Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

by Damien Echols

  As we grew older, the thrill of sneaking out lost much of its appeal because in such a small town there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. Everything is closed by ten o’clock and there’s not much thrill in walking empty streets after the first time or two. Instead, we’d rent low-budget, straight-to-video horror movies every weekend and sit up all night watching them and making wisecracks. That was the closest thing to a “satanic orgy” I ever witnessed. The police had very vivid imaginations. I’m inclined to believe they may have seen a few too many of those cheap horror movies themselves.

  Often at the end of these festivities we’d collapse onto the bed and sleep until noon the next day. We couldn’t fall asleep without music. I never slept better than with Iron Maiden or Testament playing in the background.

  Over the years Jason and I became as close as brothers because we knew there was no one else to look out for us. We shared everything we had—food, clothes, money, whatever. If one of us had it, both of us had it. It was known without having to be said.

  After we were unceremoniously released from school for summer vacation every year, we would spend the long days sitting on the ragged dock in Jason’s backyard, fishing, feeding the ducks, or making foul comments and put-downs to whatever neighborhood teenagers showed up to hang out. Sometimes we’d play video games, stare blankly at the afternoon cartoons on television, pick at each other, or listen to one of the geniuses make prank calls. Other times we’d explore out-of-the-way places in search of snakes. In our neighborhood snakes were as valuable as cash and could be traded for anything. The days were slow and lazy, hot and long, each the same as the last. This was the extent of our lives, and we thought nothing would ever change.

  The first time I met Jessie Misskelley was completely unintentional. One day after school I knocked on Jason’s door, and Gail answered. Before I even asked, she said, “He’s not here, he’s at Jessie Misskelley’s.” She called him by his full name—Jessie Misskelley—and I would later learn that’s what everyone did.

  Leaving Jason’s front porch, I began to head back toward home, because I had no idea where “Jessie Misskelley’s” was. I’d heard the name before, and from the sounds of it he was supposed to be one of the Lakeshore badasses. About halfway down the street I heard Jason yell, and I looked to my left to see him standing in the open doorway of a trailer. It turned out that Jessie Misskelley lived only about four or five trailers down from Jason. I entered the gate and Jason led the way inside.

  The trailer appeared clean and kept up, no roaches or mice to be seen, and everything was in its place. Sitting in a living room chair next to the door was Jessie Misskelley. He was wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. His feet were propped up on the coffee table, and he had a bologna and cheese sandwich in one hand, and he was twirling an orange flare gun in the other. His hands had something black smeared on them all the way up to the forearms, as if he’d been working on a car. There was a mesh baseball cap perched atop his head; the emblem on the front was a Confederate flag and a grinning skull—typical truck-stop fare. From beneath the hat, long, straight, brown hair hung down to his shoulders.

  Before my eyes even had time to adjust to the inside, a female voice screeched with deafening fury, “Get out from in front of the TV!” This seemed to be directed at me, and it came from a skinny, dark-haired girl sitting in another chair. This bundle of feminine charm turned out to be Jessie’s girlfriend, who was notorious in certain trailer park circles. Some guys had their girlfriend’s name tattooed on their chest. Jessie had the word “bitch” tattooed on his, in reference to Alicia.

  Jason and I took a seat on the couch. Jessie’s girlfriend fell back into a silent stupor. Jessie became more animated and began to bebop around the living room. He took a glass figurine from a shelf and started making kissing noises. “This is my girlfriend,” he announced, holding up the glass figure. It appeared to be a small black woman with breasts bared, perhaps a novelty saltshaker.

  An older man came out of a back room, and I took him to be Jessie’s dad. I was correct. He didn’t so much sit in the chair that Jessie had vacated as collapse into it with a groan and a sigh. He looked tired and weary, as if every day of his life had been a long day. He eyed Jessie’s sandwich and asked, “That ain’t the last of that cheese, is it?”

