52: West Memphis Three: Part One | Red Thread
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May 5th, 1993. Three eight-year-old boys, Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore...

disappeared in the evening hours of West Memphis, Arkansas. Their bodies were found the very next day, dumped and submerged in a creek in the Robin Hood Hills, an area that they were last reported having been seen. A month later, three suspects by the names of Jesse Miskelley, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols were arrested and charged with the murders. What followed was a short trial and convictions for each suspect.

Baldwin and Miss Kelly received life sentences, while Eccles was sentenced to death.

This truly was one of America's most confusing and most overwhelming cases of judicial overreach, investigatory incompetence, and general bias, as well as a clear case that maintains a laundry list of still-to-this-day impossible-to-answer questions. This is the West Memphis Three. And this is the Red Thread. Hello, boys. Welcome back. Hello. Welcome back to Red Thread, Caleb and Isaiah. It's been two months, right?

It's been a long time. Something like that, yeah. It's been a little bit. Because you went to Japan and then I wasn't able to the first couple weeks of January. Yeah. We were scheduled to come back

uh drew for last week's episode which was we did mlk martin luther king the assassination of martin luther king uh but you had a family emergency at the last second after the yeah we don't have to be vague my grandmother passed away so had to fly home see the uh see the family and you know spend time with them and all that so i wasn't able to make it but i appreciate you continuing in my stead in my absence so

No, yeah, it's a shame that you weren't able to weigh in on MLK because I read a lot of comments saying that you are an expert in the field of MLK assassination theories. That might be true, but at the same time, I think my takes on the case are very well publicized. I'm kind of an open book about that sort of thing. Especially with the new files coming out soon. Yeah, we might revisit that once the new files come out. Yeah, they might be awful.

But I don't care. I'm still there. So... Wait, let me get it on the record. What were your, like, high-level thoughts? Just so it's on red thread for the audience in case they haven't seen your video on it. What is your high-level opinion? Just bluntly. If...

I don't. Okay. I do not believe that James Earl Ray did it. Instead, I think it was more than likely, if not FBI agent, a member of the Memphis Police Department, or at least in corroboration with the Memphis Police Department. Yeah.

And I think that the FBI was gunning for him for a really long time, and then they just had the faculties to do it, so they did. Yes, that's broadly what we agreed on the episode as well. There's just too much evidence long-term of the FBI...

Yeah, they hated that guy. Well, they hated MLK, but they also had a history of assassinating civil rights leaders as well at the time. And then there's a bunch of evidence about, like, obviously the blackmailing and things like that. Yeah. That all add up to saying, like, the FBI. Stuff we know that happened is pretty damning in itself. We don't even need... I mean, they sent him a letter, like, trying to coerce him into unaliving himself. The letter, unironically, is like, you should...

Yeah Like fucking It's like it belongs in like 2020 internet forum debates Or whatever It's that level of rhetoric It's so over the top We agreed, even if they didn't Directly pull the trigger They definitely had a play In the part of putting someone In the position there to take the shot Basically I think they did Yeah

I would be very surprised if these documents came out and completely exonerated the FBI. Or maybe not surprised, considering they're the ones that control the documents at the end of the day. But still. Yeah, I don't think we're going to get a document... Same with it and the JFK files. I don't think we're going to get a piece of paper that says...

Like, well, we did it, guys. We killed him. Yeah. Honestly, it's probably just going to be more useless stuff. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if there were documents actually of Hoover bragging about it. I mean, why would you... Imagine assassinating your own political official and then writing it down and keeping it in a drawer somewhere. Like, what? That's bureaucracy, baby. Yeah. I saw someone... I tweeted...

I made a joke tweet that was like me going through the files that are going to be completely redacted or like blacked out or something like that. And someone said, well, the executive order says all information, so they're not supposed to do that. And I replied and said, yes, they're also not supposed to kill the president. Yeah. Not supposed to kill MLK either. That was also illegal at the time. Yeah.

Believe it or not, if this is true, they have a habit of not doing things up to code. I don't think it'll be anything special, but I'm still going to read it. It's like my tabloid magazine. Yeah, it's a very interesting case. Yeah, I definitely think the FBI did it, but we'll move on from there. Caleb, this is your...

farewell episode let's call it a goodbye episode yep yep it's not funny i shouldn't be laughing it's very sad no if you didn't laugh i'd be sad that's what you're known for that's your super it's inappropriate of me to laugh right now but it's uh yeah it's my my farewell my final my final red thread

Which sucks. At least there's a host that is on every show. Yeah, I'll be a guest if y'all have talent. No, absolutely not. Editor, write that down. That's not happening. Cut that line out. You've betrayed Isaiah one too many times. I just want to say, for the record, the whole Caleb is a guest joke came to fruition, by the way. We wished it into existence, apparently.

It actually turned in real. It's not as funny now.

It's not funny when you put it that way, partner. Yeah, it's just one of those things. I've got to really spend my time specifically. A lot of shit has come up and I've just got to be careful with how I'm delegating. Not that this was in any way some kind of waste of time or anything like that. It's just, I don't know. I just don't feel like I'm fully present. You've got to buckle down. Yeah, I've got to buckle down. And it's difficult to be entertaining and fun with these kind of things and

Yeah, that's what a lot of people say. It's only two hours a week. But that adds up when you're thinking about in the context of all the other projects you've got to do as well. And you've got to spend that energy being entertaining on those other projects. It's like resource allocation in and of itself. So I totally understand the decision to move on, given just how...

overwhelming this business can be when you take on so many projects and stuff. So we obviously wish you the best. I make the joke about the guessing and stuff like that, which is funny. But now, Caleb...

He was my pick to come onto the show and he's been fantastic and we've been blessed to have him. And as someone who also has his hand in like 15 different pies at once, sometimes you don't need that many pies. Sometimes the pies get to, there gets to be a bunch of them. So I, I a hundred percent get it. No ill will. And we wish, we wish him the best and he will be back. And a big thank you. A big thank you for even giving us the time in the first place and, you know, jumping on because you did it. Yeah.

so willingly with very little like time to even talk about it really like i was excited i mean it is it's been awesome it's just like and things have just drastically changed into the new year so maybe you know i don't know more pies will be available in a couple months or something i'm not sure but it's uh you know we'd love to have you on every now and then just to catch up and stuff like that of course you've been a instrumental person in the podcast for you know a long

a long time of its history. So thank you very much yet again. I'm sure the audience will miss you. But they can find you at OompaVille, of course. So it's not like you're vanishing into the wind. If they want to do that. And of course, sourboys.gg. That exists. Yo! Yeah, so...

Goodbye, Caleb. You're still around for about two hours right now. Kick him for the call. Bye. You're off the island. Vote it off now.

But he is going to help us bring in the story of the West Memphis Three, as mentioned earlier. So we're going to lead into the West Memphis Three right now. This is a complex, horrific, and tragic case. One of the most highly requested topics for the show, but it's just been so kind of scary in and of itself because it's such a massive case spanning multiple decades. And we can see that in the document length here. It's 30 pages long already.

part two is still being worked on this will be a two-part episode because we will not get everything in here at all it is so much so it is a very intimidating document and an episode but

We did our best. Before we get into the nitty gritty of the case, we should quickly look at where it took place. West Memphis, the largest city in Crittenden County, Arkansas in America. Tucked within the Bible Belt, if you Google, what was Arkansas like in the 1990s, you will no doubt get three things. Their basketball team, their football team, and their crime rate.

For now, let's just focus on the latter. We can discuss the basketball and football team later. Do they have a good basketball team and football team? Does anyone know? I don't fucking know. Memphis? Arkansas, I guess.

I don't know. There's the Razorbacks are Arkansas, right? Or are they South? Yeah, Arkansas Razorbacks. They're pretty good in college football, at least when I was keeping up with it when I was in college. Maybe they were better in the 90s if they were that symbolic of the state overall.

up there with their crime rate. What Arkansas is really good at is running drugs from South America while Bill Clinton was in office. That's the length of my knowledge about old school. That's a giant accolade. Yeah. That's like a giant trophy at their state hall. Best drug runners of... Hope, Arkansas! Best cartel runners. The drug capital of the Middle Eastern Midwest. Mm-hmm.

The 1990s, Bill Clinton was in office in the 90s, right? Late 90s. He was in the presidential office in the 90s, yes. He was governor of Arkansas in the late 80s, I think. Oh, he was the governor of Arkansas? Wow. Yes. He was busting nuts after that. Yeah. Which is where a bunch of the conspiracies about the Clinton family and stuff like that start up. Yeah. Because there were a bunch of people who came forward later saying that they...

like there were women that were like strange women coming to the Arkansas governor's house and stuff like that. But that's another topic for another video. We'll go into how much Bill Clinton's a horndog later on.

