out of the ditch that they were laying in, so out of the water that they were in, and laid under plastic sheeting in the baking May Arkansas sun on the side of this ditch in the woods, covered with plastic sheeting for two hours before the coroner arrived. This would have massively impacted findings in terms of things like time of death. Days turned to weeks and Gary Glitchell was under enormous pressure to solve the case. There was someone out there, probably quite close by, who had killed three little boys from his community. And nothing short of a suspect behind bars would calm the people of West Memphis. Glitchell needed help.

And Detective Bryn Ridge had a suggestion. There was a man called Jerry Driver, a local juvenile detention officer, who Ridge thought that they should speak to. Ridge was certain that these murders had something to do with the occult. And Jerry Driver was considered by some in the West Memphis Police Department to be the resident expert on all things satanic. Driver had been to some satanic cult training sessions run by the FBI, which you can see videos, examples of that in Satan's Underground. It's just ridiculous. Yeah. And we included clips of it in our episode on Betty Ann Sullivan, the same exact clips that are in West of Memphis. And I actually hadn't seen West of Memphis before

we did the Betty Ann Sullivan case. If you can stomach it, go watch the first like 30 minutes. You don't really need to watch more than that because the whole thing's a fucking shit show. Of Devil Worship Exposing Satan's Underground, which is available on YouTube. And it is, of course, made by the just unmatchable Geraldo Rivera. Yeah, what a guy. What a guy. Honestly, it is like a woman like laying in a bikini on a table and an old man who's like an occult expert, like pointing at pentagrams drawn on her stomach or on her neck and being

like, this is where you'll find cuts. This is the kind of thing you'll find here. And then there's that one guy who like they're walking around a cemetery and he's like, devil worshipping and homosexuality go hand in hand. It doesn't explain, just moves on. That's a quote. that is a quote so maybe jerry driver had watched the exact same thing and apparently that qualified him in the eyes of the west memphis police department as an occult expert important to say that not everybody at the west memphis police department thought that jerry driver was legit there is a subset within the police department who think that Jerry Driver, who is a juvenile detention officer, he's nothing else.

He's a juvenile detention officer, used to be a pilot, then became a juvie guy and then went on some occult training courses. And they think that he is the answer to all of their problems. Gary Glitchell is not one of these people, just to make that clear. Not because I'm defending Gary Glitchell, but just because you need to understand the big U-turn that he does much later. So Driver, after his training courses, was absolutely obsessed with the idea of Satan worshippers. Which I get because it's interesting.

Yeah, man, it's fucking so interesting. And if you're doing FBI training, you're probably pretty convinced that it's real. They legitimised it. They go on to debunk it later, but they absolutely legitimized it by making training videos like that. They explain it away by saying it's because every time there was a murder, they were getting all these calls from local police officers to be like, we think it's satanic. And so it's like they made this video to double down on that. I don't know. It's all very weird, but not the weirdest thing

the FBI has done. So anyway, Jerry Driver was so convinced that there were like Satan worshippers and all sorts in his midst in this town that he actually kept lists of local teenagers that he thought were linked to occult behaviour. Now, to be fair, this is what those training videos do suggest that people do. And presumably he focused on teenagers because he was, of course, a juvenile detention officer. And that's probably the group of people that he was most readily able to investigate. And top of Jerry Driver's list was one name, Damien Eccles. Damien had popped into Driver's list a couple of years before all this happened, before the murders,

because he and his high school girlfriend had run off together. They had agreed on a super 90s goth suicide pact if they were ever forced to come home, but come home they did when his girlfriend's parents found them and intervened. The girl's mum even called the police and Damien was charged with sexual misconduct because the two had been caught having sex. Damien's girlfriend's parents also reported him to Jerry Driver, his juvenile detention officer. And somehow, Driver managed to talk his way into Damien's house and into his room.

There he found a notebook and a lot of other random goth shit. Damien had unoriginally labelled his notebook of satanic poetry, the Book of Shadows. Which, look, we've all been there. We've all been there. I definitely had a little notebook that I dipped some tissue in some PVA glue and some coffee and stuck all over and pretended it was a magic book. I definitely did that. Hannah's looking at me like she didn't do that. I definitely did. Oh no, I definitely did. I definitely did. I used to create these like... I was like, mum, I'm a wicker now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that. I used to create these like completely like fantastic... Me and my sister used to play like imaginary games constantly and i would just create these like fantasy worlds that we just lived in good times i mean my mom fucking loved

it because she was like great they're gone for eight hours now they're pretending that cardboard box is a pirate ship oh yeah we used to sit in the garden and like use sealant you know like bathroom sealant and huff it no no much more wholesome but probably maybe some accidental huffing but we were very ventilated in the garden. We had to glue bits of gravel together and make little fairy houses. I used to do that with J-Claus. So much fun. So much fun.

Anyway, Book of Shadows. Damien's notebook is called the Book of Shadows. It's filled with satanic poetry. And I do have a fun fact here because Paradise Lost, very influential documentary in this case. We'll come on to talk about it later. The man who made that, the director who made Paradise Lost trilogy is, of course, Mr. Joe Berlinger.

