The Controversial Case of the West Memphis Three | Vol. 1
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Today's story begins in West Memphis, Arkansas, the heart of America's Bible Belt. This city is home to a small population of humble, God-fearing folk, many of whom live in poverty. Situated on the banks of the great Mississippi River, its sprawling wilderness and small-town charms instill a sense of safety within outsiders. Don't let this facade fool you, though.

Life in West Memphis is often far from idyllic. Just as the picturesque river hides a current as violent as it is polluted, the city holds its own secrets. Its rustic neighborhoods are riddled with crime, rife with addiction, and plagued by a sinister past. In 1993, West Memphis became home to one of the most notorious homicide cases in true crime history.

The case garnered worldwide infamy, but not for the depraved slaughter of three little boys, rather for the trial that followed. This satanic panic was tapering off in America's most progressive states, but West Memphians remained stubbornly insular in their beliefs. When police pointed the finger at three teenagers who wore black and listened to heavy metal, the townsfolk blindly echoed their prejudice.

despite the lack of hard evidence. Their collective crusade brought about a trial that still has the power to dominate headlines today. Truthfully, the teens, later dubbed the West Memphis Three, weren't the defendants in this case. Counterculture as a whole was on trial,

What follows is the story of three murdered Cub Scouts, three misunderstood youths, and three controversial verdicts that continue to incite debate almost 30 years later. Part 1: Without a Trace The afternoon of May 5th, 1993, was a particularly warm one.

Diane Moore sat in the shade of her porch as she watched her son, Michael, playing with his two best friends, Christopher Byers and Steve Branch. The second graders had grown up together. They attended the same school, had the same interests, and were members of the same Cub Scout pack. At around 6 p.m., Diane decided to get dinner started.

As she went inside, she saw Michael and Steve ride off on their bikes up North 14th Street with Christopher following close behind on his skateboard. This is where our story gets murky. No one knows exactly where the boys were headed or what they planned to do. Nearly three decades later,

The only thing we know with some certainty is that was the last time Michael, Steve, and Christopher were seen alive. It's believed that something horrific happened to the Cub Scouts between the hours of 6:30 and 8:00 PM that evening. Christopher's adoptive father, John Mark Byers, was the first to notice something was amiss. He and his wife, Melissa Byers, hadn't seen their son since earlier that afternoon.

The couple wasn't too concerned at first. To outsiders, West Memphis was dodgy. To them, it was home. Everybody knew everybody, and their kids were free to roam the town as they saw fit. Things were different back in the 90s, but that would soon change. As the evening sun set, the hum of the cicadas ebbed, and the familiar chirrup of crickets filled the night air.

West Memphis was swathed in darkness, and Christopher still wasn't home. John Mark called 911 in a panic just after 8:00 PM to report his son is missing. Officer Regina Meek arrived within minutes. Diane Moore, who lived close to the Byers' ran over to their house after she saw Meek's patrol car pulling in. Michael hadn't made it home for dinner.

The concerned parents called Steve Branch's house, hoping that their boys were there. His stepfather, Terry Hobbs, answered. Terry's voice was thick with dread as he exclaimed that the boys weren't at his house and neither was little Stevie. Part Two: Mud, Blood, and Mr. Bojangles Officer Meek kicked into gear. After taking a report from Diane, the patrolwoman briefly searched the neighborhood.

She drove up North 14th Street in the same direction they were last seen riding and surveyed the immediate areas from her patrol car. Occasionally, Meek got out to check side streets, backyards, vacant houses, and sheds for any bikes laying around. She found no sign of the boys or their belongings. By this time, the neighborhood was abuzz with concerned residents.

The parents of the three boys had amassed a group of friends and family who were combing the area as best they could. They meant well, of course. However, the darkened streets were now alive with people, making it hard for Officer Meek to discern potential suspects from searchers. Even so, she should have at least tried.

The patrolwoman was so focused on locating the Cub Scouts that she failed to log the names and descriptions of those she encountered. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, as they say. As Officer Meek was gearing up to expand her search, she received another call. The patrolwoman was dispatched to Bojangles, a local diner about five minutes away.

She drove into the drive-thru just before 9:00 PM and spoke with the manager, Marty King, through the window. Moments before, a bloody and disoriented black man with a cast on his right arm had been found in the ladies' room. The man made a run for it shortly after being discovered, leaving blood and mud smeared on the bathroom walls. Marty wasn't sure if the blood belonged to the man or someone else.

but it was clearly fresh. One would think that a seasoned police officer would have viewed the sighting of a bloodied, mentally disturbed man just one mile away from where three young boys had gone missing as suspicious, not Officer Meek. She never went into the diner, nor did she report the incident. She didn't even tell the employees not to clean the blood-stained bathroom. The patrolwoman simply conducted a cursory search for the man,

who would later become known as Mr. Bojangles. When she couldn't find him, she returned to the last known location of Michael, Stevie and Christopher, North 14th Street. Officer Meek knew that it led to Robin Hood Hills, a wooded area next to the I-40/I-55 Interstate, where local kids like to play, despite being warned not to.

