Abomination: Devil Worship and Deception in the West Memphis Three Murders (15 page)

Jessie: One of them had holding them by the arms while the other one got behind them and stuff.

Gitchell: Did he ever hold him up here or

Jessie: Uh, the one that was holding him up there at the front grabbing him by his headlock.

Gitchell: Had him in a headlock? Did he have him any other way?

Jessie: He was holding him like this by his head like this and stuff (Note: was indicating the victims being held by their ears)

Gitchell: Could he have been holding him up here like that?

Jessie: I was too far away he was holding him up here by his head like this (Note: showed the same as above)

Gitchell: So, so.

Jessie: And he was pulling him.

Gitchell: Ok, so who was one of them doing that or both of them was doing it? Was Jason?

Jessie: Jason was holding him while Damien did it and then they took turns.

Gitchell: So, they both did it to all three of these boys?

Jessie: Just them two as far as I know.

Gitchell: Just the two of them?

Jessie: Yeah.

Gitchell: But they, they both Jason and Damien did it to two of the boys and they took turns?

Jessie: Uh huh.

Gitchell: And they would hold, tell me again about their hands on, I mean I know you're, you're holding it up here.

Jessie: It was up here by their heads and stuff and was just pulling and stuff.

Gitchell: Alright, so they are up here, had their hands

Jessie: By their ears and pulling them and stuff.

Gitchell: Alright, Ok, say, say that again for me now.

Jessie: Hold them by their head, by ears and pulling

Gitchell: Ok.
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At around 5 PM, a hamburger and soda were provided to Jessie, while Fogleman drafted an affidavit. Police never took Jessie to the site of the murders for a walkthrough, another oversight by the investigators.

OFFICER'S FIELD INVESTIGATION REPORT

On Thursday night on June 3, 1993 at approximately 8:30 or 9 p.m., I Detective Charlie Dabbs, Detective Tony Anderson from the West Memphis Police Department and Sergeant Tankersley with the Crittenden County Sheriff's Office, after obtaining a Consent To Search form signed by Jessie Misskelley, escorted Jessie Misskelley and his wife to their residence. We went in and secured the residence until the search and evidence team arrived. While sitting in their living room for approximately two hours, and during conversation Mr. and Mrs. Misskelley talked about different incidents. During the conversation, Mrs. Misskelley got to talking about how Jessie Jr. was waking her up at night crying and having nightmares. Every time she went into his room he would be crying hysterically and he would tell her it was because his girlfriend was moving away. She told us it happened a number of times, and that she could not believe his girlfriends' moving would cause that kind of hysterical behavior, but that little Jessie had been acting strange.

Det. Charlie Dabbs
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6. ARRESTS

June 3rd, 1993

Detectives Ridge, Gitchell and Prosecutor Fogleman appeared in municipal court before Judge Rainey at 9:06 PM for a hearing explaining probable cause to arrest Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin. Completed search warrants were provided to the judge for signature. Judge Rainey agreed that there was probable cause, and he signed the search warrants. In an unusual move by West Memphis Police, the arrests and subsequent search were implemented immediately at 10:30 p.m. that night. Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Domini Teer were at the Echol’s trailer watching a movie when police arrived. Damien and Jason were arrested on three counts of capital murder. Police officers ransacked the trailer, looking for the black briefcase with the pictures of the young boys, any satanic materials and knives.

June 4th, 1993

Jason Lance Crosby

Interview with Principal

Upon hearing of the arrest of Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley, one of their friends, Jason Crosby, spoke to the Principal of his Junior High School, John Heath. Crosby told Heath that he knew who did it. He said:

He was afraid to talk because Jesse Misskelley would kill him and that his parents would have to kill him (Jesse). He then told me a story of the time that Jessie stole his bike and he stole it back, then Jessie beat him up. He further stated that he knew Michael [Damien] Echols was into Satan worship because he would kill animals and eat the meat. He said he ran around with them some. He said weeks just prior to the death of the boys in West Memphis, he overheard a conversation between Michael Echols and Jesse Misskelley that they wanted to catch a bum at one of the overpasses and torch him to death.
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June 5th, 1993

Damien Echols

Note the necklace

ONE SUSPECT WAS 'SCARY,' TALKED OF WORSHIPING

THE DEVIL

Date: June 5, 1993

Marc Perrusquia

The Commercial Appeal

Michael Wayne Echols carried a cat's skull around with him at school and routinely dressed in black. A couple of years ago he took to calling himself Damien, presumably after the antiChrist character popularized in a series of Hollywood movies.

When the 18-year-old Marion (Ark.) High School dropout was named Friday as one of three teenagers accused of murdering three West Memphis boys last month, several classmates and others said they weren't surprised.

''He just scares me talking about him,'' said Roni Hendrix, 16, one of several Marion students who described Echols as a serious youth who seemed distantly obsessed. ''When I saw it (the announcement of the charges) on TV it didn't surprise me at all.''

Several acquaintances said Echols told them he was a devil worshiper.

Separating fact from fiction was difficult Friday. West Memphis police released few details about Echols and the other two suspects, while relatives closed doors in reporters' faces.

People who would talk disagreed about how deeply Echols may have been involved in satanic activity.

''He was kind of disturbed,'' said former classmate Keith Chism, 16, a junior at Marion High School who said he thought Echols was out to get attention. ''He (told me last year) he just did it to get attention because if he didn't do it, nobody would like him or pay attention.''

Chism said Echols - who was known to all as Damien, the name he had printed under his picture in the school yearbook - went to great lengths in his unusual behavior.