Our very good friend. Our very good friend, Joe Berlinger. And guess who made Blair Witch 2, Book of Shadows? Joe Berlinger. So he was just like, bank that name, come back to it later. Make the terrible, terrible, terrible movie that is Blair Witch 2 colon Book of Shadows. I can't believe you even watched. I mean, I can. It's terrible. It is atrocious.

I think it's like... Oh, Joe had a tax bill. I think, yeah. He just had to knock it out. A hundred percent. I think the story is something like one of the original kids' brothers is looking for her her but none of the timelines make sense because he'd be like an old man by now anyway it's fucking terrible don't watch it so after the book of shadows was discovered and banked by joe bellinger in his memory bank driver spent the next few years

harassing damien and accusing him of being a witch and running the local coven cult. And this is not an exaggeration. No. This is not hyperbolic. This is literally what Jerry Driver did. 100% what he did. He'd even go into like, when Damien was in juvie, he'd even go to his cell room, whatever it is, and be like, do some magic.

Because he was convinced that Damien was a witch. And all Damien was doing was being a super goth. That's it. And other people got involved in this as well. A local pastor pointed the finger at 18-year-old Damien, saying that he was, quote, in league with the devil. I would hazard a guess that in Arkansas, that accusation gets thrown around quite a lot. So people are aware

of Damien. He's a super goth and he has sex with his girlfriend, oh no, and a pastor's after him and so is his juvenile detention officer. And Glitchell had fuck all else to go on. So he agreed to talk to Damien. Once again, this initial conversation between Damien Eccles and the police was not recorded, which in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is illegal. But working their way down Jerry Driver's list of suspicious satanic teens, two days later, the police turned up at 16-year-old Jason Baldwin's house. Damien happened to be Jason's best friend. So he was also at Jason's house when the police arrived.

And so the investigators, with no adult parent or lawyer present, talked once again to the two teenagers. And during this conversation, Damien Eccles, I think the technical term for it is went off on one. He told the police that he thought the killer would probably have been watching the boys and followed them into the woods. And since the boys weren't that big or smart, they'd have been easy to control.

Damien also stated that the killer would have enjoyed hearing the boys scream and that the interstate that ran near the woods would have provided the perfect cover for all that noise. When he was asked how he thought the killer would be feeling now, Damien told the officers that the person responsible probably thought it was funny and that he probably didn't really care if they caught him or not. Basically, what you need to know is during this investigation, Damien Eccles is being a smart ass he's being a dickhead teenager right yeah which is what he is like

nobody's arguing that he's perfect angel child baby he's a dickhead he's a dickhead and he's being a dickhead and like that's just what that is exactly Exactly. He laughs at the entire thing. He sort of scoffs at the police and at the investigation. He, you know, it's very jarring in the face of these investigators, I'm sure, who are dealing with probably speaking to people who are absolutely horrified by what's happened. But Damien, that's the role he's playing, right? He's a teenager. He's a goth. He hates the authorities.

They've been on his tail for years after the incident with his girlfriend. Like, he doesn't give a fuck. And that's very obvious. So Damien was asked to provide blood and hair samples and to take a polygraph, both of which he agreed to. Once again, top tip from Red Handed, if anybody ever asks you to take a polygraph, just say no. Don't do it. They can't make you do it. They're not admissible in court, but they can use it to confuse you and to continue to persecute you. So don't ever do a fucking polygraph. But Damien did agree. And so the polygraph was carried out a few days later by Detective Bill Durham,

who concluded that Damien was lying when he said that he wasn't involved with the killings. Have you seen that picture of a really, really old lady at a abortion rally and she has a sign that says, I can't believe I still have to protest this shit. That's how I feel about the next paragraph. Yes. Lie detectors. I can't believe we still have to do this, but we do. Lie detectors are bullshit, and we're going to tell you why again. Lie detectors don't work because there is no universal physical response that indicates lying. So the lie detector isn't detecting lies at all. What are they detecting? They're detecting stress.

And given the police interrogations and the nature of the crimes, I'd say that stress is a pretty common feeling amongst those sitting polygraph tests especially if you're being shouted at by Jeremy Kyle and also all it monitors is your response to stress so a psychopath for example it's going to sail right through drugs and alcohol also interfere hugely with the results of polygraphs something that was also very much on the table for those Bill Durham would get to some sort of answer asking the questions how you ask the questions is also very important checking the baseline of the people you're interviewing and also making sure they're not fucking high or drunk all of these things are very important and like i said

there's a spectrum none of it's real but bill durham very much sits on the incredible shit end of doing polygraphs the most bullshit the most bullshit and even for the police in this case because you know in the u.s they do use polygraphs like as part of interrogations and as part of police investigations but they are also not admissible in court there so this wasn't going to be enough the polygraph results weren't enough for an arrest. So the police let Damien go. But they kept a very close eye on him. And over the next week, Damien flounced around town, seemingly enjoying the notoriety that came with having been questioned for the three boys' murders. And this bit that I'm about to tell you is incredibly stupid.