I miss too when that was the biggest contradiction of political leaders. It's like JFK is awful. He cheated with a movie star and it's like what I wouldn't give for that now. What I wouldn't give for that to be the worst thing an unofficial has done.

Yeah, but Arkansas's crime rate was through the roof probably because Bill Clinton was off running drugs and banging chicks or something. I don't know. He just wasn't focused on that at the time. So they produced record numbers in murders throughout the region. I think it was up there as the crime hotspot of America at the time, which is pretty interesting. So that's the context of where our case begins today. And Caleb, you're going to go into the disappearance of the three young boys here.

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1993, a phone call would find its way to the police at 8 p.m. on the evening of May 5th. On the line was the concerned voice of John Mark Byers, the stepfather of Christopher Byers. He was sure his stepson was missing. Rewinding to 3 p.m., Michael Moore, a young eight-year-old boy, biked over to his best friend Stevie Branch's house in the hopes of hanging out for the afternoon.

Pam, Stevie's mother was soon getting pleased with me. Oh my God, dude, I'm going to do this. Why did Pam make you laugh? That was so innocent. I don't know. It's just thinking about how sad that is. This is sad. I mean, yeah. Just running around. Yeah, that's what's so sad about this case to me is...

Like, I remember riding around a bunch, like, doing these exact same thing when I was eight years old and not having a care in the world. And just for that to be kind of cut short, as we'll find out. Don't let...

Don't let Caleb talk you out of this. Don't let him talk over him laughing. I'm trying to make it easier for him. Favorite activity of theirs. It was also their favorite activity, by the way, just in case you guys didn't know. Pam was weighing the decision to let her son bike around the neighborhood in her mind that day, also knowing that at 5 p.m. she had to shift as a waitress at a nearby restaurant.

Anyways, she relented. I just don't even know what's going on right now. I haven't slept in three days. She relented to the desperate begging and gave her son permission while demanding that Stevie return home before them.

Eventually a compromise was met and the boys were to be home half an hour before her shift started. If not, they would face two weeks of being grounded. Happy and sure they'd be back, off they went. Excited for the afternoon adventures they were about to embark on. See, that's relatable. That's relatable. Being excited for your afternoon adventures.

Yeah, I mean, I went out every single day when I was like that. Maybe not that age. That is a bit young, I think. But yeah, like around 10 or whatever. I would constantly be out just biking around with my friends and stuff. Did you have a big banana seat? Big banana bars? Yep. I had the clickers on the wheels as well. Oh, yeah. You were cool. Yeah. You must have been rich.

Well, no, they were probably like cheap ripoffs. I don't know where they came from. He must be from the big house. You lived in the big house. He lived at the end of the cul-de-sac. Exactly, yep. The circle, yep. It's all been downhill from there. As soon as those pickets went off my bike, it was all downhill from there.

It was barely 10 minutes later before young Christopher Byers came knocking on Pam's front door looking for his two close friends. Having been told that they had just left, Christopher had spotted Pam's younger daughter in the living room watching TV and asked if he could join, where he sat for half an hour before venturing off to find his friends. Christopher had ADHD and was often described as squirming around and was generally quite active. That afternoon, we would actually see Christopher get into trouble with his father, John Mark Byers.

He had failed to wait at home for his father or older brother before he went off to play in the neighborhood and had earned him a few whacks with John Mark's father. It's very serious. Abuse. Before being asked to do some cleanup jobs for the punishment. Did you guys get hit as punishment? My mom used to whoop my ass, but my dad never did. Okay, so you did. You got whooped by your mom. Yeah, but it was fun, though.

It was just like, you won't do that. And then she would take me and spank me in the Chinese restaurant bathroom or something because I'd be making fun of Chinese people. I was just a little rascal child. I deserved it.

I was spanked a few times. Yeah, I was spanked a few times for sure. I was normally over being mean to my sisters. One time I was mean to another girl at school and I remember I got spanked. My parents would make it into a psychological game though. They'd be like, go into the bedroom and wait. And I'll be like, it would be like minutes of me like crying on the floor. Like, please, I'm just dreading it so much. And it would never even be that bad.

No, no, the spanking was like, yeah, I got spanked a lot as well as a punishment. But I think the worst punishment for me was always just like they would tell me to stand in the corner and stare at like the corner and just stand there for like 20 minutes. That was way worse than getting spanked at that age. Because 20 minutes felt like forever. Just staring at a wall. I remember getting grounded from like video games for like a week. Oh my word. And they actually stuck to it. Whenever I got grounded, that shit lasted like one day. Yeah.

And then I was able to wheeze my way back in. I think once or twice they stuck to it, but the rest of the time I normally like connived them out of it. Like, please! Yeah. I remember, I remember like the worst punishment was when I was in like, you know, towards the end of like primary school or elementary school, as you call it. Them taking away like your phone or like the computer that you would use to chat with friends and stuff or shut off the internet. That was a big one. Whenever they would shut the internet off as punishment, that's...

That would suck. That was painful. Not being able to do anything. Not being able to talk to friends. My parents punished me by just not being around much. Well, yeah. That checks out. My dad never punished me. I never met him. I just used my own devices a lot.

Caleb's over here wishing he had more punishment, more physical contact with these parrots. Hey man, I'd rather get my ass whooped than just be alone. But this happened around 5.30pm, but as it got closer to 6, Christopher completed his tasks at home. It was then that he saw his friends and hopped on his bike to ride with them, already way past the time that they were expected to be home. All three boys were seen by Michael's mother, Dana, riding up towards Robin Hood Hills at approximately 6pm, just

Just over half an hour later, they were spotted once more in the area by another local man named Brian, who was heading home from work for the day, but that would be the last time they were ever all seen alive again.

Robin Hood Hills is such an innocent sounding name too. And what's crazy, can you guys, can you taste fall? Can you taste fall and like smell it? How integral is fall and autumn like riding, being a young kid and having friends and like riding bikes, seeing the tree leaves fall off trees? Is that a thing in Australia? I know you guys have wax seats. No, we don't have trees.

Yeah, no, we don't like, it's just summer and slightly cooler summer. I would say is our seasons like bearable summer and then like excruciatingly hot summer. I mean, we do, we have, we have like autumn and whatever the fucking other one is, but like, it's not, there's no real difference between,

no not winter whatever the other cold one is yeah no autumn is spring like we have those but it's not like there's there's no difference like we're it probably leaves fall off trees and shit i think probably but like it's not when you look at like american media and like all the all the leaves turn like orange and fall down and it's beautiful and like a couple's kissing in the in the park and stuff and it's like beautiful and enchanting no we don't have that

I'm sure you can think of that, Isaiah. Oh, yeah. In East Tennessee, especially near Gatlinburg, that was like a holiday. When the trees turned color. I'm from Front Royal, Virginia, so that's known. People come from all around

uh to look at the trees yeah the turning of the lead or the changing the leaves it's like this big event people go to skyline drive and they fucking i don't know they're a bunch of fucking yellow belly fucking city folk up in there they got trees in the city but uh yeah it's it though see reading the story about these kids are the learning about this driving like it's very easy to just be like oh i was a kid once and just seeing picture it that's what i mean yeah yeah it's so easy to put yourself in the like uh position of these children and that's what's

Yeah, I mean, depressing about it, really. Yeah. It sucks. When Pam was dropped off to work at 5 p.m. by her husband, she knew Stevie had not arrived home yet, but she was not necessarily worried. She was more annoyed, having felt her son had simply lost track of time or was pushing his luck.

Terry Hobbs, Stevie's stepfather, did a cursory drive around the neighborhood looking for his stepson, but came up short. He didn't make Pam aware until he picked her up from her shift at 9 p.m., telling her Stevie had yet to come home. That's kind of shocking. I mean, I know it was the 90s and stuff, but you're in a place with an extremely high crime rate and Bill Clinton's the governor. I'd be a bit worried, right? I'd be like, is 7 p.m. his dark out? Yeah.

It's 7pm and my kids aren't back yet Like uh I would go tell Pam Not let her like complete her shift or whatever That'd be the first thing I would do right Go grab the mum Like uh if I don't get Let's say someone even doesn't call me Or if I call someone and they don't answer I think they're dead I can't imagine I cannot imagine the 90s Like that shit's crazy

Yeah, eight-year-old boys as well, like out in the world alone at night, dark, and you don't know where they are. Imagine meeting someone and you're like, just write, here's my number, write my number down. And then you have to like somehow get lucky to call them when they're home or it's so strange. It's such an bizarre idea. Such a different world. Yeah, yeah. And no TikTok. Oh, man. Crap.

