Yours for Eternity: A Love Story on Death Row

by Damien Echols

  I thought it was kind of romantic.

  I love you so, so much. Sometimes I think we’re both insane. And it’s great.

  D.

  December 23, 1996

  My dearest Lorri,

  Well, tomorrow we should hear a decision from the Arkansas Supreme Court. I don’t expect anything out of them, they will do nothing to help us, but we must pass through them in order to get to the federal court. The federal court is the one who will help us. Even though I know the Arkansas Supreme Court will do nothing for me, I still can’t help but hope, even though I know I will be let down. It’s still impossible for me not to keep my fingers crossed.

  I do have some good news though. There is a show on NBC called Dateline and they usually do a show that deals with 4 different topics, and they spend 15 minutes on each. Now they want to do a show where the entire hour will be about nothing but my case. This is major, because this show is watched by the world! This is going to be a bigger help than you can imagine.

  *

  p.s. I thought about it, and I think Indigo is a good name. It’s much, much better than Matilda. So Indigo it is. And it’s an appropriate name for either a boy or a girl.

  My heart and soul belong to you, my loved one,

  Damien

  December 26, 1996

  My Dearest Lorri,

  Well, so far 2 out of 4 of my predictions have come to pass, but I was wrong about 1 of them, and we have to wait to see if the fourth will be as I said. I said the Arkansas Supreme Court would make a decision before New Year’s Day, and they did. They made it today. Second, I said they would deny me. They did. Third, I said they would overturn Jason’s conviction, and this is the one I missed, because they denied him, too. My fourth prediction was that I will be released sometime when I am 23. This is the one we have to wait a little longer to see. I still can’t believe that I missed one! Oh well, practice makes perfect.

  *

  This is our first Christmas together. It’s amazing how different everything is with you. I love sitting here thinking of the first Christmas you, I, and our child will spend together, no one but us. Isn’t it incredible to even think of it? Like a miracle. And of course, the child’s name will be Indigo.

  I talked to the new lawyers, and I do not like them. I’ll talk to you about it, but they are soul-suckers.

  I feel scared now, because there is no magick anywhere when you are gone. I miss you so bad.

  I love you forever,

  Damien

  January 9, 1997

  My dearest,

  I just got to work and the radio was on. It was people talking from the Arkansas Department of Correction about the executions tonight. Maybe it was because I hear so little in the news these days—but I sat down and put my ear right next to the speaker and listened to it all. They talked about Paul and his spiritual advisor was speaking. Then they talked about Frankie. I felt so strangely touched—like I wanted to cry. Yet, I just wanted to hold you—that’s all I wanted. After that I left work and went for a walk. Then I became overcome by the feeling that once again—we are going to be together, that you are going to be OK, and that everything will work out fine—not just “fine”—the way it should be—which is tremendous.

  I love you,

  Lorri

  January 9, 1997

  My dearest Damien:

  It’s Wednesday night and I just had dinner with Susan and Luis. It was cauliflower and spinach. I may give you a grocery list someday—isn’t that a lovely thought? “Damien . . . will you please go to the store for me?” and the list would have things like—Parmesan cheese (grated), broccoli, ice cream, cookies, milk, potato chips, eggs, tampons. Yes, I would sneak that in whether I needed them or not, just to make you buy them. I can’t wait to do little things like that.

  “Damien, will you stand on my back, please?”

  “Damien, will you hand me my towel?”

  “Damien, will you wake me up when you wake up?”

  All these things are so simple. I can’t wait.

  “Damien, will you come kiss me til I’m dizzy?”

  Sweetness.

  But I was thinking today, this will be the first time in my life I will ever employ my feminine wiles! I’m going to get you to do all kinds of things! This will be fun! But I promise you will be duly compensated for all of them.

  Those are the things I love to think about sometimes. Sitting in a room with you, reading a book, with your head in my lap, you reading too, and stroking your hair. I could stay like that for a long, long time.

  We could have toast with jam and butter for breakfast. Or I could make you anything you wanted. Do you like French toast?

  I would always do anything you wanted. We will be very, very happy, my loved one.

  I kind of don’t want a TV. What do you think? I would like to do without a telephone. But I suppose we should have one.

  Imagine how differently we will view the telephone then? No longer the lifeline it is to me now. We will never have to be parted.