He would go around telling people that his girlfriend, who was pregnant at the time, was having a baby just so they could sacrifice it to Satan. God's sake. He's a fucking edgelord, right? He's an 18-year-old edgelord who, and this is the thing you have to understand about Damien Eccles as well, is that he is very charismatic and he's very intelligent. Part of me can kind of relate to Damien in that I definitely spent a lot of my childhood, early teenage years feeling very like much like an outcast. I spent a lot of time reading books because I didn't have like friends

to hang out with. So I do understand him on that level. He doesn't have a huge social network. He is a bit of an outcast. He's a bit of an edgelord. And he spends all of his time reading. He's very intelligent. But he likes freaking people out. And I think that that's what you're seeing here, right? And Damien Eccles is, again, through and through proper 90s small town goth kid. That's who he is. He'd grown up absolutely fucking dirt poor, as in this town and this area of the US at the time was incredibly deprived. But Damien is like the lowest of the low when we're talking about socioeconomic. Like literally no money. And also he's growing up in this bumfuck nowhere town, no offence if you're from West Memphis, but that is how he felt about it. Surrounded by people who despised him. And at home, things also weren't much better for Damien. It's not like that was

like a safe haven for him. His stepdad was an incredibly abusive man, and Damien had long stopped hoping that his mum would save him from the routine beatings and humiliation that his stepdad dished out. And like I said, he was an outcast and publicly he embraced that image he wore all black he white powdered his face he like dyed i don't know if his hair was actually black or if he dyed it that color but you know he wears it long dark he even completed the look with the word evil tattooed across his knuckles it's super got goth. It's super 90s goth. And not rare. Like a lot of people were doing this. No, absolutely.

I had a girl in my year at school who dressed exactly like that. And in year, I think in year nine, she went to Camden Market and got a pentagram tattooed on her wrist. Come on. It's not rare stuff. No, no, no, not at all. So Damien already had this reputation. He already had this sort of public image or this persona around town. So when people found out that he had been interviewed by the police, Damien kind of loved it. He loved to play into that, freaking out the squares, right?

He even told a group of girls at a softball game that he was the killer and that he already had his next victims in mind i know eye roll eye roll and all of this because west memphis is a small place everything he said everything he did everything he wore got right back to glitchell and so he went to speak to damien about the comments he had been bandying around and And again, Damien just laughed it all off. But during the interview, the teenager mentioned that urine had been found in the little boy's stomachs. Apparently, this was information that only the police knew, though we haven't been able to find any official police reports of that being the case, but it wasn't exactly like they were writing everything down anyway.

Yeah, as we'll go on to see also, there were a lot of issues with the medical examiner autopsy situation. So a lot of places, they do say that this was something that was being withheld by the police so they could investigate if it was a real person who came forward or when they had a real suspect. But it's never sort of recorded anywhere officially, so I don't know if it's true. But Damien Eccles tells them and they're like, aha, he couldn't know this unless he's the killer.

But also, it wasn't the case that only the police had heard that the boys had urine in their stomachs. Steve Jones had been told by someone in the medical examiner's office. And he even told police that he had spoken to Damien Eccles about it. So Steve Jones is the guy that found the bodies, right? Or found the trainer that led to the police finding the bodies. And Steve Jones is Jerry Driver's BFF. Ah. Yes.

So he also works in juvie. Damien's in juvie. Steve Jones hears it from someone in the medical examiner's office about the urine being in the stomach, even though it's not in the official records. Very confusing. And then he goes to Juvie and is mouthing off to Damien. So Damien saying it, the police are like, he could only know this if he was the killer. Well, no, loads of fucking people knew that. So Damien knowing about the urine in the stomachs was not quite the smoking gun that it may have seemed at the outset. You might be wondering why we haven't gone into the full

medical examiner's report yet, especially because we're weeks into the investigation timeline by now. Well, we aren't telling you about it because Inspector Glitchell did not get to the post-mortem results for an entire month after the murder. So he's working on fuck all for a month. Absolutely fuck all. Under an enormous amount of pressure so imagine trying to investigate these killings without any concrete evidence from the medical examiner about how the boys had died and what had actually physically happened to them which is very important as we will go on to find out and that added to the immense pressure and stress that Glitchell and

the rest of the police department was under. You can kind of understand. I'm not saying it's good policing, but I can understand why he followed the leads that he did. Yeah, my sympathies for Gary Glitchell are going to run out pretty swiftly. But up until now, the man's got fucking nothing. And he's also not one of these crazy sort of Satan spotters. He doesn't think that's what it is. He genuinely thinks it's a stranger murder, but he's got nothing. He doesn't even have the ME's report into the postmortems yet. So given the absolute lack of information, lack of evidence, lack of anything, no doubt the

police were pleased when they found themselves another witness. Vicky Hutchinson was a 32-year-old local waitress who was being questioned by authorities on suspected check fraud. When she'd come into the station that day to be questioned, she'd brought with her her eight-year-old son Aaron. Now Aaron had been friends with the murdered boys and he suddenly told police officers that he'd seen a black man in a red car pick up Stevie, Christopher and Michael after school on the day they were murdered and just drive away. Now, we know that this couldn't actually have happened because the boys all went home after school at 2.30pm. Stevie then left his house with Michael at 3.30pm