Chism said Echols often brought a cat skull to school, sitting sullenly in classes. Chism said Echols once flunked a business course the two students took together, compiling a ''zero average'' in his tests and graded papers. ''While everyone else was working, he was just playing with that skull,'' Chism said.

Roxanne Harrison, parent of one of Echols's former friends, said she was frightened by the young man. Harrison said Echols once told her in her house at 1850 N. Avalon that he was a ''devil worshiper,'' displaying several satanic poems he had written.

''I run him off,'' said Harrison, who said Echols routinely wore a long black trench coat even during summer months. ''I told him to his face: 'You get out and don't come back.' ''

Although Harrison forbade her 13-year-old daughter, Jennifer, from having contact with Echols last year, she said he brought her family more trouble after the murders of the three West Memphis boys May 5.

''My daughter kept on telling me when this happened, 'Mama, he done it. Mama, he done it,' '' Harrison said. ''She said, 'Mama, he said there's going to be two more killed' . . . she was scared to go outside.''

Daughter Jennifer, who just completed eighth grade in Marion schools, said Echols started acting strange in recent years. He frequently dressed in black T-shirts and black pants, she said, claiming among his heroes heavy metal performers Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica.

''He started writing all these poems about devil worship and I just tried to get away from him,'' Jennifer said. After the murders, ''everybody was saying it was him,'' Jennifer said.

In earlier Marion yearbooks, Echols is listed as Michael Hutchison. Friends said they believe he was adopted by a stepfather a few years ago and changed his name to Echols.

A man who answered the door Friday at a trailer at 2706 S. Grove in West Memphis - the address police gave as Echols's home - said he was the teen's natural father. The man, who said his last name was Hutchison, declined comment.

Echols had been staying with his girlfriend at the dilapidated, stench- filled mobile home rented by her mother in Lake Shore Mobile Home Park north of West Memphis, just a few streets away from where Jason Baldwin, another suspect, lives.

No one was home at the trailer Friday afternoon, but its owner, Pam Hollingsworth, allowed a reporter and photographer inside. The floor in one room was covered in cat feces, and garbage and food were found throughout the home.

On a window was a framed compact disc case titled Grim Reaper, with ''See you in hell'' handwritten at the bottom. Strewn across the bedroom floor were cassette tapes of heavy-metal artists.

Hollingsworth, who said she's talked to Echols several times, said she was afraid of him.

''He said the devil had chosen him. He said, 'The devil tells me what to do and I do it.' '

OFFICIALS FIND SIGNS OF CULT ACTIVITY

CRITTENDEN SITES REVEAL SATANIC GRAFFITI, CARCASSES

Date: Monday, June 7, 1993

Commercial Appeal

Source: By Marc Perrusquia and Bartholomew Sullivan

Authorities began seeing a marked increase in satanic-related graffiti and reports of animal sacrifice about a year ago, a Crittenden County official said Sunday.

Jerry Driver, chief juvenile officer for Crittenden County, said he's visited at least five sites in the county where he's found graffiti and animal carcasses.

Driver's comments came the day The Commercial Appeal obtained a copy of a statement given police by one of the teenagers charged with killing three West Memphis boys. In that statement, Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr. said he was a member of a cult whose members had sexual orgies and mutilated, killed and ate animals.

Misskelley, 17, along with Michael Wayne Echols, 18, and Charles Jason Baldwin, 16, is charged with three counts of capital murder in the deaths of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis.

Echols's mother Sunday said the talk of Satanism in the case is hurting her son's right to a fair trial.

Pamela Hutchison took issue Sunday with press and television reports that she said portrayed her son as involved in devil worship.

People who know Echols have said he claimed to worship the devil and that he carried around a cat's skull and called himself Damien, as in the popular Omen movies.

But Hutchison said her son took the name from a book about Father Damien, a Belgian missionary priest who worked with lepers on Molokai in the Hawaiian islands in the 19th Century.

Echols was not involved in Satanism, Hutchison said. She said she believes her son is innocent.

Authorities, though, have noted an increase in activity that seems to be related to Satanism. Sunday at one of the sites where the activity has taken place - known to locals as "Stonehenge" after the ancient Druidic monoliths near Cambridge in England - there were the remains of a dead gray cat with tan feet and a plastic bag containing a part of a rattlesnake.

The site, which is an abandoned concrete cotton gin, is covered with spray- painted graffiti, including backward swastikas, pentagrams, tridents and references to Lucifer. Besides broken bottles and spent shotgun shells, Stonehenge contained charred logs and several unopened condom packages.

"Kids get involved in this as a joke," Driver said. "Ninety percent of them are in it for the so-called thrill. There's a small group that's in it seriously."

Drug and alcohol use and sex often are common at the sites, Driver said, which serve as a magnet for kids out for a good time. For many, it's a fad, he said, "but a dangerous one."

Driver could not provide an estimate of the number of young people in Crittenden County involved in such activities, but said the great majority are probably on the fringes and not seriously involved in Satanism.

Local teens often travel to the Stonehenge site at night to socialize and marvel at its legend and chilling atmosphere.

"Sometimes people think it's funny trying to scare other people," said Kim Floresca, 15, who just completed 10th grade at Marion High School. "It's supposed to be a place where cults go out, and they're supposed to sacrifice virgins and animals and stuff."

Floresca said she once went to the Stonehenge site about two years ago with a group of teens who included Misskelley. The night was just a typical night, she said, and Misskelley did nothing out of the ordinary.

Floresca said she never heard of the other two suspects visiting the site.