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

by Damien Echols

  Lorri came to visit me about six months later. I remember it was summer because she wasn’t wearing a coat. We had no idea what to expect, and both of us were on autopilot, for lack of a better way to describe it. We both knew we needed to talk to each other, and then to see each other. Lorri flew in the night before to be at the prison at eight a.m., when the three-hour visitation period began. She flew back to New York the same day.

  It was a slow and gradual process, forging ahead together. In the beginning, I couldn’t have even articulated what we were doing because I had no concept of subtlety. Now it’s a personal obsession of mine, to know more of subtlety. I believe this obsession started with literature. The Latin American writer Julio Cortázar had had a huge impact on her life, and his books were among her most valued possessions. When she sent them to me, I was dumbfounded. I truly couldn’t understand why anyone thought these stories important enough to commit to paper. They made no sense to me. I had been raised to believe a real story had a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion in which the loose ends were tied up. These stories seemed to defy logic.

  I knew I was in love with Lorri when I started to wake up in the middle of the night furious and cursing her for making me feel the way she did. It was pain beyond belief. Nothing has ever hurt me that way. I tried to sleep as much as possible just to escape. I was grinding my teeth down to nubs. Now, years later, it’s exactly the opposite. Now there is no pain, yet she still makes my heart explode. Now there is only fun and love and silliness. She drives me to frenzy, because I can never get enough.

  For the first two years we knew each other, Lorri flew from New York to Arkansas about every other month, so in addition to the phone bill, this was an extremely expensive relationship for her.

  When she came to see me, there was a sheet of glass separating us. It was maddening, and we would often blow through the screen at the bottom of the glass just to feel each other’s breath. I loved to sit and look at Lorri, as she has an absolutely perfect body. It’s every man’s fantasy, like a 1950s pinup model. To have such intelligence in a body like that is a miracle. She takes exquisite care of herself, and it shows. It inspires me and makes me always try harder to be better for her.

  The thing is, I do things just to dazzle her. She says I know everything, and she is always amazed by the information I can supply on any topic she thinks of. I devour books by the boxful, just to impress her with what I know. I exercise twice a day—push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, running in place, and yoga—just so she’ll be as enamored of my body as I am of hers.

  Lorri and I weren’t able to touch each other at all until December 1999, when we were married. We had the only Buddhist wedding ceremony in the history of the Arkansas prison system. The guards had no idea what to make of it. It was a small ceremony that lasted about forty-five minutes, and we were allowed to have six friends there to witness it. They were friends and supporters of us both. Afterward, people said it was so beautiful they forgot it was taking place in a prison. At one point, I broke out in a cold sweat and nearly fainted, just because that’s every man’s genetic predisposition to weddings. After we were married, Lorri and I were permitted to be in the same room with each other, but every visit we had while I was imprisoned was chaperoned.

  Lorri had moved to Little Rock in August 1997 to start a whole new life and to be near me. She kept and still keeps every aspect of my life—and my ongoing legal case—neatly filed and managed, even when I rebel against it. She now represents me to the world at large. When she attends a meeting on my behalf, everyone has learned that it’s the same as if I were sitting there. She’s the only person I’ve ever trusted to take care of me as if she’s taking care of herself. When things need to be done “out there,” I can rest easy knowing she will tend to it.

  I spend every day of the week looking forward to Friday, when we have our weekly “picnic” in a visitation cell. Everything else is just a countdown to those three hours. We don’t spend all our time waiting on some distant day when I’m out of prison, because we have a life together right here and now. This is our life, and there is not a moment when we’re not in each other’s minds and hearts.

  Her parents are extremely supportive of our relationship and make trips to the prison for occasional visits. They’ve been a hell of a lot more accepting than I would have been if I had a daughter and she announced that she’d married a guy on Death Row. My son loves her as well, and she gets to take on the role of stepmother whenever he comes for a visit. She’s better suited to the role of parent than I, because I’ve still not gotten used to someone addressing me as “Dad.” In the early years, Domini brought Seth to visit me twice—after that, she would send him by plane to meet Lorri, who brought him to visit, though after he was about twelve, he and his mother just stopped visiting. This happens all the time: in the first year or two family will visit weekly or monthly; after that, their lives continue on, and the visits taper off.

  I would go through everything I’ve been through again if I knew that’s what it would take for Lorri to find me. She found me when I was drowning and breathed life into me. I had given up and she gave me hope. For the first time in my life I am whole.