and Chris joined them just a few minutes later. Stevie was meant to be home at 4.30 before his mum left to go to work but he never came home and the boys were reported missing to the police at 9 or 9.30 that night. So there is no way that they got driven away from their school by a black man in a red car at 2.30 and were never seen again. They were. So if this couldn't be true, why exactly was Aaron telling this story? It's hard to say. The entire town was absolutely obsessed with this case. It was all anyone was talking about, as you can imagine. And he's just a kid. He's eight years old. Perhaps he was lying for attention, perhaps confusing various incidents in his mind. Maybe that happened another time. Maybe it

happened to some other kid and he's conflating things. In the many, many cases of satanic panic that we have covered in the past, if they have taught us anything, it's that kids tell weird stories and that they're not always telling the truth. Yeah, especially when they think it will get them the approval of adults. Absolutely. But it wasn't just Aaron. Now Vicky, his mum, thought she too might also be able to help. And it's not clear exactly how it all started. Like I couldn't really get to the bottom of how this particular bit of the story sort of came to be. But odds are that Vicky Hutchinson saw Jerry Driver's occult list. And another name on that list was that of a local boy, 17-year-old Jesse Miskelly.

He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry.

Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a

social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's highly likely that Vicky picked up on Jessie's name because it was the only one on the

list that she knew. She also knew that the police wanted dirt on the town's prime suspect, Damien Eccles. So Vicky asked Jessie to introduce her to Damien. Jesse and Damien weren't friends. They knew each other because they were from a small town and they were of a similar age. Everyone knew everyone. Jesse even openly admitted that he was terrified of Megagoth Damien. But he did agree to introduce Vicky to Damien. And Vicky and Driver cooked up a scheme to get Damien to initiate her into his coven so that she could uncover all of his child-murdering witchy secrets and the Book of Shadows.

That's true. That is their plan of action. And then the next stage of the plan, phase one is coven initiation. Phase two is that Vicky, 32-year-old Vicky, mother of one, would seduce 18-year-old Damien and then get him to confess to the murders of the three boys. Driver even gave Vicky a bunch of occult books to scatter around her trailer to make it seem more spooky and legitimate. Like a crystal skull and, you know, just some candles, some incense. You've got to really be on the scene to seduce a kid like Damien. I mean, he's a smart kid.

He's a smart kid. He's like, no, sorry, this isn't occult enough in here for me, actually. You're really not spooky enough for me. What is the most embarrassing thing that you've ever pretended to be interested in for a boy? Oh, okay. Oh, fucking, where do I begin? For me, it's Stop Stop. That's a good one. That's a real good one. Yeah, I've definitely done that.

This has just smacked me in the face. It's like a really like repressed memory. Cars. I used to pretend that I could build engines. Oh my gosh, that's so specific and technical. No, I mean, I didn't think you could to be fair my first car was it was a classic car so that was basically like a lego engine so like maybe i changed a fucking scar plug or something like but i i can under no circumstances build an engine that's so funny that's. And he didn't even get with me anyway. Embarrassed myself. Did you land your dubstep, Dream Man? Yeah, but not Dream Man.

So what we've learned is Missouri's a better liar than I am. Yes. So anyway, Vicky's busy doing her seduction technique. She's got her occult book scattered around, etc. But why? Why was vicky vicky the waitress 32 year old vicky the waitress with her kid who's got presumably her own life to lead why was she so keen to play detective especially when it came to spending time alone with a suspected brutal child murderer well you could say she's doing it out of a righteous sense of

justice. Yeah. But I think that the $35,000 reward money that was on the table at this point might also have had something to do with it. Quite possibly. So, Vicky and Damien did meet. According to him, though, the conversation lasted about 15 minutes

in her trailer, presumably while he looked confused at all of the occult books that were scattered around everywhere. And all this happened while Jesse was stood just outside. Then, according to Damien, his mum came and picked him up, and then he left. But Vicky's version of events, however, is slightly different. She told detectives that Damien had been super into her and invited her to a coven meeting. According to Vicky, on the 19th of May, so this is about two weeks after the murders, Damien picked her up in a red Ford Escort and Jessie was in the back. She said that they drove out to a field together where a bunch of mysterious people that Vicky didn't know were all painted in black and having a giant orgy.

She would later say that she also saw children there being ritually sacrificed. It was apparently all too much for this new covenantendee, Vicky, so Damien took her home. The police confronted Damien Eccles with all this, but again, he just laughed it off, saying that he didn't have a car and that he couldn't even drive. And can you imagine your Damien, the police, the police are coming to you and be like we heard you drove uh that waitress uh vicky hutchinson out to a field and there was a bunch of people painted in black having a giant orgy and you were murdering kids out there what would you do but laugh like imagine it's farcical it's farcical and also it's a farce he very much enjoys oh yeah like this is feeding

into his fantasy in a big way he's like i've even convinced the police and spoilers i don't think he did it but like in my opinion this is why he's doing it because he knows he didn't fucking do it of course and also the reason he's laughing at everything is because we've talked about this in the anton lave episode right what people misunderstand satanism to be versus what it actually is damien eckles is definitely into things like wicker because he tells the police when he's being interrogated here, when they ask him about being a witch, he does tell them he's into Wicca, which probably didn't help. But you can imagine that people who are genuine Satanists, who like, you know, Anton LaVey style, Temple of Satan, etc, things like

that. Imagine if they were talked to by the police. I mean, like, are you ritually murdering children in here? Of course, they're going to laugh because they know that's not what Satanism is, right? And I think that's the problem you're seeing here is that he's laughing at the police because he knows that that's not what Satanism really is. And they're taking his laughter as contempt. He is contemptful of them, but it doesn't mean he did it. No. But they double down on this Vicky orgy story and they carried out a polygraph on Vicky.