  Jessie’s response was “Oops.” When his dad informed him he’d been saving it to take for lunch the next day, Jessie pulled the cheese from between the bread and flapped it in the air. “You can still have it,” he said, holding the cheese aloft and casting a grin in our direction. It was several bites short of being a whole piece.

  His father paid him no attention. Instead he said Jessie needed to get ready to climb under the trailer and make sure all the tires were on and aired up. They were preparing to move it to another trailer park, called Highland.

  Jason was suddenly very ready to leave. As we were going through the gate Jessie called out, “Y’all come back later so you can help me.” Jason said, “Okay,” over his shoulder without slowing down. A little farther down the street he told me that’s why he rarely went over there—they always tried to put you to work while they did nothing. Needless to say, we did not go back later to help, and Jessie took no offense. He knew he’d try to get out of unpaid manual labor, too.

  I never did see Jessie a great deal, but we became familiar enough with each other to talk when we met. Jason and I would run into him at the bowling alley and spend an hour or two playing pool, or hang out for a little while at the Lakeshore store. Jessie was no great conversationalist, but his antics could be amusing, and the odd things he said were usually worth a chuckle. It was very apparent to anyone of even average intelligence that you weren’t dealing with the world’s brightest guy. He was a great deal like a child. He was harmless.

  Nine

  Going back to school the next year was like starting from scratch. I was going to high school, while Jason was staying behind in junior high. In the preceding three years, I had developed a sense of security or stability, and now it was gone. Even though the high school was only about ten feet away from the junior high, it was a whole different world.

  Marion High School drew ninety-five percent of its student body from middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods. This was a place where kids drove brand-new cars to school, wore Gucci clothing, and had enough jewelry to spark the envy of rap stars. This was a place where I definitely didn’t fit in. Everyone who used to skateboard seemed to have given it up and moved on to other things, which meant that my circle of acquaintances had grown much smaller. In truth, I wasn’t even skating all that much anymore.

  In response to my new environment, my behavior became even more outrageous, and I was viewed as a freak. Freaks were a definite group of people, but it’s sometimes hard to explain what causes a certain person to fall into that category. Freaks weren’t really popular, but everyone knew who they were on sight. One boy had huge muttonchop sideburns, wore short pants, and had stuffed animal heads on his shoes. Another guy rarely took a bath and had a tendency to show up every now and then wearing a skirt. He wasn’t gay; he just liked skirts. A girl named Tammy (whom I had a crush on) was harder to define. She was gorgeous and a gymnast, but she wore nose rings, thermal underwear under her shorts, and white socks with black sandals. We had an odd relationship because she’d insult me and create a whole new genre of derogatory names to call me, but she’d jump down anyone else’s throat if they even looked at me funny.

  I began an intense and unlikely friendship with a guy named Brian that year. He sat next to me in a couple of classes and was always very quiet, but in an arrogant fashion. He dressed as if he had a business meeting to attend every day, had immaculately groomed blond hair, and wore tiny, round, gold-rimmed spectacles. When he finished whatever work had been assigned to us, he’d pull out a novel and quietly read until the end of class. When he acknowledged anyone’s presence, it was with contempt. I couldn’t resist bothering him. When I demanded
to see the book he was reading, he refused, saying that it had been a birthday gift and I looked like the sort who would damage it. When I declared that I wished to try on his spectacles, he once again refused and said he had no desire to clean my greasy fingerprints off the lenses. He seemed to think me an ill-mannered barbarian. These exchanges continued on a daily basis while class went on around us. He once hissed at me furiously, “Why can you not whisper? Even when you’re being quiet you’re still screaming.” This came after several warnings from the teacher. He had never been thrown out of a class in his life, and he had no intention of this being his first.

  One day I noticed he had a cassette sitting on top of his books. I leaned over to get a look at the title, and it was no one I had ever heard of. “What’s that?” I asked. Handing me the cover so I could read the lyrics, he said it was a Christian rock band and that it was the only kind of music he listened to.