  Any friendship that is worth its weight is like a dark and secret place where you hide bits of yourself. The door can be opened only by the two people who have the key, and you carry it with you wherever you go. Magnify that by a billion, and you begin to get an idea of what marriage is like.

  Lorri and I have struggled, fought, wept, and laughed as we were forced to discover new connections. She’s the only person I’ve ever known who has the tenacity and willpower to keep going when all others would have given up and walked away in defeat. We’ve had to take turns guiding each other through dark places. In the end it has helped us create a stronger bond than those who get to live together under the same roof. We’ve grown together as a single organism.

  Times have been both hard and magickal. I’ll never forget the Christmas we spent brokenheartedly whispering to each other on the phone, listing all the presents we would so dearly have loved to be able to give the other. Sometimes we decide on television programs to watch at the same time, and it’s as if we’re going to the movies on a date. We adjusted our sleep schedules so that we go to bed and get up at the same time. We talk to each other all day long. For example, I’ll think of something she said or did when she was last here and suddenly find myself laughing at her antics and saying, “You monkey!” out loud, forgetting for a moment that I’m alone in a prison cell. Instead, for that time period we are playing and cavorting together. We both do this.

  * * *

  I have a propensity to glance around the visitation area to see what others are doing or talking about. You see a wide variety of experiences and activities taking place. Some people are incredibly happy to be there with a loved one, and others show up late and act like they’d rather not be there at all.

  One father showed up every week hoping to persuade his son to drop his appeals and allow the state to execute him. He had two reasons why this was such a good idea. The first was that he believed it was the Christian thing for the son to do. The second reason was that the trip to and from the prison was difficult to make when he came to visit. I turned away in disgust, unable to comprehend a parent who would encourage his child to commit suicide.

  A great many visitors appear awkward, because they don’t know what to say to the loved one they came to visit. They glance around, clear their throats, and ask, “How ’bout them Cowboys?” thinking football the only safe topic. When visitation time comes to an end some people jump up, relieved the painful experience is over and eager to be on their way. Others clutch hands and hug, trying to get in one last kiss. A few cry as they leave; a few more laugh and call out raucous good-byes. Some convicts shuffle their feet and look at the floor; others stare at the retreating forms of loved ones until they’re out of sight.

  Some convicts and visitors don’t even get to touch each other and
have to speak through a pane of glass, like Lorri and I did for the first three years of our relationship before we were finally approved to sit in the same room together. Some people never get approved at all. Children stare at fathers without being able to hug them, sometimes for years at a time.

  My parents separated again during the first year I was in prison. They both continued to live in the West Memphis and Marion area. My father came to visit regularly during the first year, and brought his new wife. He stopped visiting after 1997. My mother also remarried. She usually came to visit me two, maybe three times a year in the early years. She couldn’t come more often, because she couldn’t afford it. She has never owned a car that cost more than a few hundred dollars and so had no means of making the long trip to the prison—nor could she afford a trip to the vet when her beloved cat got into a fight with a possum.

  During one visit she sat across from me in a hard plastic chair, slowly eating her way through a bag of pork skins bought from the prison vending machine and describing every detail of performing an amputation on the family pet. She spoke with a tremendous amount of pride in her accomplishment as I squirmed in my chair and tried to keep from becoming violently ill. She was clearly pleased with her handiwork and couldn’t understand why anyone would not be in awe and pat her on the back. She seemed to view herself as the Mother Teresa of the cat world.

  The unfortunate feline came home with one of its back legs bitten most of the way off. She held the little guy’s leg together and bandaged it up, hoping it would miraculously grow back together. It did not. Soon the cat began to stink of rotting meat as gangrene set in. After she realized the smell was not going to get any better, she called the vet and asked for advice. The vet told her she had two choices—the cat could either be “put to sleep,” or they could amputate the leg, which would cost what amounted to a small fortune when you’re poverty-stricken.

  My mother couldn’t stand the thought of having the animal put down, and she couldn’t afford the amputation, so she decided to do it herself. From old movies she had learned that ether renders people unconscious, so she figured it would work on the cat. Her first step was to buy something from an auto parts store that was in a can labeled “Ether.” Since ether isn’t something a person can just march into a corner store and buy, God only knows what the can contained. She poured the liquid into a Mason jar and held the cat’s head over it, forcing her patient to inhale the fumes. Other than causing the creature to struggle, it didn’t seem to have any effect.