And once again, Detective Bill Durham, in his infinite wisdom, found that Vicky Hutchgy story and they carried out a polygraph on Vicky and once again, Detective Bill Durham in his infinite wisdom found that Vicky Hutchinson was not lying. And look, I don't know Vicky Hutchinson, but if you watch any interviews with this woman, I don't know if she wasn't totally high or drunk or something else when she was having this polygraph done.

And also the way in which the questions were asked, there are issues with it. Because basically go on to find out much later that she got blackout drunk on the night she's talking about. And she did end up going to a party where she didn't know anybody and she was all freaked out. And she woke up the next day on her fucking front lawn with a bottle of whiskey next to her.

So even asking her like if she did get taken somewhere where she was scared, where there was like a weird thing going on. Those things could still have tested to be true because she may not have felt like she was being deceptive. But again, Bill Durham on the extreme bullshit end. And while all of this was going on, Vicky's son Aaron was questioned by the police again. Remember, he's eight years old. The same age as the boys who've just been killed. And he was friends years old. The same age as the boys who've just been killed. And he was friends with them. And now

three weeks after the murders, Aaron said that he, Stevie, Michael and Christopher played in the woods together a lot. And that on many occasions, they'd come across a group of men having sex with each other and doing creepy ritual stuff.

Vicky even produced a little skull earring that she claimed Damien had left at hers the day of the successful seduction. And Aaron claimed that he'd seen one of the wood sex men wearing the same one. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, ladles and jelly spoons.

Coven Uncovered. Which also sounds like a brand new series for TLC to start. Oh my god, yes. Coven Uncovered. Which also sounds like a brand new series for TLC to start. Oh my god, yes. Coven Uncovered! So the police needed someone else to spill on Damien, since all he did was laugh at their questions. And they set their sights on the boy that Vicky had brought to their attention, 17-year-old Jessie Miss Kelly.

So the police asked Jessie to come down to the station to help them out. And remember, there's a $35,000 reward on the table. So Jesse was keen to speak. But what happened over the next 11 hours changed the lives of three teenagers forever. Jesse was like Damien from an incredibly poor family. But Damien, like we said, he was a voracious reader. And whilst being a bit of a smug teenage smartass, he was intelligent, charismatic. If he had managed to get out of that town, he probably would have been just fine. And Jason, Jason Baldwin, Damien's best friend who the police also interviewed, he was also an outcast who had matching evil knuckle tattoos with Damien. But he also did really well at school and he clearly had a mum who loved him very much.

Jesse Miskelly, on the other hand, was worlds apart. Jesse's dad was openly abusive toward him and Jesse also had significant learning difficulties. It's suggested that Jesse's mental capacity at the time of the initial police interrogations was probably that of an eight or nine year old. But he's 17. And I think the other point to make about Jesse is that he clearly has diminished mental capacity. There is no doubt about that. Anytime you hear him in an interview and we'll play some clips in a moment, it's very, very obvious.

But what's not obvious is when you look at him it's not a physical manifestation of his diminished mental capacity it's only when you start to communicate with him that you realize it's more like speaking with an eight or a nine-year-old and i think that goes some way to explain why for example the jury see it in a certain way etc and also why the police are able to pretend like they didn't know because they do pretend not to know they claim not to know that jesse was someone with learning disabilities at all and as sir he just said it isn't obvious to look at him but once he's speaking it is extremely obvious so we do not believe for one second that the police did not know especially when you discover that the detectives did a polygraph on jesse after telling him that it was a machine that could read his mind. This bit makes me sick.

That's abuse. It's incredibly abusive what they do to Jesse. And this mind reading machine found him to be lying. Surprise, surprise. And it found him to be lying when he said that he wasn't involved with the murders. After that, detectives then told Jesse that his brain had told the machine that he was lying. But a confused Jesse still kept saying that he didn't understand why the brain reading machine would do that. Just to make it incredibly clear, Jesse not only had

the mental capacity of an eight or a nine year old, he had an IQ of 72. And the police knew exactly what they were doing. And if you're in any doubt about that, in subsequent interviews that they do with Jesse, they repeatedly asked him if he knew what a penis was. Are you telling me that you have a 17-year-old sat in front of you? You're asking him, sincerely asking him if he knows what a penis is, but later on you're going to say that you didn't know he had a diminished mental capacity.

They are lying so hard. So with Jesse stressed and failing polygraphs, but still not giving up the goods because he kept saying he didn't know why the machine was saying that, the police decided to play another card. And if the brain lying machine thing made you sick, prepare yourselves. Because what the police decided to do at this point was show Jesse, a boy that they could clearly tell had learning difficulties and is there on his own when he's being questioned, they showed him the crime scene pictures of the dead boys. And over the course of the next 11 hours that they questioned Jesse that day,

detectives told him again and again in the classic move, if you just tell us what we need to know, you can go home. And this seemed to do the trick. As a terrified Jesse, without a lawyer, or like I said, even an adult present, started confessing to all sorts of things related to the killings. And there is tape out there. You can find the recording of the entire confession. Jesse gives about three confessions in total, officially. And this is a recording of the entire confession. Jesse gives about three confessions in total, officially. And this is a recording of the first confession that he gives. We're not going to play the whole thing because it's about 39 minutes long.