  Yours forever,

  Lorri

  January 13, 1997

  My love,

  For the past few days, I have been lying here thinking, and I don’t feel so very young anymore. Actually, I feel pretty damned old. This feeling comes upon me from time to time, but I don’t believe it’s ever gone this deep before. I mean, I know I’m old, but I don’t always feel that way, just every once in a while. And when I feel it, I can’t stop looking in the mirror, because during these times I can always see myself age a little more. I don’t mean this physical body, I mean when I look at the eyes and allow myself to look as deep into them as I can, I always see my true self getting older and older. Sometimes it makes me a little happy, because I know that with age comes wisdom, and I have been collecting wisdom for a long, long time. But at other times, it doesn’t make me so happy, because I will feel like a very tired, old little creature who is well past its prime. And I feel that in all this time I have spent, I should now at least be able to rest, to just lie with you forever, to touch you, to tell you how much I love you. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. I will be content just to be able to be near you for eternity. That’s the only thing I want. To hell with anything and everything. I have not the time, patience, or mind for it. Nothing else even concerns me, just being with you.

  I love you forever, and I belong completely to you for eternity,

  Damien

  January 22, 1997

  My Dearest Damien,

  I am so tired tonight—the full moon is in just two days and I will put the water out. Today, I thought of us with our moonade stand out in the middle of nowhere—just ghosts stopping by to buy our drinks.*

  I think about us being somewhere—just the two of us all the time, too. How we will fill the day eating toast with jam. Me drinking coffee—not you, though, you can have tea—chamomile tea! I’ll make everything for you. We’ll know the woods and the fields so well. We’ll find a place to swim, and in the winter we’ll go for long walks in the snow in the cold. We’ll come back to our house and I will make the sweetest love to you that you have ever known. Then I will read to you or we can watch some old wonderful movie.

  There is so much to do.

  I had the oddest discussion with Luis tonight.

  I said, “Do you think I am insane?”

  And he said, “Oh yes”—but lightly and in a sweet way.

  He then said, “Don’t you know that is why I am here—to keep you from flying off the earth? I will keep the points of the eyes (?!) until you do what you have to do. You are too emotional for this world.”

  He knows why he is with me. It makes me feel safe in a way—like the plan is going about as designed.

  I love you,

  Lorri

  January 29, 1997

  My love,

  I loved the wa
y you described us being by ourselves with just the woods and fields and each other. I keep reading it over and over; it makes me feel so close to you. We’ll spend an eternity doing nothing except studying each other, making love to each other. There is nothing else worth doing.

  I like what Luis said about you being slightly insane, and him being there to keep you from flying away. But one day, you will fly away. You’ll fly away with me. And I think that if both of us weren’t just a little insane, we would never make it. I’ve always treated insanity in a joking way, but I think madness is so romantic. And I love the idea of us gradually going mad together. It seems so beautiful.

  *

  No more Sandman, no more Grand G. I will never go far away from you. I will always be right with you, so you should never have any fear of it being otherwise. I could not live if I were away from you. There would be no reason to even try. I am all yours, I completely belong to you, and you must never doubt it even for a second.

  I love you for eternity and belong only to you,

  Damien

  February 3, 1997

  My dearest,

  I fear I am so reckless sometimes—you are so much wiser about things sometimes. I lack discretion. That is my problem. At a time when all could be and is heard and read—I just go about our lives babbling away.

  *

  Waves of jealousy. They are horrible to me. I’ve lived my whole life without being a slave to it, except for once. Just once and that lasted a relatively short time.

  But with you—it could cause me to become stark raving mad. It’s like you said—I remember a thing you have said and it just goes around and around in my head and I torture myself. You have nothing to do with it—because I know you would never want me to feel this way—as I would never want you to have a moment of misery. So I’m going to try very, very hard to make it stop. No, I couldn’t bear to see a picture of Deanna, because I would never be able to stop thinking of her, because I’m sure she was extraordinary, and I know you were crazy in love with her, and I know that I am nothing like her. So I couldn’t bear to have that image in my mind. You’re lucky in that I was never attracted to physically beautiful people—except women—which was wonderful because I never wanted to sleep with them or fall in love with them in that all-encompassing way.

  So you could never look upon anyone from my past and think, “He’s beautiful,” because they were all strange-looking—even on the fringe of ugliness. I veered far, far away from beauty. I found it almost too alien for me—I gravitated toward scars and crooked teeth and malformed bones, gauntness. So being in love with a true, pure-to-the-point-of-scariness beauty is very difficult for me at times. So please bear with me—my jealousy is so young, so reckless—so new and strong, even overwhelming. I don’t know why it exists when we love each other so much—you say it’s the nature of it—and you told me how you hated being with Domini—and that whole situation sounds so miserable and yet it makes me feel better?? That you two were miserable makes me feel better. Why is that? It’s crazy.

  To know that I would never change anything about myself—the way I look, the way I think—the way my life has gone (except for not being with you). I wouldn’t change anything so why am I jealous? Because someone else got a piece of you or had an impact on you.

  So, I’m going to try really, really hard to stop it. I think it’s corrosive. I do.

  I want you to try, too. For you have nothing to ever be jealous of—even though most of the time that reasoning means nothing.