It was situated behind the blue beacon truck wash and attracted particularly unsavory characters, such as drifters and drug addicts. The boys would have had to cross a narrow sewage pipe spanning the marshy 10-mile bayou to get there. Although Meek doubted they'd make the crossing at night, she went to look for herself. The air was thick with mosquitoes, so much so that she inhaled them with every breath, forcing her to turn back.

The patrolwoman doubted that three 8-year-old boys would be able to bear the bloodthirsty fog if she couldn't, prompting her to leave the shadowy woods. She continued cruising through the neighborhood until just after 11 p.m., when her shift ended. Part 3: Hogtied and Brutalized The West Memphis Police Department only initiated an official search at 8 a.m.

The party was led by the Crittenden County Search and Rescue Squad and included several volunteers from the Boy's neighborhood. Almost 50 searchers combed through West Memphis on foot, bikes, boats, and all-terrain vehicles. At one point, a helicopter was even deployed to scour the area from above. No trace of them was found, and any hopes of finding them alive dissipated by the second. Soon, all hope was lost.

It began with the bikes. Later that morning, searchers sifting through the 10-mile bayou in a John boat made an ominous discovery. Two small children's bikes were hidden in the murky waters near the sewage pipe. One was green. It was Michael's. The other, black and red. Stevie had gotten it for his eighth birthday. Next, it was the shoe.

Juvenile probation officer Steve Jones spotted a single black sneaker with no laces bobbing in the nearby drainage ditch. It quickly dawned on Jones that the bayou was the key to the boys' disappearances. Perhaps they'd fallen off the pipe crossing and drowned. He radioed for another police officer, Michael Allen, to join him in searching the ditch. Officer Allen plunged into its shallow waters to get closer to the little sneaker. He froze instantly.

His foot had gotten caught on something firm but soft. Alan raised his leg, dislodging whatever it was from the mud below. A body floated to the surface. It was Michael Moore. The Cub Scout was naked and long dead, his skin so pale it was almost translucent. The officers dragged Michael's rigid corpse out of the swampy waters and laid it on the bank.

They continued sweeping through the drainage ditch in silence until the bodies of little Christopher and Stevie were dredged up from the stagnant depths. The eight-year-olds had been stripped naked and hog-tied with their own shoelaces. This was no accidental drowning. This was murder. Some of the boys' clothing was discovered inside out, twisted around sticks, and shoved into the muddy ditch bed. Their underwear was never found.

This led the police to believe that the boys had been raped, making the motive for their murders a sexual one. However, after examining the sickening wounds inflicted upon the little boys' bodies, the cops immediately blamed the occult. Part Four: Small Town Satanic Panic Later that day, autopsies confirmed that the Cub Scouts hadn't been raped. The news came as no comfort to their distraught parents though.

The boys had still suffered. They endured a prolonged, sadistic attack during which their killer mutilated their bodies seemingly for the sake of it. Stevie Branch received 21 specified injuries, his face almost unrecognizable. The left side was battered, bloody, and covered with abrasions and deep gouges.

Michael Moore's skull was fractured in 10 places, and his little body was peppered with 63 wounds, many of which were defensive. The forensic pathologist determined that both boys had drowned. Curiously, Christopher Byers suffered a far worse fate than his friends. While Michael and Stevie's upper bodies took most of the damage, Christopher's 62 injuries were predominantly found on his lower body.

and they were nothing less than unspeakably gruesome. Aside from bruising, lacerations, and abrasions, his genitals had been horrifically mutilated. The eight-year-old had been completely castrated, his scrotum severed from his groin, and his penis was stripped of its flesh. Rather than succumbing to the bayou like his fellow Cub Scouts, the poor boy eventually bled to death.

to investigators. These grisly details proved that the murders had been some sort of ritualistic satanic sacrifice. The fact that the victims were found in Robin Hood Hills only bolstered their beliefs. It was well known that delinquent teens liked to gather there and cause trouble, often leaving graffitied pentagrams in their wake. Rationally, these were simply acts of rebellion against their strictly Southern Baptist upbringings.