Here are some choice cuts. Okay, Jesse. Jesse, let's go straight to that date, 5-5 of 93. Wednesday, early in the morning. You received a phone call, is that correct? Yes, I did. Who made that phone call? Jason Baldwin.

All right. What occurred? What did he talk about? He called me and asked me could I go to West Memphis with him, and I told him no. I had to work and stuff, and then he told me he had to go to West Memphis so him and Damien went and then I went with him.

Alright. When? Wednesday. Alright. When did you go with him? That morning. Nine o'clock in the morning? Yes, sir. Okay. I went with them. Now, were you in a car? Whose car were you in? We walked. You walked?

We walked. Where did you go? Went with the driver. Did you hear any more hollering or anything? No. All right. You went home. And about what time was it that all this was taking place?

They called me about... I'm not saying when they called you I'm saying what time was it That you were actually there in the park I was there about 12 About noon Does Damien have a knife He doesn't have one

He didn't have one that night Did he borrow yours Did they have a briefcase with them He didn't have one that night? He didn't have one that night. Did he borrow yours? No, he didn't borrow mine. Okay. Did they have a briefcase with them? You didn't see a briefcase? I didn't see a briefcase. Not unless they left it there that day before it happened. Not unless they left it there with anybody and sent it there that day.

Have you ever seen them with a briefcase before? I've seen it that one night. I've see it down there that day. Have you ever seen them with a briefcase before? I seen it that one night. I seen it with them that night. Okay. What is kept inside that briefcase? They had some cocaine and a little gun. Is that where you first saw the pictures of the boys? I didn't make sure.

You saw the pictures in the briefcase? Mm-hmm. I heard when we had that cult. Okay. Now, you have participated in this cult, right? Yes. How long have you been involved in it? About three months.

Okay. Tell me some of the things y'all do typically in the woods in as being in this cult we go out kill dogs and stuff and carry girls out there all right what do you do with the girls when you're out there we're screwing stuff does just everybody take turns everybody all have the origins and stuff like that okay when you kill a, what do you do with it? We usually skin it. Build a little bonfire and ate it and stuff. Okay.

When you're initiating somebody new to come into a call, what actually is done to initiate that person into the car? We usually, you know, kill the animals, you know, see if he knows how to handle the meat and stuff. After we kill it, see if he knows. If he can't handle it, then he don't get in. Okay. So he kills an animal. You mentioned earlier that he may have to eat part of that animal.

What part of the animal would he eat? Part of his, uh, meat off his leg. Meat off his leg. If he can't eat it, then he don't get in. Doesn't get into the club. Right. Now, on these meetings, have they ever been violent? Anybody gotten mad and gotten in a fight? No.

Okay. The night you were in these woods, had y'all been in the water? Yeah, we were in the water. We were playing around in it. You were playing been in the water? Yeah, we were in the water. We were just playing around in it. You were playing around in the water? Yeah. Alright. What were you doing in the water?

Besides just playing, I mean, the little boys, had they been in the water? Did they get in the water with y'all? No, they didn't get in the water with us. Okay. What were you doing in the water with y'all? No, they didn't get in the water with us. Okay. What were you doing in the water? We were just sitting there, talking stuff at each other. Okay. Were y'all having sex?

No, I wasn't. You weren't? No. Was Damien and Jason having sex? They take turns going up under the water. Going under the water. What were they doing under the water. Going under the water. What were they doing under the water? I don't know.

They sit so far away, they go up in the water for about, I'd say about five, ten seconds, and then come up and the other one go down. Okay. So they were just messing around in the water. They called for these boys to come over there? Yeah, they seen the boys and then they hollered. They been hollering, said, hey, and the boys came out there. Did they call them by name? Uh-uh, they just hollered and then they just showed up.

Did you see any of the boys actually killed? Yes. Okay. Which one did you see killed? That right there. You're pointing to the buyer's boy again? Okay. How was he actually killed? He choked him real bad. Choking him? Okay. What was he choking him with? Like a stick. It was a little stick and it kind of held it

up like that. Okay. So he was choking him to the point where he actually went unconscious? So at that point, you feel like he was dead? Yeah. Okay. Did any of the other two boys, were you there when they were actually killed? No. You say you got sick of what you were seeing. Did you throw up or anything?

Mm-hmm. Where did you throw up at? I got a little bit of waste after what took saying that. I lived about half a mile up the road when I threw up. So after that, at last, after a month of absolutely nothing coming in on this case in the way of Leeds, police finally had a confession and a direct link back to jason

baldwin and thereby their main man who they've been trying to peg the whole time damian eccles the only problem was that jesse miss kelly's confession was absolutely riddled with inconsistencies and listening without screaming is hard when you hear just how much the detectives are leading him. And what kind of a shirt? I mean, you know, everybody wears a special shirt for different things. He's wearing a Megadeth shirt. A Megadeth? Not Megadeth, Metallica.