What? No. What? Let's see. Was Vine around then? Oh my god. Be quiet, Jackson. Boomer. Boomer. No one remembers Vine. Shocked and in disbelief that he had not told her sooner, two chilling words came out of her mouth. He's dead.

Why? Yeah, so that would be your reaction, apparently, if you miss a phone call. It's the same thing, yeah. Back at the Byers' house, Christopher's parents had become increasingly worried as the night went on, with John Mark being the first to call the police at 8pm, who promptly arrived minutes later to investigate the alert. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on. This is a different parent. The mom... The kid's not home yet. And the mom just says, he's dead.

But it's 9pm though He's dead for sure You know your son though That is the biggest That is the highest level you could jump to All at once No build up just straight to the moon One shot As Caleb just said You catastrophize sometimes When shit out of the realm of the ordinary happens This probably never happened to them before

Yeah. I mean, just think about your own child's like missing for what? Three hours past when they're supposed to be. And you're like dead in a river. Dead. Gone. The ditch. No idea where they are. Never to be seen again. Anyways. Dead. Immediately. Yeah.

Continue, sorry. He's dead. I'm going back to work. Take me back to the restaurant. Second shift, dude. I'm picking up another shift, yeah. Robin Hood Hills was searched throughout the night, but there were limits to the resources available to the search team and nothing was found. As the morning sun broke, so too did the hearts of the families of Christopher, Stevie, and Michael as the time since they were last seen began to stretch longer and longer and it became increasingly obvious that something was deeply wrong.

Investigations continued throughout the day with an arm-to-arm canvassing of the area conducted immediately at 8 a.m. The first evidence was found that very afternoon, oddly not during the canvassing, when a child's shoe was discovered floating through a river in the Robin Hood Hills woods. It was discovered by juvenile parole officer Steve Jones, who quickly called for backup. A juvenile parole officer

What the hell is that? Yeah, like just juvie, I think. I think they got everyone in the fucking city on board to search this, obviously, or like all the law enforcement, which included probably the local juvie officers. So he's not a juvenile. He's a juvenile. No, no, no. Yeah, it's a young sheriff. He's like a deputized. He's a deputized. He's a PO.

He's a PO for juvie people. We even got that Lord of the Flies kid out here looking for him. He's real good though in those woods. To find the kids we need to think like the kids. Juvenile parole episode. You smell him boy? Go get him.

When an officer went into the ditch to retrieve the shoe, Michael Moore's body, which was sitting at the bottom of the creek, was dislodged and discovered. Shortly after, the bodies of Christopher and Stevie were also discovered in close proximity to Michael's body. The three boys were found naked and hog-tied with their own shoe lace. Oh my god, with each hand tied. I did not realize it was that intense. That's fucking insane. Oh my word.

And the interesting thing here is that each boy seemed to have been tied with a different knot. Michael Moore with square knots, Christopher Byers with two half hitches, Steve Branch with three half hitches with varying loops on each knot. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, well, let me pause on that for a second. Did you guys do Boy Scouts or whatever the fuck it's called? No.

No? You weren't like... No. Okay, I thought that was way more common. American media has led me to think that every single person was a Boy Scout. Well, so some people do Boy Scouts... Okay, the only people I ever knew that do Boy Scouts growing up were people who lived in cities who didn't want to. So it was like kids who were in like...

like suburbs or like big towns who like i want to go camping for a week and learn to do stuff those are boy scouts because like caleb and i like grew up in the woods like we grew up you were you were naturalized boy scouts you were you were raised in the it would be like okay let me leave my woods here and go to a group who's very restrictive about what i can do in a different kind of woods yeah uh yeah but anyway back to the the evidence here i wanted to uh ask like

How... Three different knots, that would indicate, like, different people tying the knot, surely. Because if you were just... If you were tying... If you were tying the children or the people, you'd probably use the same knot, right? That's what that indicates to me. Yeah. Like, do you guys know your knots? Like, are these significantly different? Because I don't know my knots. I know those knots. Uh...

I know knots. I don't know how to do them. I just tie stuff and then people are like, oh, that's so-and-so. And I'm like, okay. It's like a science. Not so science. I just do them. I don't know the intricacies of them. Do you, Caleb? I would imagine the significance there is it's like there's two different strategies used between the...

between the ropes. Or maybe I could see maybe like if it was one person, one person who had kidnapped these kids, maybe he forced them to tie each other up and that's why they use different knots maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's just a very odd detail to me. Yeah, it's strange. That they would each tie with different knots. I don't know the names of knots. People who also talk about the names of knots, I feel like those are the same type of people who take pictures of birds.

you know and know birds real well you meet really cool people like awesome epic people bird watching sick do you do that no no I don't I don't I don't but that's weird knowing not names is weird I feel like

Alright, you can continue. I just wanted to point that out. No worries. Another piece of evidence that might suggest that Moore than one assailant was that Michael Moore was physically assaulted by two different objects on the left and right side of his head. Below is a picture showing different objects found in the area. The wounds and indents on Michael Moore's skull were consistent with E-17 on the left side of his head and E-139 was consistent with the damage on the right side of his head.

So that picture's in the show notes, by the way, which you can go to the description to find. But if you're watching video, it'll be up on screen right now. So there's two different

wooden sticks, I guess you could call them branches that were found in the nearby premises that they kind of, it seems like they rudimentarily matched to the wounds on Michael Moore's skull. Potential weapons, yeah. Yeah, potential weapons. Two different for one of the boys, Michael Moore indicates that there was more than one person utilizing them. Definitely, to me, anyway. And their boys experienced terrible physical mutilation. Uh...

General mutilation they were so badly mutilated the immediate assumption was castration The fate of the boys had been torture and murder at the hands of one or more people I mean, that's like yeah, that is just I've never heard of this I've heard of this I think the West Memphis three I've heard of that but I don't know anything about this this story. This is like fucking crazy tragic All right, so the police investigation Isaiah would you like to take yes gotcha so

There was an immediate desperation felt within the local police at the time. They faced immense public pressure to solve the mystery of who murdered these three boys, but there was truly so little evidence for them to go off, and what little evidence they did manage to find was horribly mismanaged by an inexperienced and inadequate police force. An investigative journalist, Mara Leverett, later found that, quote, the police records were a mess. To call them disorderly would be putting it mildly.

For example, some physical evidence was stored in paper sacks obtained from a local supermarket. Yeah, that was all of the description of the mismanagement I needed. Like, to just know that they were storing shit in paper sacks that they got from, like, the local, I don't know what a brand of grocery stores over in America is. Kroger's? That's one, right? Yeah. Yeah, one of those places. Like, that's crazy. Yeah.

It's so dumb, Isaiah. It's so dumb. It is. I can't imagine ever being in a position where you're like trying to investigate a murder. The tale is old as time. Yeah, I know. It happens constantly. It's so sad. Yeah, I'm just used to it at this point. In addition to the general desperation directed towards the already overwhelmed West Memphis Police Department, something else was happening throughout the country at the time that drove criticism and bias towards the murders.

This little-known something was broadly called the Satanic Panic. Yes! It comes back! It's always relevant during these cases, during the 80s and 90s. Love it. Yeah, because it's all that anyone was talking about, especially conservative groups. Yeah, I want to go back to that. That was fun. The Satanic Panic? Yeah. I want general fear of Satan again. You know what? Me too. During the 80s and 90s, the devil, known by some as Satan...

Was everywhere. That's so funny. I did them. It was a moral panic, a widespread fear across communities that cult-like activities designed around the worship of Satan were prevalent in America. It was fueled by sensationalized media reports, flawed police investigations, public hysteria, and misportrayed alternative cultural swing towards emerging art forms and entertainment. I would also argue it was fueled by Satan as well, perhaps.

Well, perhaps. That's yet to be determined. Those who were working on the case felt like the case may have a cultish, satanic aspect to it, and this bias persisted without much in the way of evidence supporting the theory. With this mindset, however, there was one name in town that the investigators thought of immediately. Damien Eccles. Imagine having that reputation.

Three boys are murdered and they immediately start thinking, obviously a satanic aspect. And then immediately they're just like, oh, Damien Nichols. That's a bad rep. Ah, yes, clearly.