However, the insular community of West Memphis held religion above rationality and talk of devil-worshiping cults swept through the town within hours. Instead of quashing the rumors to protect the integrity of the investigation, the police fueled them. Chief Inspector Gary Gitchell, the lead detective on the case, actually told reporters that his department suspected the murders were connected to the occult.

This accusation was surprising, considering they lacked any evidence to substantiate their suspicions. There was no fresh graffiti in the woods, nor satanic symbols at the crime scene. And, while the nature of the boys' injuries was nightmarish, to say the least, it doesn't necessitate the involvement of a cult. In fact, there was no evidence that violent, satanic crimes had ever occurred in West Memphis.

The detectives tunnel vision led to them all but ignoring more plausible leads and theories early in the investigation. Instead, they singled out a troubled teenager who fit their superstitious guesswork. "Looks like Damien Echols finally killed someone," Officer Steve Jones concluded.

The 18-year-old dropout who lived in a trailer park stood out in the church-going community. He wore black, had long hair and tattoos, and wrote dark, brooding poetry. Worse, he enjoyed hardcore rock music, science fiction, Stephen King novels, and the odd horror movie. This, coupled with his antisocial behavior and penchant for shoplifting,

earned him a bad reputation, particularly amongst law enforcement. Jones wasn't the only policeman who thought Damien was an A-grade devil worshiper. His supervisor, Jerry Driver, also had it out for the teen.

Both juvenile probation officers had a penchant for crying Satanist at the sight of anything they deemed anti-Christian. Driver actually kept note of the lunar cycle so that he and Jones could patrol the town during full moon and hopefully thwart any attempted human sacrifices. Damien liked to play into their paranoia whenever he was arrested for petty crimes.

The self-described Wiccan would foolishly provoke the officers with tall tales of cults and animal sacrifices. In the end, his childish baiting came back to bite him. Part 5: Echoes of Salem Damien's fate was sealed as early as the day after the Cub Scout's bodies were discovered. The locals weren't trying to make a murderer. To them, satanic cults were very real and very scary.

When law enforcement officials confirmed their fears and began circling Damien, the townsfolk blindly backed them. There was no evidence that he was anywhere near Robin Hood Hills on the day the boys were murdered. However, in the context of West Memphis, he made for a perfect prime suspect, and not just because of his appearance and senseless stories.

Damien had a long history of severe mental health problems, including depression, delusions, auditory hallucinations, and mood swings. He'd even been forcibly institutionalized in 1992, after which he was granted full disability status. Now, this doesn't excuse the police from persecuting him, but it certainly justifies their questioning of him. Damien was interrogated several times in the days following the murders.

He was cooperative, but vehemently denied knowing the boys or being involved in their deaths. He claimed that he was home with his family on the evening of May 5th, where he spoke to several girlfriends over the phone. Investigators weren't convinced. Allegedly, a few of Damien's lady friends denied the phone calls. Worse, the polygraph test he took indicated that he'd been deceptive.

While it's common knowledge that polygraphs are often far from accurate, the results only stoked the suspicions surrounding him. Damien didn't help his case, either. Being the rebellious teen he was, he went into each interrogation with a cocky attitude. Investigators probed him about the mind of the murderer and, instead of distancing himself from the subject, Damien countered with surprisingly plausible insights. Truthfully,

He made simple observations that were likely influenced by his interest in the dark and disturbing, ones any true crime connoisseur worth their salt would agree with. The police took his remarks as proof of guilt. Damien was interrogated more than anyone else, despite the presence of other promising suspects. Early on in the case, two West Memphis teenagers were briefly investigated, Chris Morgan and Brian Holland.

Like Damien, the teens had frequent run-ins with police, although theirs were predominantly drug-related. Suspiciously, they left town four days after the Cub Scout's bodies were discovered and headed for California, where they were arrested that same month. The Californian police administered polygraph tests to the teens, who exhibited deception when denying their involvement in the murders. That's not all.

Morgan, who once drove an ice cream truck in the Cub Scouts' neighborhood, was known for abusing alcohol and drugs to the point of blacking out. He often had no memory of what he did during his binges and claimed that he might have well killed those little boys. Morgan quickly backtracked, though, and recanted his statement, which seemed to be enough for the investigators back in West Memphis. Samples of the teens' blood and urine were handed over to them.

but they never followed up on the lead. They'd already decided that Damien was guilty. Even the bizarre sighting of Mr. Bojangles failed to arouse much suspicion. To the police department's credit, they did send officers to investigate the incident, but only after Marty King, the diner's manager, asked them to. Marty thought there had to be a connection between Mr. Bojangles and the Cub Scout's murders. The police disagreed.

even though a hair from a black male was found on a sheet covering one of the bodies. As the disturbed man had a cast on his arm, they assumed that he couldn't have bound and killed three young boys. Even so, they took blood scrapings and a pair of sunglasses from the bathroom as evidence, which were later lost. With all other suspects apparently ruled out, the West Memphis Police Department began building their case against Damien Echols. This time,

they had an ace up their sleeves. Part Six: Playing Detective On May 6th, hours before the discovery of the boys' corpses, Vicki Hutchison was being questioned by police after her employer accused her of stealing. She brought her eight-year-old son, Aaron, with her to the station. He was friends with the then-missing Cub Scouts and, allegedly, had some valuable information she thought the police would want to hear.