Metallica shirt. All right. Was he wearing a cap? Anything like that? No, he didn't wear a cap. All right. Damien, What was Damien wearing? Damien had some black pants on, some boots, and a black T-shirt. All right. Was anything on his shirt? No kind of design or anything?

Just black. The blue jeans that Jason was wearing, the designer jeans, were they old jeans, wore out, holes? They were wore out. What did he look like? They had holes in the knees and stuff. Holes in the knees. What color is Jason's hair? Blonde.

Bright blonde or like a sandy reddish type blonde? You know the difference? It's like a sandy colored blonde. Sandy colored blonde? Okay. You know the difference? It's like a sandy color blonde. Sandy color blonde. Okay. He's wearing blue jeans. He had a Metallica shirt. This is a shirt that's got Metallica across the front of it spelled out and a man's name or something on it or a picture. Is that right? You tell me.

They had pictures. Honestly, that's some of the worst bits of it like how consistently they are leading him and feeding him information and then jesse just repeats it to them and they're like oh well there you go there you go i'm like how fucking how this is shoddy beyond belief and it's also made worse by the fact that huge chunks of the tape are missing. There's only about 40 minutes or so of the interview tape that exists, but Jesse was interviewed for over 11 hours. And when you consider that even with the tape that we have, it's clear that the police are leading him like crazy. Imagine what's said in the bits that are missing, in the hours that are missing.

So let's not fuck about. Let's discuss some of the issues with Jesse's confession. First off, the timing is problematic. Initially, Jesse says that the murders happened at noon, but they can't have because all of the boys were still in school at that time. The boys were seen alive until about 4pm on the day that they vanished, so they just couldn't have been murdered at noon. And so with a little nudging from his police pals, Jesse ends up saying that it actually happened at about 7 or 8pm. Yeah, I mean, there are so many lies, and it's like we were talking about before. Like, he even tells the police in the recording

that the boys didn't go to school at all that day. But we know that they did, because their parents picked them up from school and brought them home. Like, he doesn't know what he's talking about, and it's so obvious that he doesn't. Jesse also told the police in these interrogations that the boys were tied up with brown rope. But that's just not true. They were tied up with their own shoelaces. Jesse also said that he watched Damien and Jason choke the boys. But the postmortem results, which were finally in in by this point and we'll get to in a moment, revealed no bruising to the boys' necks or any neck injuries of any kind. But he's insistent

that that's what happened. Jesse also said that Michael Moore, one of the three boys that was murdered, had run away at one point while Damien and Jason were quote-unquote screwing the other two. But he said that this happened after he'd watched the boys be tied up. So how is a boy who's been hogtied running away? None of it makes any sense. It was also at this point that Jesse made a huge life-changing statement. He said that he had been the one who chased Michael Moore down and brought him back. This statement is what absolutely condemned Jesse as it took him from being just a witness to being a participant.

Why Jesse says this, I don't know. I don't know. Again, there's huge chunks of the tape missing. We don't know if the police fed that to him. We don't know why. He's also incredibly confused. He's incredibly scared, stressed. And like we said, it's like they're interviewing an eight-year-old.

And to come back to the screwing part, because Jesse says that again and again, that he had watched Damien and Jason sexually abuse all three boys while he'd been stood in the woods. The thing is, there's no clear evidence of sexual assault that's ever been found. And we'll come on to that. The best the pathologist could say

was that sexual assault might have occurred. There was too much damage to the bodies to know for sure. Something we'll come back to in a moment. There was also evidence that seemed to suggest that the murders hadn't been carried out in the woods at all. Firstly, there is a significant lack of blood at the scene. And also, the boys had no fresh mosquito bites, even though the woods were swarming that day,

so much so that the search party had to turn back this is the thing a lot of people do point to this evidence that we had to include it but we also do know that it was days before they were found and the crime scene was found and it had rained during that period so if there was any sort of hard evidence it could easily have been washed away by that point and the fact for having no mosquito bites we do know that the boys headed down there earlier and then when the search party starts looking at about 10 o'clock, the mosquitoes are there. So it's worth mentioning, but I have, again, no hard evidence to say one way or another that they did or didn't happen there. In fact, there's no real hard evidence for the murders taking place in the spot they were found

at all. So could it have been just a site to dump the bodies? Maybe. But in Jesse's version of events, the boys were definitely murdered at the place their bodies were found. And that's the thing, the police can't even definitively prove that he is telling the truth when he says that because they have no hard evidence to prove that that's where the murders happened. They have no hard evidence to corroborate anything that Jesse says. There are so many glaring issues with jesse's confession and as we will see over the course of this episode and the next jesse goes on to change his story multiple times and the police also know that people give false confessions it happens all the time so a confession on its own is never enough for a conviction i I mean, that's why they even have like things that

they withhold to check if that person knows that information. Here, they don't even need that. Here, they know that things he is saying are sometimes not backed up by hard evidence, but sometimes fly directly in the face of the evidence that they have, but they ignore all that. And this isn't even really a case of a volunteered false confession. This is hands down a coerced confession. Jesse really does seem to be parroting what he's told by the police. But none of that really seemed to matter. After a month-long, tiring investigation, and having the entire town on their backs,

