Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (44 page)

123. He said that all that registered was that he was being led in handcuffs out of Damien’s house. “They took me to the police station,” he later recalled. “We went through all kinds of rooms, and ended up upstairs, in a room with blue walls, and pictures and certificates on them, and a ball bat in the corner. They handcuffed me to a straight-back chair. Ridge and Allen were there, and a uniformed officer. They came in and tried to get me to admit to murder. They had this statement already typed up and told me to sign it, but I wouldn’t sign. They told me there was no way out of it. I might as well admit to it. I was trying to tell them where I was at that day, but they said, ‘No, that’s a lie. We know different. Somebody’s already ratted on you. You committed the murders. We want you to admit it.’ Somehow, I fell out of the chair. I fell backwards. I think Allen pulled it out with his foot. He said, ‘You ain’t nothing but white trash.’ Later on, Ridge was in the room with me by himself. He said, ‘Nobody knows you’re here. We could throw you into the Mississippi River and write you off as a runaway; nobody would know the difference.’”

124. After he’d come home from school, Jason said, “Damien and Domini were already at my house waiting for me. They didn’t go to school. We went in and played Super Nintendo. I got something to eat. Then Dennis, my mom’s boyfriend, said I had a phone call. It was my uncle Herbert. He said, ‘You forgot something.’ I was supposed to mow his yard. I was supposed to have done it earlier, but I had an art exhibit at school, so I’d put it off. My friend Ken and Damien said, ‘We’ll go over there with you.’ I cut my uncle’s yard. And while I was there, Damien had to call his mom, and tell her to pick him up at my uncle’s house instead of at my house. He and Domini went to the Laundromat to call, and his mom picked them up there. It took an hour to finish the lawn. My uncle paid me $10. Me and Ken went to Wal-Mart. Then we went to Sam’s and bought ten-cent Sam’s sodas. We played Street Fighter for a quarter. Then we went back to my house. Ken left to go home, and then I went over to my friend Adam’s house. It was dark by then. He had this Iron Maiden tape I’d been wanting. I went over there to try to buy it. He sold it to me for $4. I had a necklace of a dragon with a silver ball that this girl had given me at the skating rink. He wanted me to sell it to him. By then it was getting close to ten or ten-thirty. I wanted to get back before curfew started, so I went back home. Matt and Terry and Dennis [ Jason’s stepfather] were there.” Jason said he told the police all this the night of his arrest. “I told them I didn’t do it. But they didn’t want to listen.”

125. Officers who booked Jason noted that he did have a tattoo, but not the
E-V-IL
that Vicki Hutcheson claimed to have seen. According to a police intake form, he had small ankh, the Egyptian symbol of life, in the web between the thumb and index finger of his right hand.

126. Author interview with Fogleman, April 2001.

127. One of the young people who’d accused Damien was William Winfred Jones, a teenager who lived in the Lakeshore trailer park near Jason. As was common in the investigation, Ridge had questioned William, then questioned him again on tape. In the portion of the interview that was taped, William stated that he and Damien had been friends for the past five years. He said that Damien had not been “weird” at first, but that he’d started acting strange after he’d gotten into “that satanic cult stuff.” William said that one night when Damien was drunk, he’d asked Damien if he’d murdered the boys. William said Damien admitted that he had. William told Ridge that Damien loudly proclaimed that he’d had sex with the boys, and then killed them with a “little,” eight-to-ten-inch knife. William added that “everyone” in the Lakeshore trailer park had heard the drunken claim. However, when Ridge asked William for the names of others who’d heard the alleged confession, William modified his statement. On second thought, he said, only he, Damien, and Domini had been present.

128. Ridge listened as Gail Grinnell recited some of what she’d heard. She told him of one instance when some girls had told a neighbor “that the police had been telling them to stay away from that boy named Damien—that he was a member of a gang.” But Ridge was not interested in hearing complaints about police conduct. Without addressing her remarks, he told Grinnell, “It’s really not complicated—the position we’re in and the position that Jason is in. If he’ll tell us a story, if he’ll tell us where he was that day, what time he got places, and we’ll check with those people that say he went to those places. If we prove that his story is true and correct, then Jason is a free person. But we can’t even start until Jason tells us what happened and where he was…. If we can prove that that’s where he was, I’m more than willing to see him be a free man. I mean, that’s the truth. But I can’t even start until Jason tells me something.”