  I was appalled and outraged that such a thing existed—how dare they defile the sanctity of rock ’n’ roll? He claimed he had quite the extensive collection, was active in many fundamentalist youth programs, and never missed church. He even had the nerve to invite me to come with him. My first instinct was to make a nasty gesture, but I suddenly stopped. Why not? It could be very interesting. My own religion felt so personal to me, a private thing, that his religion seemed viral, its only purpose to recruit more followers. It was all about “saving” others; once you “saved” somebody, you just moved on to “saving” others.

  The function we attended was some sort of youth gathering. The Baptist church had a gym, and that’s where we went. There were teenagers playing basketball, Ping-Pong, and even a few board games. I took part in none of the above. Instead, Brian and I took a seat in metal folding chairs at the back, so we could watch everyone else. While we were talking, a group of about five girls approached us, obviously friends of his, judging by the way they greeted him.

  Despite what I had been expecting, I soon found that I was enjoying myself. I struck up a friendship with one of the girls that would last for a couple of years—we talked two or three times a week on the phone, for hours at a time. Contrary to what my past experiences had led me to expect, no one preached, tried to convert me, or seemed to be even thinking about religion. We sat and talked while everyone went about their business all around us.

  It also seemed to be quite the hot spot for teenage romance. Just like any other place where young people tend to congregate, you would often see boys and girls looking at one another as if they were about ready to eat each other up. We went back to this place several times during the year and there was only one awkward moment.

  The awkward moment came when I showed up one night dressed in a long black coat, black pants, black shirt, and shiny, knee-high black boots that looked like they’d been stolen from a dead Nazi. This was my everyday garb now. I no longer dressed like a skater. In fact, I now never wore anything but black. Anytime I replaced an article of clothing it was with something black. I never again wore any color until after I was arrested. My appearance had been changing gradually, too. I had allowed my hair to grow long and tangled until it looked like Johnny Depp’s hair in the movie Edward Scissorhands.

  I noticed Brian talking to an older man, who I later discovered was the “youth pastor.” When Brian came back and sat next to me, he said the youth pastor didn’t like the way I was dressed, that it appeared “satanic.” Brian suggested that I at least take off the black duster, so I did as he requested. His eyes grew large as he urgently said, “Put it back on!” Evidently my shirt, which was emblazoned with the Iron Maiden slogan “No prayer for the dying,” was a church “don’t.” I hadn’t even thought about it before that moment, but it drew a great deal of attention from everyone else. That moment became one of the nails hammered into the coffin that sealed my fate and sent me here.

  As I sat in the Monroe County jail some years later, waiting to go to trial for murder, I saw that youth minister on the television screen. He was practically rabid as he ranted about “pacts with the devil.” He seemed psychotic. Simply the fact that I wore such a shirt to a church function was enough to convince a great many people that I had to be guilty.

  My influence on Brian’s life crept in gradually. His manner of dressing changed, his hair grew long and shaggy, and he no longer listened to Christian rock bands. He soon fell into the “freak” category. He wore silverware for jewelry and chain-smoked clove cigarettes. He was no longer above sneaking into his mom’s cabinet for a drink or two every now and then. He took up skating and became better than I had ever been.

  He was better because he was fearless. It was as if the possibility that he could fall and damage himself never even crossed his mind. Some part of me was always scared that I was going to fall when trying something new, so there would be a slight hesitation or a sense of holding back. Brian never had that; he hadn’t yet learned that pain waits for you around every corner—and it was apparent just by watching him.

  Soon I was staying at his place on weekends, or he at mine. On spring days, we’d go to the convenience store down the street from his house to get chocolate milk, Popsicles, and cigarettes, then sit on the curb and watch people going in and out. It doesn’t sound like much fun, but it was relaxing to me.