the police department of West Memphis decided that this confession was good enough. And so, at 10.30pm that same day, the police went straight out to arrest Damien and Jason too. They charged each of the three boys with three counts of capital murder. And the next day, when asked how confident he felt about the case by the press, on a scale of 1 to 10, Gary Glitchell said eleven. And a transcript of Jesse's confession was immediately leaked to the local paper. So everyone in the town knew exactly what he said, which is surely how you ensure a fair

trial in a small town when everyone knows everyone. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. The entire confession was leaked, obviously by somebody in the fucking police department, to the local paper. And then everyone in town's read it. So how exactly are you going to have a fair trial? Well, we'll come on to that in the next episode. But now, before we leave it for this half of the case, because yes, like we said, this is a beast of a case.

It needs two parts. I do want to address something that I feel is often missed when people discuss this case, especially by the documentaries I found that have made it famous. I think the problem is, while we've talked about the satanic panic, while we've talked about West Memphis being an incredibly small town in a very deprived part of the country, in all of the documentaries, I found that the people of West Memphis are painted to be sort of these Bible-thumping idiots. That's kind of, especially Paradise Lost, I think kind of makes it feel that way. And it makes it feel like these people who had absolutely no possibility of rational thought just grabbed their pitchforks one day and went off to hunt

down the town outcasts in some sort of out-of-control witch hunt. That is not what happened. I just want to make that point clear because this story isn't a story about a town turning on its outcast. This is a story of corruption and police misconduct of the highest order. The people of West Memphis, the grieving, terrified people of West Memphis were lied to and manipulated by authorities desperate to close this horrific case and desperate to consolidate their own power and also keen to use the murders of three little boys to benefit themselves. We'll talk about the political ambition side of things in the next episode. And as we'll see in the next episode, the reason that I can so confidently say that this wasn't just a town-led mob witch hunt

is because as more evidence came to light, even the families of the murdered boys saw past their pain to call for the truth and demand justice. They do a massive U-turn on what they think happened here. So I really don't want people to walk away from us covering this case thinking that the satanic panic was a phenomenon. It swept across the whole of the US from city to town. From sea to shining sea. From sea to shining sea. No one seemed to have been immune from falling for

that bizarre way of thinking but what i don't want people to think is that these were a bunch of fucking stupid hillbillies that just went after damien jason and jesse because that's not what happened they were lied to and yes some people could point to the people like vicky hutchinson and a few more characters that we'll explore in the next episode who came forward and testified about witches and covens and satan etc as being well look they are a bunch of bible thumping idiots well i think let's just say 35 000 on the table in one of the most deprived towns in the us at the time would get anybody talking and get anybody saying anything they need to say so yeah guys that is part one of west memphis three skip right over because part two is probably already out.

You lucky bastard. But before you do that, actually, we have an announcement to make. Hannah, do you want to tell the people? I do want to tell the people. If you follow us on Instagram, you will know that we are Big Buddy Best Pals with True Crime Obsessed. We did a tight five at their London live show at Cadogan Hall, which was great fun. And they have very kindly invited us to Columbus, Ohio, where we'll be taking part in Obsessed Fest. Oh, my God. We are so excited. So everybody knows, obviously, we do have a bizarrely bigger following in the US than we do in our own homeland of the UK.

Hey, man, there's more people. There's more people, but proportionally, we're still getting more US people. But we'll take it. We'll take it. We're going to make it in America, baby. So to do that, we are coming to Columbus, Ohio. We're going to be at Obsessed Fest. It's at the end of September.

So it's really like not very long to go if you are listening to this. And we're going to be doing a show there. We're going to be doing a show. We're going to be doing a meet and greet. So if you would like to come and meet and greet us and watch the show then head on over we're going to be there from like the 29th yeah we've been told of october so 29th of september to the 1st of october we'll be around yeah we've been told which plane to get on and that is about it at the moment but shenanigans abound in columbus ohio apparently there's a sephora we're

really excited about it because we don't have it in this stupid country. So anyway, we're going to be at Obsessed Fest. And also, who's going to be at Obsessed Fest? None other than Damien Eccles. Spoilers. He's out of prison. Spoilers. He went to prison. Anyway, guys, we would love to see you there if you're about.

If tickets are still available. I don't know if they are. Follow us on social media for all of the details. We'll see you in Columbus, Ohio, baby. Yeah. Tell us what to do stuff there. Tell us what to do stuff there. Tell us what to do stuff there. Tell us where to eat.

I heard that Columbus, Ohio is in the top three cities, foodie cities in the whole of the US. Bullshit. I don't believe that for a second. No, I hear that like these kind of, these kind of like more quirky fun towns actually have a way better food scene

than like New Yorkork and la because it's just like really pretentious and expensive but apparently these are the places to go okay well send us your suggestions or send me the episode number for diners drive-ins and dives with guy fieri going to columbus ohio and i'll watch it and then we'll go there and then we'll go to sephora so plans that's it guys come on and listen to the next episode, like, now. Exactly. Bye. Bye. Bye. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years.

I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal.

We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus.

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