129. Normally, arrest and search warrants, along with the affidavits submitted to support them, are open to public review. The practice, which has existed for centuries, is intended to safeguard citizens against unfounded arrests. But now Rainey was announcing that that normal level of openness would not be allowed in this case. He justified his order to seal the records, saying that the “high level of publicity” the case had attracted threatened “the defendants’ right to a fair trial.”

130. Bruce Whittaeker, of WMC-TV, channel 5, in Memphis, said he had turned down the offer because “we don’t buy news.”

131. This article was written by Bartholomew Sullivan, the
Commercial Appeal
’s lead reporter on the case. Another of the paper’s reporters who wrote extensively about the case was Marc Perrusquia. Sullivan and Perrusquia teamed up with Guy Reel to write a book about the case,
The Blood of Innocents,
which was published by Pinnacle Books in 1995.

132. When Gitchell was asked if parents in West Memphis could now allow their kids to “go out and play normally,” he answered obliquely. “I think all parents need to always know where their children are at,” he said. He added that “kids should stay away from” Robin Hood, which he described as “dangerous.”

133. An editorial in the
West Memphis Evening Times
noted that ever since the murders, “the rumor mill in Crittenden County has been grinding on overtime. The level of supposition reached wildfire proportions after the three teens were arrested last week, and community comment linked them with Satanism. Public curiosity being what it is, in the absence of any hard, cold facts other than the names, ages and addresses of the suspects, speculation is bound to continue.” The editorial advised that “giving the public a bare framework of facts surrounding these murders would have gone a long way toward suppressing the rumor and supposition. It seems to us that’s much more dangerous to these defendants’ eventual fair trial than the truth would be. But beyond that, the failure of the courts to allow the public even a limited knowledge of the facts in this case means Crittenden Countians have no choice but to take on faith the word of the police and prosecutors that this crime has been solved and that the community can breathe a sigh of relief…. While this community has no particular reason to distrust its law enforcement officials, a little reassurance wouldn’t hurt. But the case remains shrouded in secrecy, and the public’s questions remain unanswered. We hope, above all else, that our faith in the law enforcement and judicial system is justified. We just wish we knew for sure.”

134. Rainey’s order sealing the normally public records was affirmed by circuit judge Ralph Wilson Jr.

135. Reporters did ask a few questions about the variations in Jessie’s confession. One reporter for the
West Memphis Evening Times
asked Fogleman about the part in which Jessie had said that the boys were murdered at around noon, when it was known that they were in school. Fogleman’s answer was terse: “Obviously, the time is wrong.” The
Commercial Appeal
also took note of Jessie’s apparent “confusion about the issue.” The principal of Weaver Elementary School confirmed that the victims were in school all day, but the principal of Marion High, where Jason attended, refused to release attendance records that would have supported his claim that he had been in class there all day. In another article, the paper noted that the transcript of Jessie’s statement “places commas in unusual places.” For example, it reported that at one point the transcript quoted Jessie as saying, “Well after, all this stuff happened that night, that they done it, I went home about noon, then they called me at nine o’clock that night, they called me.”

136. The Reverend Rick McKinney warned, “Satanism is out there. Parents and young people need to be aware of its reality.” He advised that “a fascination with horoscopes is an early sign. If you go to the library and look for information on horoscopes, they will send you to the occult section.” And he added, “There is definitely a connection between hard metal music and Satanism.” The Reverend Tommy Stacy, another Baptist, said the situation in West Memphis called for “spiritual warfare.” But it was warfare, he advised, that was best left “in the hands of the Lord and law enforcement.” Yet another Baptist minister, the Reverend Tommy Cunningham, began a series of sermons on satanism. He told an overflowing crowd, “Satan wants us to believe he is a nonreality. If he convinces us of that, then his work is carried out best.”

137. The psychologist, Dr. Paul King, was identified by the paper as the author of
Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll: Dealing with Today’s Troubled Youth.