Aaron told detectives that on May 5th, the day the boys went missing, he'd seen Michael Moore talking to a tall, skinny black man in a maroon sedan after school. He heard the man tell Michael that he'd been sent by the boy's mother to pick him up, something Diane Moore categorically denied. The West Memphis police showed little interest in Aaron's statement.

despite the sighting of the bloodied Mr. Bojangles later that same evening. After the discovery of the Cub Scout's bodies, however, they brought the boy in for another interview. This time, Aaron's story was different.

He claimed that he was playing with Michael, Stevie, and Christopher at their playhouse in Robin Hood Hills when five satanic-looking men with painted faces appeared. According to Aaron, he was hiding in a tree when he witnessed the men rape, abuse, and drown his friends while chanting in Spanish. The boy was interviewed on multiple occasions in the coming weeks, and his story changed dramatically each time.

it became clear that Aaron wasn't a credible witness. The playhouse he spoke of didn't exist. The autopsies proved that the Cub Scouts weren't raped, and his stories were verging on the fantastical. More so, after mentioning intimate details about the crime scene, Aaron admitted to getting the information from the news. Investigators seemed happy to overlook these inconsistencies.

focusing instead on one statement the boy made. He named Damien Eccles and the teen's two misfit friends, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Miskelly, even though he couldn't identify them in photo lineups. Interestingly, Aaron also asserted that John Mark Byers, who the neighborhood kids feared could have been the killer. The police ignored everything Aaron said that didn't align with their theory and fixated on the bits that did.

One officer actually leaked portions of the boy's statements to the media, adding to the cloud of satanic suspicion that followed the three accused teens. Eventually, investigators realized that Aaron's stories wouldn't hold up in court, leading them to call on his mother instead. They knew that Vicky, who had a potential theft charge hanging over her head, would be willing to help.

One week after Erin's first interview, investigators pressured her into getting close to Damien. After she agreed, they bugged her trailer and instructed her to invite the teen over and tell him she was interested in becoming a witch. One detective even lent her some books on witchcraft to make it seem more believable. Vicky lived next door to Jesse Miskelly, who was known for causing trouble in town.

The 17-year-old was also known for being childishly naive and easily led, so she asked him to introduce her to Damien. When he showed up, Vicky recited what she was told to say, but Damien just laughed. She pressed him further, not wanting to disappoint the detectives. "I hear you like to suck blood," she said in her best attempt at sounding nonchalant. Damien chuckled again and explained that he encouraged such gossip so that people would leave him alone.

To Vicky's dismay, the teen simply had nothing incriminating to say. A few days later, when she arrived at the station to review the tapes, Vicky noticed that Chief Inspector Gary Gitchell had photos of Damien, Jason, and Jesse taped above his desk. They were being used as makeshift dartboards. Vicky listened to portions of the tapes as Inspector Gitchell questioned her about the contents. The recordings were crisp and clear.

She could hear everything Damien said word for word, as he'd been sitting next to the lamp that hid the microphone. The West Memphis Police Department recalls the quality of the audio quite differently though. According to investigators, the recordings were so unintelligible, they'd be useless in court. The tapes were conveniently lost soon after, leaving the police back at square one. They needed a smoking gun.

and he knew exactly who's arm to twist to get it. Once again, investigators got Vicki Hutchison to do their dirty work. She was told to meet up with Damien again, and when she reported back to the police on May 28th, her story was just as bizarre as her son's. Vicki claimed that, days earlier, Damien and Jesse picked her up in a car, though the teens neither owned nor had a license to drive one.

Allegedly, they then drove her to a field in the middle of nowhere where a gathering of witches was taking place. Several other teenagers were there, all of whom had black paint concealing their faces. Moments after arriving, Vicky claimed that the teens began taking their clothes off and touching each other. Uncomfortable, she immediately asked Damien to take her home. Jesse stayed behind. Investigators were thrilled with the hot lead Vicky had offered up.

One week later, on June 3rd, they pulled Jessie Miss Kelly in for questioning to find out more.