  Damien . . . you just called . . . you said something to me that I will never forget, and it means so much to me—more than you even know. You said that you have never been happy until now. I thought my heart would just burst.

  You, my dear, have made me happier than I have ever been—and I know we both suffer not being able to be together. But to hear something like that makes all of my “suffering” worth it.

  *

  Do you remember one of the first times we ever spoke on the phone—the second time, actually. I started whispering to you—and you said . . . “Why are you whispering?”

  It’s so funny, it just seemed the right way to speak to you.

  Now we do it all the time.

  Yes, you are definitely turning into me, I am turning into you.

  *

  Not to be a nagging lover, but just how much are you smoking these days? On my next visit, I’m going to come back there and have a little chat with all of those who continue to send you cigarettes as a gift. And what’s this about cigars??!! You thought I was going to let that slide, didn’t you? Well, guess again. Maybe you should take to chewing sugarless gum.

  *

  Damien, we do talk of sanity, insanity a lot—but I honestly do believe you are the sanest person I have ever known. You’re honest and I think to most people, the truth sounds like the ravings of a madman.

  But I want you to know—I have never thought of you as insane. I think we’re both a little “off”—but even then—I don’t think we are—we are more aware of who we are and what we are doing than anyone I’ve ever encountered. Think of all the crazy things people around us do—and yet, they look at us like we are crazy.

  Yours, forever and ever,

  Lorri

  February 10, 1997

  My love,

  You should get a package at the same time as this letter, so I will explain it.

  1. The coffee—for the short period that I tried to drink coffee, this was the kind I drank.

  2. The “Breakfast drink”—I drink a glass of this every day. Look at all the vitamin C in it!

  3. The spoon—I have these lying around everywhere, because they give me one 3 times a day and I never throw them away.

  4. The oatmeal cake—when I eat one of these, I can’t stop. I will eat 4 or 5 of them.

  5. The pack of oatmeal—I buy boxes of this all the time; it has all different flavors in it, and I like them all.

  6. The crackers—I love, love, love these. Yummy.

  7. The red pen—I used this to underline things in books.

  8. The black pen—I have used this pen many times to write to you.

  9. The strawberry candy—you never know what kind you will get when you order this, because they have all different kinds and they send you whatever kind they want.

  From now on, I will be forever looking for things to send you. Everywhere I go (where am I going besides to take a shower twice a week?) I will be looking for things to steal for you.

  I love and belong to only you for eternity,

  Damien

  February 12, 1997

  My dearest,

  I love the gifts you sent me—now the pen you used to write to me is being used by me to write to you. I love this pen. I will use the red pen to underline things. I ate the oatmeal cake tonight—it was completely lalishla! And I will have the oatmeal and the coffee for breakfast. I will save the breakfast drink for Friday. The spoon I will keep with me all the time to stir my coffee and the crackers I will have tomorrow for a snack at work. I want to ask you about the small wooden coffin that arrived with the book. I put the strawberry candies in the coffin—but they didn’t want to stay in there, so I took them out. I couldn’t tell if the coffin didn’t want the candy or the candy didn’t want to be in the coffin. Where did you get it and what is it for?

  *

  You don’t know how much I love these gifts!

  I love you and am yours through eternity,

  Lorri

  February 28, 1997

  My beautiful one,

  Our 1-year anniversary? How can a whole year have passed already? But then, in a way, it seems as if so much more time than that has passed. It seems somehow much shorter and much longer than one year. How can that be?

  *

  Yes, my love, we will be together, and it does not matter if it is wh
ile living or in death. Either way, we will be together, so what does it matter? We have eternity together, so this small amount of time that we are separated must not be allowed to make us sad, because it really means nothing. I feel so wonderful just thinking of it. Yes, my love, we can endure this for now, because everything is ahead of us. I am your ghost. No, I do not doubt at all! I have no doubts, my love. I feel it deep inside of me, it’s so huge it feels as if I will explode. I will never again fear losing you, I will never fear anything because I know that I have you.

  I love you beyond measure,

  Damien

  February 28, 1997

  My dearest love,

  Damien, I can’t spend another summer here—I have to get down to New Orleans. I got my last huge phone bill today. We can be strong, you and I—when we need to. There will be plenty of time for overindulgence. I have been quite proud of us. It makes me feel really good—like we are accomplishing something. OK if we talk once a day through the week and 4 times on Sat and Sunday—that’s only $200.00—we can do that—yes—yes—yes!

  And maybe I can come visit you more.

  I love you,

  Lorri

  March 3, 1997

  My dearest love,

  No, my love, you truly don’t belong here. But neither do I. Just hang on for a little longer, and I promise you that we’ll go to where we do belong. We’ll go to nowhere. And you’ll never have to worry about this place again. Until then, just remember that I love you.