Damian Wayne Eccles was an 18 year old at the time and he was publicly known to have an interest in occultism. He wore dark clothes, had dark hair, and had a sort of mysterious and somewhat intimidating aura about him. That's also how my wife described me when we first met. Really? Are you joking? Mysterious and intimidating aura. I can see why she married you then. Yeah.

He had also definitely had his share of trouble throughout the years, with his attendance rate at school being incredibly poor, which prompted frequent visits from social workers. Damien had also allegedly threatened his ex-girlfriend and her then-boyfriend at the time, and he suffered with severe depression to the point where he was admitted to a psychiatric ward and put under watch. Apparently, Damien tried to suck blood from the arm of another person around this time, believing that it would give him superpowers.

The social worker took notes on her meetings with Damien and wrote, quote, Eccles told her he might become another Charles Manson or Ted Bundy, end quote. He also had a history of saying uncomfortable things and being erratic with many examples of times where he would just blow up and hurt someone, and even his family had become scared of him.

Later, Dr. George W. Woods testified that Echols suffered from, quote, serious mental illness characterized by grandiose and persecutory delusions, auditory and visual hallucinations, disordered thought process, substantial lack of insight, and chronic incapacitating mood swings, end quote.

This is all to say that Damien was known to law enforcement at the time and immediately fit the bias they had already formed surrounding the idea of a potential satanic murderer. Yeah. So it was entirely like their bias was pretty much immediate. Like we said, they, like there was an officer at the scene of the crime who said something to the effect of, I think, uh, Damien's finally done it or something like that at the scene of the crime. Like, you know, when they were all standing there. So there,

Their bias was already in mind or their bias already existed at the time when they discovered the scene of the crime. So Damien was kind of like railroaded immediately, I would say, as someone who was pinned to fit the MO or whatever. Was there anything about the murder to indicate it was satanic other than the fact it was like...

I mean, there were some trauma indicating that they had been cut, like again, the castration or the wounds to the genitals that looked like castration. That was only on one boy, by the way, not all three, as well as just them being tied up and found naked. I think people immediately just went to satanic panic as opposed to,

What would probably be the more rational answer of like a, you know, child predator or something like that. A sadist or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which was what my immediate assumption would be. Rather than a Satanist. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So on May 7th, two days after the bodies had been discovered, Damien was first interviewed. The juvenile officer who first discovered the floating shoe, Steve Jones, was sent to interview Damien about the murders, but there were no notes taken of this interaction.

The next day, Detective Bill Durham and Investigator Shane Griffiths spoke to Damien again, but this time they also questioned Jason Baldwin, Damien's close friend, and Damien's girlfriend, Dominique Thier, at the time, at Baldwin's house.

Jason and Damien had a history of vandalism and shoplifting, respectively. While Damien had left school already, Jason was still enrolled and earned high grades. They had bonded over similar tastes and interests, as well as their hatred of the cultural climate of the Bible Belt they found themselves a part of. They told the investigators that he had never heard of Christopher, Michael, or Stevie, and had no idea what happened to them. Damien agreed to provide hair and blood samples and a polygraph when asked.

But when he completed it, it returned a reading that implied that Damien was being deceptive. So I'm in jail. That's enough for me. That's enough for me. Send him straight to jail. Yeah. Polygraphs are very... I mean, like, I don't even know how they work. There's a reason they can't be used. They're used as interrogation tools or like...

circumstantial evidence there's a reason they don't count as like evidence evidence well yeah so i don't they're inadmissible in court right because it's not a proven science you can i think that you can use them under some conditions but they don't hold any staying power on their own yes like what they're most often used for in my from what i've seen i was about to say my experience like i'm a cop or something from what i've seen

They're used as an interrogation tool. So say they're interrogating a guy and then they do a polygraph and it's like, okay, we know you're lying because the test says that. So you may as well fess up now. Exactly. Look at these records here. Which makes sense. I don't like the idea of these tests

which aren't a proven science. I'm pretty sure they just measure your stress, right? Which you're going to be stressed. It's like heartbeat and like stress levels and like blood pressure and stuff like that. All things that would indicate when someone is lying, but when you factor in the situation and the context, like you're in a... When you factor in you're being interrogated by the police about a triple homicide. Even if I was being completely honest, I would be very stressed and my heartbeat would be kind of... Because I know it's like...

I know the whole idea is like, well, they take a baseline to see where you're already at and then they judge off the baseline. But if someone's like, oh, what day is it? What's your name? You're going to have a different biological reaction than someone going, where were you when these children were murdered? It's like, even if you didn't do it, that's a stressful thing to be asked by a detective. So here, I'll read these questions that they asked to Damien about the murders. And let me know if you'd be stressed while you were asked about this. Okay, so question three.

Sorry, I'm still recovering from influenza. I've got a persistent cough. Question three. At any time, Wednesday or Wednesday night, were you in Robin Hood Hills? Imagine the police shouting at you as well. Damien answered no, by the way. Question five. Were you present when those boys were killed? Question seven. Did you kill any of those three boys? Question nine. Do you know who killed those three boys?

Question 10. Do you suspect anyone of having killed those three boys? Like, that was so stressful. Obviously, they have to ask those questions and stuff, but, like, I can understand why polygraph tests are kind of, you know, laughed at, in a sense, as not being entirely indicative of the truth.

So, yeah, but the report ends by saying, quote, it is the opinion of this polygraph examiner that the subject recorded significant responses indicative of deception when he answered the above listed relevant questions in the manner noted. Conclusion, deception indicated, which is a pretty hard final line, quote.

I like that final line there. That's pretty cool. Deception indicated. Yeah, like fucking, yeah. Target acquired. Target acquired. Deception indicated. All right, so let's pivot for a moment briefly because there are two interesting people we need to introduce here. A woman named Vicki Hutchinson and her eight-year-old son, Aaron.

Vicki was a new resident of West Memphis and had troubles of her own with police at the time. She was accused of stealing money from her employer and had gone in for a polygraph exam with Detective Don Bray to resolve that issue. But the exam didn't go ahead because Vicki had brought her son into the meeting as well, who managed to distract the detective as he had apparently been friends with Christopher, Stevie, and Michael.

He was brought in to give a statement three weeks later, and in this statement, he shared some new details that the detectives weren't expecting. He talked about a clubhouse that they, Michael and Christopher, were going to, which was located in Robin Hood Hills. They would go to this spot where they could sometimes watch specific men. When the detectives asked what the men were doing, he replied that, quote, they were doing nasty stuff. They do what men and women do, end quote.

He stated that apparently this had happened quite a few times with the boys going back to the spot to watch adult activities. He described the men as around 20 years old and, quote, looking like his mom, end quote, which was interpreted to have meant that the men had long hair. That is bizarre. That is such a bizarre turn of events. I rode around on bikes a lot when I was growing up. I never did that. I never found places where people banged.

Like, the most I would say was finding, like, you know, like, adult magazines in the woods and stuff that you would stumble across and shit like that. That's about as far as that would go. Yeah, that's wild. Well, it's like, okay, they're eight. And then, I don't... Clubhouse? Like, a treehouse or something like that? Or maybe... Yeah, I think...

So I think that's what people interpret that as meaning. But when they went and investigated the scene, the police officers and investigators didn't find any clubhouse and stuff. But what I'm thinking now is that perhaps they just referred to that general area as their clubhouse, maybe. There's no evidence to support that. But maybe it's like their hangout spot. They were at some point where they were watching like...

They're watching people hook up with each other. Or does that mean that they were watching movies where that was happening? Like they had pornos or something? Specifically, I think men having sex in the woods is what the indication is. Which is bizarre. In Memphis? Seems unlikely. In like a 4 by 10 foot patch of trees? Right?

I also don't know how they wouldn't have been like three eight year old children wouldn't have been seen as well by the men and stuff I don't know it's not I don't think this was admitted into court for good reason let's say an eight year old's like yeah well in you know west Memphis we have a clubhouse where we watch a man do sexy stuff in the woods together yeah west Hollywood maybe alright

These statements are considered controversial because apparently he had been pressured from his mother to cooperate with the police, but the police were asking very leading questions which may have influenced Aaron's responses. The statements got even more explosive when he alleged that he was there at the time of the murder with him claiming that they were attacked by these men that they often saw and that Michael and Stevie were sexually assaulted and tied up by the men.

He described the men as wearing black robes and cloaks that he associated with some sort of ritual gathering.