138. Quotes about cults ran the gamut. “Cult experts gave warning in 1992,” a front-page Sunday headline in the
Commercial Appeal
read. John Mark Byers told the
Commercial Appeal
that even after the arrests, he and Melissa remained afraid that members of a satanic cult might be free in the community. The paper reported that Byers believed “that others may have seen the three defendants ‘all bloody and muddy and wet’ after the murders”—others who “knew that these three little boys were going to be sacrificed.” “My wife and I are scared,” Byers told the paper. “The devil is at work, and recently, Satan and his demons have been at work in West Memphis.” Crittenden County librarian Nelda Antonetti told the
Commercial Appeal
that “she was alarmed by a sharp increase a few years back in students checking out books on Satanism, the occult and magic.” In an article by Marc Perrusquia, on June 13, 1993, the paper went so far as to note that “one book inspected recently by a reporter had a dog-eared page that listed human fat in a recipe for a potion enabling witches to fly, and also mentioned the heart of an unbaptized baby as a delicacy following a black mass.”

139. Bray acknowledged this in an undated three-page typed report that he gave to the West Memphis police.

140. At one point, in the interview on June 8, 1993, Bray asked Aaron if he’d seen any of the assailants “abusing” Michael Moore. Aaron answered, “I didn’t know he was abusing him.” Bray then asked, “Well, you told me they raped him at one point. Is that what they did? Who raped him?” Aaron responded that Jessie did.

141. Author interview with Lax, May 2001.

142. Eight years later, Jason recalled: “I was there for two weeks before I could talk to my mom. They put me in an orange jumpsuit that said ‘Craighead County’ on it. But I didn’t know where that was at. I didn’t know where I was. My mom didn’t know where I was, either. For two weeks, she visited jails—two whole weeks. Once she came to the jail where I was at and they told her I wasn’t there. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, guards would come around and wake me up, to show me off to other police. They’d point and say, ‘Yep, that’s him.’”

143. When assigned to write about who he’d be if he could be someone else, Jason had reflected: “I am satisfied with being who I am. I admit I have certain flaws I wish I didn’t have, but that’s life. Everyone has at least one thing about them that makes them special. My special quality is art. I have always been able to entrance people with my artwork, and I like that. It is the one thing that I can do that mostly no one else can do. So I am happy with being myself.” Another assignment called for him to contemplate his future. Jason had reflected: “Well, in my immediate future, I plan to graduate high school and go to some art college, and major in commercial art. Within the next ten years, I plan to be doing art for MTV on their videos and stuff, or doing album covers, T-shirts, etc. Within the next thirty years, I’ll probably be mellowed down and be reduced to doing wildlife paintings at home and selling them. Or I may have my own tattoo business somewhere. Well, I guess that’s just basically it with my career.” Asked to describe his musical tastes, he’d written: “The kind of music I like mostly is heavy metal. But I listen to all kinds of music. My favorite groups are Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Testament, Slayer, and Ozzy Osbourne. But I also like Guns n’ Roses, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pigface, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam. The reason I like this music is that it sounds good. Most of them make a point or statement in their lyrics, and I like that.”

144. The three defendants had been taken to jails in different towns, and though families were told where they were being held, authorities refused to make the locations public, claiming that the secrecy was for the defendants’ protection.

145. As reported in the
Commercial Appeal
, June 9, 1993.

146. The drug Echols took was amitriptyline, an antidepressant sedative that must be prescribed by a physician. Overdoses can cause an erratic heartbeat or coma. The 1993
Physicians’ Desk Reference
stated that “potentially suicidal patients should not have access to large quantities of this drug.” Arkansas law requires that prisoners be seen by a physician, who must approve any prescription medications, but in this case that precaution was not taken.

147. Lax and Shettles soon learned that the information they’d been given about Damien’s name was incorrect. But since Damien didn’t care which name they used, and since they’d already gotten to know him as Michael, that was the name that stuck. After one interview, Shettles wrote, “He stated he asked to be named Damien as, at one time, he thought about becoming a Catholic priest and knew that father Damien was a person who was kind and helped lepers.” She found the story poignant; Michael, the social leper, taking the name of a priest who’d cared for suffering outcasts.