  For some reason I can no longer remember, I began keeping an odd sort of journal during this time period. It was a plain black notebook with no special characteristics, but in the years since it has become one of the most embarrassing and humiliating aspects of my existence. Everyone else is free to forget their period of teenage angst. I am not. That damnable notebook is always there to remind me. To be honest, I’m always amazed that I still get letters from people telling me how much they’ve enjoyed reading the parts that are known to the public and asking for more. There is no accounting for taste. I’m appalled that I ever wrote such trash. One day while watching my favorite sitcom a character on the show remarked, “Ever since they decided poems don’t have to rhyme, everyone thinks they’re poets.” How true. He may as well have been pointing at me.

  I wrote about typical teenage bullshit: depression, loneliness, heartache, angst, free-floating anxiety, thoughts of suicide. Even after I tired of it I was enticed into writing more by the only factor that has motivated boys since the beginning of time—a girl. Ultimately she kept the notebook, and I forgot all about it. I never even saw it again until I found myself on trial a couple of years later. Not only would I find myself on trial for something I was innocent of, but the prosecutors would rub salt into my wounds by reading my most private thoughts and feelings before a packed courtroom, television cameras, and newspaper reporters. Somehow this was considered “evidence.” A bad hairdo, a black wardrobe, teenage angst-ridden “poetry,” and a taste for hair bands is enough to send you to prison. Death Row, no less.

  The notebook became filled with all sorts of things I hardly remember—quotes, bits of information, lines from my favorite stories, and “poems” I had written. I can bring myself to call them that only with tongue in cheek. When I hear or read someone quote from them now, I want to crawl under a chair and hide. Ultimately, it is only my bad taste that has been immortalized.

  * * *

  The evening following our last day of school, Brian stayed at my house and we ordered pizza to celebrate the beginning of summer vacation. We sat at the kitchen table eating and watching the occasional person walk past on the darkened street outside. When I informed him that during the course of the day I had met a girl and we’d found ourselves attracted to each other, his curiosity was piqued. I told him her name, Laura, thinking he’d have no idea who I was talking about, but he surprised me by saying, more than once, “Are you serious?”

  It turned out that he saw this girl and her two sidekicks on an almost daily basis, because one of them, Ashley, lived on the street directly behind him. That set the tone and daily routine of our entire summer. Every single day after Ashley’s parents left for work, Brian and I would head s
traight over to her house, and all five of us would spend the day watching music videos or passing the hours in her backyard pool. The third girl’s name was Carrie, and before the summer was over Laura and I broke up and Carrie and I paired off. Brian and Ashley were an item all summer. There was something magickal about that season and the small group the five of us formed. When the summer ended, so did we.

  We didn’t meet them often on the weekends, because that would have involved the hassle of dealing with parental figures. We kept in constant contact by phone, but had no in-the-flesh meetings. Instead, Brian and I would spend the weekends ice-skating at a nearby shopping mall, riding around the streets of Memphis with his older brother, or watching videos and talking. That was the summer of much talking.

  I also got my first job, and it was one of the most horrendous experiences of my life. I woke up one morning and decided I was tired of being broke and penniless; it was time for me to join the workforce.

  I started by putting in applications at all the usual places that hire teenagers—grocery stores, fast-food joints, Walmart. No one was hiring. Then one day I remembered a small seafood restaurant next to the highway. I had never been inside the place, and I was growing desperate because potential employers didn’t seem to value the exceptional intellectual giant who was presenting himself to them. The seafood restaurant was my last option.

  I stepped inside the place one afternoon, and it was so dark that it took my eyes a minute to adjust. The floors were bare concrete, and the tables were small and covered with red-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloths. The cash register stood a few feet away from me, and sitting on a bar stool next to it was a small, gray-haired, humpbacked man. He seemed to be engrossed in paperwork of some sort. I approached him and asked if this fine establishment might be hiring. He looked at me for a moment in a way that would lead one to believe he was calculating shrewdly, then asked, “Can you start tonight?” I responded in the affirmative, and he told me to show up at five o’clock.