Aaron may have also been influenced by the satanic panic or his mother. Statements were never used in court as they were deemed unreliable with a lack of credible evidence and blatant contradictions to known facts about the case, such as a lack of evidence suggesting that the boys had been raped. Yeah. I don't. So there was a lack of evidence that they were raped is what it's saying. No. So there was no evidence suggesting through the evidence.

autopsy and examination that the boys had been raped. Yeah. No. Okay. Gotcha. But that doesn't mean, so that doesn't mean that the, uh, perpetrators weren't operating on like sexual humiliation and stuff or sexual motives and stuff. It just means that they had been raped. Yeah. This sounds like an eight year old boy. Cause it goes from like, Oh, you knew these boys to like, I was there when they were murdered.

Yeah, plus obviously their murders were known at the time as well, so that could have influenced this kid being like, yeah, I totally saw it. And they were wearing black robes and cloaks. Yeah, it sounds like a boy kind of taking all these different sources and then making his own story. In West Memphis. Look at the group of guys who hook up in the woods wearing cloaks. Yeah, anyway.

But let's go back to Vicky. Vicky relates to the investigators that similarly to them, she thought that the killing was cult related. And that was the mom with the boy, by the way, Vicky. She was the mom. So she also had to bias that there was a satanic panic kind of thing vibe. So obviously if she's relaying that to the son, then he's also going to tie that into his story. Yeah.

That thought or bias led to an idea. See, Vicki had a neighbor, 17-year-old boy who would help her mow the lawn and sometimes look after the kids. His name was Jesse Miss Kelly. While not close or best friends, she knew that Miss Kelly was acquainted with Damiana Jackson.

Not me. Jason. Damien and Jason. Not me. You said Jackson. Oh, my bad. Sorry. Slipping the tongue, I guess. Was acquainted with Damien and Jason. Vicky proposed the idea of her playing detective for the police department, using Jesse as an in to get close to Damien and prove his connection to the murders. The police, unbelievably, thought this was a great plan. And so they said...

And so he thanks her to do just that. This random woman who's like, I swear Colt did it. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get in close to this 17-year-old boy who mows the lawn, and I'm going to use him to get evidence of the killers. And the police were like, I have no idea how this could go wrong. Yeah, well, that's a great idea, man. Get in there. Why didn't we think of this? Let's ask Bill Clinton. Here's your badging gun, man.

An important factor to note here before we go any further is it is brought up many times in this case is that Jesse Miss Kelly has a low IQ. It was recorded as only being 72. This meant that he could only read at a third grade level and was categorized as borderline intellectual functioning. Hey, but that's still intellectually functioning. I didn't even know you could categorize someone as that. That's brutal. He is borderline functional. You're almost functioning.

You're caught on the board. Dude, you're close. You better watch it. Yeah. This is important later on, but it also meant that Jesse was quite a susceptible and vulnerable person as those with low IQ tend to be easier to coerce and convince. When Vicky came to him asking questions about his friends, she also asked about wanting to meet up with Damien. Guys, is her being attracted to him? Well, that's creepy. Wait, her idea...

in order to operate for the police to get information was to seduce the minor. Damien was 18. Oh, well, in that case. Yeah. In that case, it's okay. Legal. Jesse didn't ask any questions and set up the meeting. The first meeting wasn't eventful. It happened at Vicky's house where she left books on Wiccan or... She's a genius. What?

Where she left books on Wiccan around in hopes of piquing Damien's interest in her as a way of opening him up to her. No wonder the police deputized her. She was made for this business. Oh my word. The subterfuge. Ultimately, nothing much happened here at the first meeting. It was the second meeting where her story took a turn. Oh my gosh. Okay.

On May 19th, Vicky told investigators that Damien had picked up herself and Jesse in a red Ford Escort. This is a very bizarre detail as Damien did not own a car at the time and had never been known by anyone to drive. So Damien then took them to something called an Esbat, which is best described as a gathering of witches. Wait, can guys be witches? Yes. Warlock. Yeah, guys can be witches. Warlock, but it's different. Warlock.

Or wizards. I don't know. I think a wizard's like, you're smart and you read books. Warlock is you eat roots. Talk trees and shit. I don't know.

That's what you do. You eat roots and talk to trees. You're fucking right. Dude, I could 100% see you shirtless, like, casting spells in the woods during the morning. Like, throwing sparks out of your hand and eating roots straight out of the dirt. That's so you. They're there to be eaten.

They are there to be eaten. Exactly. You kind of look like a wizard the more I think about it. Like, just the mustache and your whole, like, If you put a robe on him, if you put a robe in, like, a... Bro, that guy's a wizard for sure. If you put a robe on that guy, he's a wizard. Or actually, no, I don't think you're a one guy. I think you'd be more like a staff guy so you could, like, poke

poke around in the woods for those roots if we had him in a police lineup and like we were like alright bring out the five people all dressed in robes he'd get ID'd immediately yeah that there's a wizard that there is a wizard that's a wizard if I've ever seen one put him away that there is a wizard send him to wizard jail in this world where being a wizard is illegal you're immediately put in jail if you're a wizard yeah well it should be I don't want people flicking fire out of their hands at me absolutely not need to get them out of here nah that shit's cool man

Okay, so anyway, she says the girl who thought it'd be a good idea to seduce the 18-year-old and put Wiccan books out on the table at her house is now saying that he took her to a witch. This woman clearly has a mental illness. Like...

Or just watches the news way too much Well okay to give the benefit of the doubt To provide maybe a little bit of Understanding to this woman I think she's insane as well like you But devil's advocate here Maybe her son Told her about those things That he had experienced And she believed his stories maybe Maybe it wasn't her feeding him the information Maybe he had an imagination But she's now saying that Damien Took her to a witch meeting

Yeah, I don't know what that... You're right. Never mind. She's lost me again. So now that we got that out of the way... Yep. We're at the SBAT now. SBAT, yeah. It was here she encountered around 10 other teenagers who had painted themselves black. Cancelled. While there, they all began... This is like the test of time. While there, they all began to remove their clothes at the same time and started to touch each other.

Damn. They were calling each other by nicknames like Spider and Lucifer instead of using their real names. Was everyone just banging in the woods at the time? Like, what's going on? This is like classic, like, 80s, 90s satanic panic. Like, oh, they're trying to convince teenagers to have unprotected sex and to pray to the devil. Like, classic Spider. He's always doing that. Yeah.

If I knew a guy named Spider, I would assume he was doing that. True, yeah. That's a good point. Selling drugs out of a van. Absolutely. Fake IDs. Spider's a weird name for a guy. He definitely plays bass in some weird garage band. Yeah, absolutely. So what I want to know here real quick, though, is one of them was named Lucifer. Wouldn't that be like a...

You wouldn't want to do that in a, in a, like a Satan cult or whatever though, because aren't you meant to worship Lucifer? Taking his name as your own is kind of weird. I don't know, bro. Yeah. I guess we're trying to apply logic to something that doesn't require it. This is kind of a little out there. Yeah. I don't know what their naming conventions are for D&D and whatnot. Vicky had decided she had seen enough and apparently asked Damien to leave, to which he willingly drove her home while leaving Jesse behind. They left him?

They were getting naked and touching each other too. I'd probably stay. I wouldn't want to leave. They requested that Vicky conduct another polygraph test on June 2nd, which he did. The test declared that she was telling the truth, which ultimately means very little because lie detector tests are not admissible in court and aren't considered trustworthy, but they were utilized a lot in this case.

So quote from Vicky. The next day after he finds out that I want to go do this, he told me and asked me that I want to go to SBAT. I didn't know what SBAT was. I looked it up in the book and found out that he was a meeting and I thought immediately, yeah, this is where I want to go. I want to see what's going on. That's how I imagine Vicky talked. She's nosy. She just wants to be included in everything. It sounds like.

I have no idea. I guess this is the same police department that shot Martin Luther King. So I don't know what I'm expecting, but I guess more than like, let's deputize this woman. Yeah, it's so crazy. Give her a magic gun. That's what I said. Give this woman a gun immediately. Like, isn't the evidence sourced by her just going to be inadmissible anyway? Uh,

It would have to be. What would be inadmissible? Any evidence gathered by her. So what's the point of deputizing? Well, no, she's a patron of the police department now, I guess, whatever that means. Oh, okay. What frustrates me is I know this ends with Damien and them going to jail, so I'm just getting ready for that. Through this bizarre story stemming from a completely unrelated person, investigators still seize the opportunity. That opportunity was none other than Jesse Miss Kelly.

We mentioned that he was a susceptible young man with low intelligence, and many believed that the police at the time recognized this as something that they could use to their advantage. They wasted no time bringing Jesse in the next day, placing significant interest on him due to the fact that he was involved in rituals and had a connection to Damien Echols. Jesse was only 17 at the time, and so he was still classified as a minor. This meant that they needed permission from his father to approve of this interview, which he eagerly did.

Wow, I bet that father feels bad now, maybe, hopefully. He gave permission for that and it eventually led to a 20 year life sentence. Well, okay, so...

Yes, because it didn't... This is a unique scenario because it's a false... It seems like we're going towards a false conviction, right? If I had a son and the police were like, did you murder someone?

Either my son didn't murder that person or my son did murder that person. And either way, I would want it to be known like this. Again, this is a very unique scenario where it seems like the police were at best behaving incredibly stupidly. Yeah. Like to the degree of like there. I don't know if the father could have reasonably done.

Assume that would happen. I don't think anyone's like, well, what if the police are trusting some random old lady to tell them about, you know, which cults in the woods of Memphis, you know, like, hmm.

Plus, there's always the assumption, or I see this assumption a lot, maybe not now, but historically, that the police will treat you fairly in interrogations and things like that. Like, you can trust the police a lot of the time, when, no, they're obviously seeking a prosecution. Well, the police are looking to convict someone. That's their job. Yes, exactly. That's their job. So...

Maybe the question of who actually did it typically falls on attorneys and judges more, but the police are looking to get arrest. So that's always going to be their objective.

But even then, it's like the level of incompetence on display here. I don't even know if you can prepare for aside from just saying like, obviously, I guess I'm trying to give the father the benefit of the doubt because I know this results in like his son becoming a part of it when he wasn't actually a part of it. Potentially. We truly don't know who was part of this, by the way. Sure. What is the outcome of this? It seemingly seems to be the case. I'm just, I guess, trying to make the father sound less evil than...

it would initially say, cause the way it's phrased here is it sounds like, well, the father wanted 35 grand. So he was willing to put his son's livelihood at stake for it. I don't,

I don't really know if that was the case. Well, no, I believe that the father believes that the son was completely innocent and that there was no risk. Exactly. Yes. I don't think the father would send his son to jail in a life sentence for $35,000. I mean, he didn't get the 35K anyway, so it's not like the game. Did you hear that? This is off topic, but the person who turned in Luigi Mangione didn't get the reward money. Yes. Yeah. Became a social enemy for it too, probably. I did not hear that.

Yeah, the person who called... I think it was out of McDonald's. The person who called the police that Luigi was hiding out of McDonald's didn't get the reward money because they called 911 instead of the tip line. So they didn't get... They weren't...

qualify for the award so so needlessly mean like they've already like probably ruined their lives now because everyone hates them for turning oh yeah there's been a bunch of people who've like to my understanding tracked down like their personal facebook and like you know like trader class yeah class trader yeah yeah anyway

The interview that followed became very important to the police's investigation, but it also became incredibly controversial. First up, the police interrogated Jesse for around 12 hours, but only around 45 minutes of it was recorded, leading to a lot of time left unaccounted for. Many have also weighed in on Jesse's IQ and how he is probably susceptible to coercion and suggestion, especially throughout the intense questioning and the overwhelming nature of a 12-hour-long police interrogation.

Jesse had no lawyers or parents present during the interrogation, too, something considered to be, at the very least, unethical for a minor to be exposed to.

At first, Jesse denied any involvement in the murders of the three boys. He took a polygraph test where he was asked questions like, have you ever been to Robin Hood Hills? Have you ever took part in devil worship? Have you ever attended a devil worship ceremony? Are you involved in the murder of those three boys? And do you know who killed those three boys? To every answer, Jesse responded, no, but the polygraph indicated deception.

When Detective Durnham was discussing the result with a colleague, he declared that Jesse was quote, lying his ass off. As hours passed, Chief Inspector Gary Glitchell and Detective Ridge began to wear Jesse down. This was when they finally got what they wanted, a confession.

The tape begins recording at 2.44 p.m. that afternoon. Conveniently when the confession happens, by the way, roughly. So they didn't record 12 hours. He's about to do it to start the recording. I have a feeling. I have a feeling. Turn it on now. The subject quickly turns to the 5th of May.

It's best to read some excerpts from the confession to get a more complete understanding of it. Okay, let's role play this. Who wants to be? I'll be. I'll be. I'll be Jesse. Okay. I can be rich. I'll be rich. I'll be rich. I'll be glitch. Glitch comes in at the end. So. Okay, cool. All right. Wait. What? This is Arkansas, right? This is. Yeah, this is Arkansas, Memphis police chief. So.

Witnessed by Michael Wayne. I can't see that one. Witnessed by Michael Wayne, Alan, and myself, Detective Bryn Rees.

Okay, Yessie. Let's go straight to that date. 05-05-93. One day, early in the morning, you received a phone call. Is that correct? I'm not going to do a low IQ kind of consulting. I was so afraid you were going to do that. I was going to say, well, it sounds like fucking Caleb is rich. No, he's just being an Arkansas corn-fed southern boy. I guess I've never met an Arkansas dude. Come on, man.

Yes I did. Yes I did. And who made that phone call? Jason Baldwin. I don't know, I'm trying to say I was 17, I don't fucking know. What occurred and what did he talk about? He called me and asked me if I could go to West Memphis with him and I told him no, I had to work and stuff. He told me that he had to go to West Memphis, so him and Damien with and then I went with them.

Before continuing, this is an important note. Jason Baldwin was known to the police as a friend of Damien's. And while they had him in the back of their minds, this immediately elevated from friend to an additional key suspect. Isn't this crazy that they got all their key suspects just from, uh,

a random woman basically having jesse as her her lawnmower random woman who manipulated a 17 year old mentally ill man into talking about he wasn't even connected to them he wasn't even like close friends with uh no he just like jason kind of knew them damien yeah he kind of knew them and then the police just lawnmower bullied that dude in an interrogation room until they got him to say the thing they want him to say yeah classic wiccan behavior

To be fair, though, this is what kind of screws me up. We're going to continue reading, but he does confess to it, and I just don't understand why. That happens. It happens a lot, but in detail and stuff, it's just so strange. I can't remember where I was. If it was in person, I think it was in person. No, shut up. We were talking about to a detective. I think this was maybe when I worked at the gun shop, and we were doing a presentation with a...

A detective who was talking about self-defense laws. I can't remember. Anyway, I had a detective one time tell me he was like, you know, in TV shows and movies and stuff like that, like they always show people confessing to something they didn't do. And that just never happens. People do not confess to crimes they did not commit.

And it's like, yes, they absolutely do. There are countless examples of like years later, DNA evidence is used to exonerate people who signed a confession because they get interrogated and like beat down over the course of several days to the point where some people get gaslit into think. I mean, there's, I do not, I cannot count the number of psychological studies there are into, uh,

about when people are in a scenario where someone with authority tells them to continue doing something or tells them that a false thing is another thing they just go along with it like you can very easily wear someone down like oh and then you add in the add in the fact again that this was a low iq a 72 i mentally functioning person that is borderline functioning coerce yeah borderline functioning yeah i i get it it's just such a

It's such a strange phenomenon, like a social phenomenon where when presented with that level of authority, you literally do admit to things that you genuinely didn't do. It's such a crazy phenomenon that just baffles my brain. All right, we can continue though. Who's rich?

Me. Okay, what occurred while you were there? I forget what the voice was. It doesn't matter anyway. It was the Arkansas Corn Fed. When I was there, I saw Damien hit the one boy real bad and then he started screwing them and stuff. Alright.

You got in front of you a picture that was taken out of the newspaper, I believe. It's got three boys, and these are the three boys that were killed on that date in Robin Hood Woods. Okay, one of those three boys is that you say Damien hit the third picture, which will be... Michael Moore. Isaiah.

Oh, yeah, it's Glitchell. It's finally your turn. Sorry. This boy right here. Isaiah was using a dramatic effect then. My apologies. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's the buyer's boy. That's who you're pointing at. Yes.

If you read the caption, the Grizzlies lane from left, eight-year-old Michael Moore, Stephen Branch, and Christopher Byers. Okay, so you saw Damien Stratton, Chris Byers in the head. How'd you get a bit of like gruffness in your voice then? That was nice. The growl. Jesse continues. Right. What did he hit him with? He hit him with his fist and bruised him up real bad. And then Jason turned around and hit Steve Branch.

So this is all part of the confession, obviously. So they immediately... He immediately... He's...

He's adding details and stuff. I don't know if this was coerced by the police. Like they asked him to say this kind of stuff before the tape started. That's kind of like the insinuation I get, but it's still such a... Jesse uses detail and stuff. It's not like he just said, I did it or something like that. Or we did it. There's detail and stuff as we'll find out. Ridge continues. Okay. And when you came back a little bit later, now all the three boys are tied? Yes. Is that right?

Yes, and I took off and run home. All right. Have they got their clothes on when you saw them tied? No, they had them off. So I get that this is like leading questions, right, Isaiah? You would say this is like leading in a certain direction from the detectives? Correct. Okay. They had already gotten them off when he first hit the boy. When Damien first hit the first boy, did they have their clothes on then? Yes. All right. When did they take their clothes off?

Right after they beat up all three of them, beat them up real bad. Beat them up real bad. And then they took their clothes off? Yes. This is so insane. It reminds me of Jesse, at least, the words. It's like something I've heard in Red Dead Redemption or the way he's speaking. This is the guy that's borderline functioning, right? Yeah, Jesse is, yeah.

And maybe Ridge as well. Yeah. This is bad writing. And then they tied them up. Then they tied them up, tied their hands up. They started screwing them and stuff, cutting them and stuff. And I saw it and turned around and looked. And then I took off running. I went home. Then they called me and asked me how come I didn't stay. I told them I just couldn't. Just couldn't stay? I just don't get it. It's so... I get it. I get that he could be coerced and false confession and stuff. But man, that's just so much...

So much detail that even if I felt like I was pressured into confessing something. I don't know. I don't really think that's a lot of detail. He's saying, yeah, I saw it and then I ran. I mean, honestly, it's probably because they spent 12 hours before going, were you there? Did you look away? Did you run? And he goes, no, no, no. Now they're like, okay, what happened? He's like, I looked away and I ran. Oh, okay, yeah. Just echoing back what they asked him about. Yeah, I could see. Yeah, he just wants to get out of this. He's just like, yeah, I did all this stuff that you just said. Yep, gotcha. Okay.

I couldn't stand it to see what they were doing to them. Okay. Now, when this is going on, when this is taking place, you saw somebody with a knife. Who had a knife? Jason. Jason had a knife. What did he cut with a knife? What did you see him cut? Or who did you see him cut? I saw him cut one of the little boys. All right. Where did he cut him at? He was cutting him in the face. Cutting him in the face? All right. Another boy was cut. I understand. Where was he cut at? At the bottom.

On his bottom? When he faced down and he was cutting him or... He was. Now you're talking about bottom. Do you mean right here? Yes. In his groin area? Yes. And this actually is important and it's an important detail for later because this is referring to the castration-like wound that was present. But a lot of experts would later testify that that damage was potentially or likely done by animal wildlife because that...

That lake that they were submerged in was filled with snapping turtles and things like that. And none of the other boys, or none of the other victims, sorry, had similar damage or injuries like that. So it's potential that it was post-mortem animals, basically. Which would potentially indicate that Jesse here is lying and just telling the police what they want to hear, given...

that they had evidence, you know, suggesting that, that castration, that castration like damage had been done. Jesse had a rat tail. You seen a picture of him? Yeah. Yeah. And Brian Ridge. And that's how the detective Ridge West Memphis police department. He sounds like that. He actually sounds like that. I'm listening to the tape. Did you listen? Oh yeah. This is detective Brian Ridge of the West Memphis police department currently in the West Memphis police department conducting next best case in triple homicide.

So you were pretty close. Yeah. I just kind of added like a little bit of more of a, you know, a little more East Memphis kind of impediment. Gotcha. All right. So those are the excerpts of the confession. I think it was important to read over those in order to provide the confession. So it's a long excerpt, but it's an important moment in the case. Many felt the detectives were leading Jesse into this confession. It's up to you to determine if that is the case or not.

There were other inconsistencies as well. Jesse originally said the murders happened in the daytime, but they didn't. He also said the boys were tied up with rope when it was actually their shoelaces. He also said that the boys had skipped school that day, but they definitely didn't. These were eventually ironed out by Jesse and the interrogation ended...

With Jesse getting the details correct and Jesse implicated himself, Damien and Jason as the three murderers. So I think how that would have gone is like he says something like we tied them up with rope and then the detective leading goes, are you sure it wasn't shoelaces or something like that? You know, like leading him into the correct answers to iron out those details and make sure that the confession was as airtight as they could get it.

Kind of like coaching him through a confession. Like, did this thing happen? And he goes, yes, that's it. So, yeah, they were, they never asked him a false one. They were never like, did you guys do it at 3 p.m.? Like, they always asked him the thing that they want him to say yes to. He picked up on that. Yeah. Yeah. The West Memphis three.

The police had their guys and the case blew up nationwide. Media, talk shows, and newspapers further exacerbated by the fuel that was the satanic panic. Jesse confessed that he originally saw Damien confront and physically assault Christopher while Jason did the same to Stevie. Michael had run off scared, so Jesse chased him down and caught him before returning him to the group. He took the boys' clothes off and tied them up using the shoestrings.

Jason and Damon then sexually and physically assaulted them, according to Jesse. At this point, Jesse was overwhelmed with the scene in front of him and ran off home. However, let's get back to the inconsistencies in Jesse's confession. When you read through the statements, it's almost like the police are trying to work around these problems to lure Jesse into the correct information or confession. See the example here where the police can see an error in the times provided by Jesse. They follow up with additional leading questions to plant the information that they want to be true. So...

What time did you get there? I got there about nine. In the morning? Yes. Wednesday morning? Yes. And, uh... What time is it right now? Right now? Yeah. You don't know what time it is? Do you not wear a watch? It's at home. So... My dad woke me up this... So your time period may not exactly right. May not be exactly right, is what you're saying. Right.

So yeah, again, they're leading him into saying yes constantly, basically. When this statement was given to a judge, they said that the time needed to be clarified before they move forward with prosecution. Jesse was brought back in on the 3rd of June for further interrogation, even after he had already confessed. This time everything lined up exactly. So...

Jesse, when did you boys, when you got with the boys and with Jason Baldwin, when you three were in the woods and then little boys come up, about what time was it when the boys come up to the woods? I would say it was about five or so, five or six. Now, did you have your watch on at the time? Uh-uh. You didn't have your watch on? Uh-uh. Meaning no. All right. You told me earlier around seven or eight.

Which time is it? It was 7 or 8. Are you... It was starting to get dark. Okay. I remember it was starting to get dark.

Okay. Well, that clears it up. I didn't know. That's what I was wondering. Was it getting dark or what? Well, we got up there at six and the boys come up and it was starting to get dark. What time was it? Five or six. I told you to say seven or eight. It was seven or eight. Yeah. True. Oh, man. It sucks that this ends with people's lives getting ruined. Yeah.

It's a botched police investigation. There's no arguing that. Well, botched implies that they attempted to do something and they accidentally did wrong. This is very clearly a coerced or dare I say, um, um, conspiracized police investigation. I mean, botched in the sense that we still don't know who killed these three young boys and we may never know due to their horrible investigation skills at the beginning of the case. Yeah.

Which is the most important time to collect evidence. Of course, yeah. The police with very little physical evidence, but a damning confession from one of the accused believed they had their murderers.

Damian, Jason, and Jesse were to face court over the murders of Christopher, Stevie, and Michael. The night after the interrogation, just hours later, warrants to search the homes of Jesse, Damian, and Jason were issued, and the three were charged with three rounds of capital murder. They were arrested on June 3, 1993, despite the inconsistent details of the crime and contradictions of Jesse's existing confessions. The

The police were extremely confident in their investigations of the case. They believed that the killers were caught and that they had amassed enough evidence for a quick and easy prosecution.

Because Jesse had confessed to the police, his trial was to be conducted separately to Baldwin's and Eccles' trial. This was due to the Bruton rule, which meant that Jesse's confession could not be admitted against his codependent. Yeah, that was interesting to me. I didn't know that rule existed. I thought that confession would still be able to be used against them, potentially. So you can't confess on someone else's... Okay, so if I confess to a crime...

And that can be used to definitively say, yes, he says he did the crime like court cases pretty close. If I say that me and Caleb committed a crime, then that cannot be used to open and shut Caleb's case. Just because it can't be used as like, well, it sounds like it can't be used at all in the case. I mean, like, don't get me wrong. If I say Caleb was there too, they're going to arrest him and put him on trial.

and do an investigation. They're going to do their own criminal investigation, but they're not going to be like, well, there's a confession saying Caleb did it. Would that still not count, though, as expert witness, basically? Witness testimony? I mean, I could maybe, if I made a deal with the police, I'm sure I could be a witness against Caleb, but I'm not going to... If that was the case, then you could bring anyone down with you, right? Say I hated my wife, and I go out and rob a

And I'm like, yeah, me and my wife did it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm not saying... Yeah. Put me up to it even. Goddamn bitch. I'm not saying that it should be immediately indicative of... The police will take it into account. The investigators will 100% take it into account. Yeah. And I'm sure... It can probably...

It can't be admitted as evidence, sure, but I 100% think that this would be used in interrogations. It would be used in evidence gathering. It will be present even if they can't admit it as evidence. It just can't be used in the courtroom. Yeah, you can't convict someone because someone else said they did it. Yeah. Yeah.

To further add on to how inept and unprepared the West Memphis Police Department was for a case investigation of this magnitude, there were several situations where leads were seemingly just not investigated. And by the way, we'll get into more of these ones in the next part of this episode, because this episode is already quite long at the moment and we've got limited time. We're going to provide a synopsis of the kind of things that we might get into into the next episode. Just, yeah.

Blood was found on a knife previously owned by John Mark Byers, Christopher Byers' stepfather. The blood was determined to be consistent with Chris Byers' blood, as well as that of John Mark Byers' blood. However, the police chose not to pursue this lead for some reason.

One other such prominent lead that was inadequately explored was that of Mr. Bojangles, which involved the sighting of a mentally disoriented black male who was found inside the bathroom of the local Bojangles restaurant located only a mile from the crime scene on the night of the murders at 8.42 p.m. Have you heard of Bojangles restaurant? Is that like a chain? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Bojangles is a big chain. I've been there many a time. Good food? You can kind of think of it as like a...

Like Popeyes or Raising Cane's. Good breakfast sandwiches. Yeah, like breakfast sandwiches and stuff like that. Did the guy actually have a connection to the case or was he just in a Bojangles? You'll find out. Okay, all right, all right.

The man was reportedly bleeding and had brushed himself up against the restroom walls, leaving behind evidence. Oh, by the way, he was at that Bojangles, which was located only a mile from the crime scene, and he was there disorientated and bleeding on the night of the murders at 8.42 p.m. So, like, you know, directly while they were missing. Yeah, okay.

The Bojangles manager reported the incident to the police the next day, and when the police arrived to investigate, they took a sample of the blood from the walls and tiles of the restroom. However, incredulously, police detective Brian Ridge would later testify that he had later lost those blood samples, and they were unable to further test the lead, so it had gone cold.

There's a guy bleeding out in the restaurant next to it. Yeah.

Or he has blood everywhere and they just don't follow that up. That's fine. Just for my Australian brain, how far is a mile? It's short, right? That's like very close. It's less than, it's about 1.4 kilometers. It's like 1.7 maybe. So very, very close then. That's ridiculous. Oh yeah, it's 1.7 because it's 1,760 meters, right? Something like that, yeah. Okay, so very close enough for that to be significant, let's say.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, not a lot of people bleeding to death within one mile in downtown Westwood. Well, maybe, but not this time. Yet another interesting initial pair of suspects were Chris Morgan and Brian Holland. These two local teenagers both had a history of drug offenses, and they both hastily departed from Oceanside, California, just four days after the bodies were discovered.

Morgan himself frequented the exact neighborhood as he had driven an ice cream truck route through the area. The pair were arrested in Oceanside on May 17, 1993, where they underwent polygraph exams by the California police. Investigators found that both men's charts indicated deception when they were asked if they were involved in the disappearance and murder of the three boys in West Memphis. During further questioning, Morgan claimed that he had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse and, due to this, he had experienced many mental blackouts.

The California police sent blood and urine samples from Morgan and Holland to the West Memphis Police Department, but there's absolutely no evidence to suggest the department ever followed up or investigated Morgan or Holland as suspects. They're in California. They're California's problem now. That's too far. You can't leave the state if you murder someone. The murders were in Arkansas and they're in California. Those are two different places, Silly.

That's too far away. Plus, I don't think they can walk that far. They weren't Satanists either, so clearly not them. That's very clearly not our case. The news told me it was Satanists who did it, so that's clearly who did it.

People may be wondering, we've got this crazy lady who's got Wiccan books on lock. Yeah, that's enough for us. I think we have enough. I think we figure it out. She's pointing us one direction, and they're over in the other direction to the west in California. We're following a lead right now, and it's some crazy 45-year-old woman putting on lipstick ready to seduce a child. Into the woods for naked orgies with teenagers. She's trustworthy. Yep.

People may be wondering as to why the West Memphis Police Department was not dealing well with the investigation. Well, there's no concrete answer why, but the prevailing speculation is that the small local police force was completely and utterly overwhelmed by the murders, which were unlike anything they had experienced before. Not just in the brutality, but in the sensationalism.

The murders brought with them an unprecedented level of expectations and attention that they were ill-equipped to deal with. That's one way of putting it. That's an understatement in and of itself. Yeah. They were horrible. They truly did themselves no favors, though, with the department making a habit of constantly denying offers of aid and consultation from other sources like the violent crimes experts at the Arkansas State Police.

People suggest the reason for this refusal of outside or state support was due to the West Memphis Police Department themselves being under investigation for suspected theft from the Crittenden County Drug Task Force. They were getting loaded on their own supply? They were getting drugs? It could be that or it could be... I mean, Drug Task Force also like... Seize money and stuff like that too. Anything related with drugs. We had...

The sheriff where I grew up got arrested for like stealing from supplies. And he was also like getting inmates to like do work around his house and stuff like that. He got arrested by the... Yeah, he was a sheriff. And he got arrested by the State Bureau of Investigation. It was very funny because the feds raided the sheriff's department and...

I like live nearby. So everyone like drove to the hillside over to take videos. Oh no. Cause they had feds perp walking, uh, like sheriff's deputies out. It was wild. Yeah. That's hilarious. We're all like, yeah. Wild times. Police on police action. Yep. Police on police. Um,

Regardless of why, regardless of the why of the situation, it is simply a fact that the West Memphis Police Department conducted a bad investigation that left a lot of evidence not followed up on or otherwise lost. Is it possible that they found the right murderers? Of course. But they certainly conducted the investigation in an unprofessional and counterintuitive manner, sabotaged justice at every corner. Well, I mean, yeah, we can see that, like, again, uh,

They're eventually exonerated and let free. And if they are the real murderers, then it's this botched investigation that led to them. That made them get exonerated. Yeah, that didn't supply the evidence necessary to necessitate their convictions. Either way, not a great move. No, awful. Horrible.

And that in of itself could have substantial ramifications for the trials that were about to rock Arkansas and America as a whole. Trials that themselves would bring with them more unanswered questions. Trials that seemed wholly rushed and maliciously intent on only one outcome. That is the trials of the West Memphis Three next time on Red Thread. But that's going to do it for this episode. Do-do-do-do.

We went over... There's just so many details to this case that we can't fit in everything. The next episode will deal with the trial and the outcome of the justice or the justice... the lack of justice. So we'll go into details about that next time. But for this episode, we wanted to deal with the investigation and the disappearances specifically. So any details that we missed in this episode will likely be touched

touched on in the next episode including one of the fathers is now a primary suspect let's say in the court of public opinion because there's a lot of evidence that suggests that he may have had something to do with it we'll definitely touch on that in the next episode so please wait around for that Caleb

That was it. I'm sorry for putting you through the ringer for your final episode, but thank you very much for being here with us to say goodbye. Really do appreciate it. Again, thank you very much for being a host on the Red Thread. I hope you enjoyed your time. It was nice. I did. I love you. Y'all are awesome. You're the best guest we ever had. Yep. 100%. We hope to have you back in the future.

Isaiah, it's good to see you again. Thank you very much for showing up again. Absolutely good to talk to you boys as always. And it's good to hear from you guys in the comments. Please leave us feedback on how we can improve the show. That's definitely appreciated. As well as just sharing the show with friends and family, people that you think might like the Red Thread and hearing about cases in a more kind of casual, digestible way. Definitely share that with them. We really do appreciate the support. We're on audio platforms. Yeah.

Really do appreciate it. Again, Red Thread merch exists at official.men. You can grab that merch over there. Really do appreciate the support. People say it's very comfortable. So if you want one of those comfortable pieces of merch, go over there. Other than that, that's going to do it for this episode. Thank you very much for joining us. And thank you, Caleb, again, for joining us for the time that you did. Thanks, guys. We'll see you next time. Bye.

Talk to you all later. I'm going to miss our favorite guest. Bye. No. Bye. Bye. I'm not very good at goodbyes.