  She decided pills were the next-best option, and she scoured the medicine cabinet. The cat was promptly forced to swallow both a Valium and a muscle-relaxer that had been prescribed for my mother. The cat had ingested enough painkiller to fell a large adult human. After a few minutes it was no longer even moving. The only sign of life was the loud, nonstop purring that emanated from its small, inert form.

  Her next step was to lay out her surgical instruments, which were limited to a garbage bag, a large pair of shears, and a small sewing kit. The garbage bag was used to cover the kitchen counter and contain the mess. The unlucky bastard was placed on the makeshift surgical table, where my mother stood with shears in hand. She realized she couldn’t bring herself to do the actual cutting “because the cat trusted me too much,” so she recruited her new husband to take part in the operation. The husband took up the shears and severed the tiny leg with one good chop while my mother held the cat’s head and gave it what comfort she could.

  The stump was then washed with cold water under the kitchen faucet (“I figured the cold water would help stop the bleeding”) and the wound was drenched in hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol. After finding it impossible to sew the wound shut, she decided to experiment with a new product on the market called Liquid Skin. This stuff would normally be used in place of a Band-Aid to cement together the edges of a minor cut. My mother used it to seal off the cat’s stump.

  I was doubled over and clutching my head in my hands. When I managed to sit up straight I saw my mom dusting the last of the pork skin crumbs from her hands, and Lorri looking like she was going into shock.

  “So the cat’s okay?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah, he’s just fine. He falls over sometimes when he loses his balance, and sometimes he forgets he doesn’t have a leg and his stump twitches when he tries to scratch his head with it, but other than that he’s hopping around just fine.” She was clearly proud of herself and beamed with pleasure.

  Mothers are odd things. We’re quick to think of their nurturing aspects, but there is also some sort of strange darkness there. It tends to be much stronger in connection with sons than with daughters. It’s easy for a mother to cross an invisible line and enslave a son with kindness. There’s nothing more revolting than a man incapable of slipping his mother’s apron strings. He will always revert back to a boy in her presence. I see boys with unnatural attachments to their mothers all the time. It’s a sign of the times in which no one ever grows up. We live in soft times.

  My mother’s just not capable of feeling things very deeply. Or at least not as deeply as I do. Not anger, love, hatred, or anything else. You could insult her, tell her you hated her, and she’d play off the drama of the moment, but the very next day she’d act as if nothing ever happened. My grudge is always there, and my moods are not flippant.

  Twenty-four

  I am a Sagittarius, a fire sign. Sagittarians are known for their need to keep moving, exploring, learning. Much like fire, Sagittarians must be fed or they will die. What they must be fed is a constant stream of new experiences. There aren’t many journeys to be undertaken when locked in a cage. Outward motion comes to a complete standstill. You have two choices: turn inward and start your journey there, or go insane.

  There is no time in prison, unless you create it for yourself. People on the outside seem to believe time passes slowly in prison, but it doesn’t. The truth is that time doesn’t pass at all. It’s an eternal vacuum, and each moment is meaningless because it has no context. Tomorrow may as well be yesterday. That’s why there’s so much stagnation inherent in prison life—because there is no momentum of any sort.

  There is only one way to avoid being swallowed whole by malaise, despair, and loneliness, and that is to create a routine you stick to no matter what. A physical routine, a mental routine, and even a spiritual routine. You don’t pass time—you create it.

  I began measuring time by doing thirty push-ups a day, and pushing myself until several years later I could do one thousand. I began doing ten minutes of meditation a day, and then pushed myself until I eventually reached five hours a day. It was only by becoming more disciplined, more focused, and more driven that I could prevent myself from falling into entropy and internal death.

  One of the first things that both Ju San/Frankie and Gene told me was that you must turn your cell into a school and monastery. You will spend a minimum of twenty-three hours a day in that cell, all alone. After I was moved to Varner, I spent only three hours a week out of my cell, when Lorri visited. Most people can’t take being forced to come face-to-face with themselves, so they become loud and mean, like baboons looking for a shiny object to distract themselves. The number one distraction is television. Most people in prison grow fat and out of shape as they spend endless hours in front of the TV. They’ll watch football, basketball, baseball, soap operas, The Jerry Springer Show, Judge Judy, and anything else that crosses the screen. They watch TV from the moment they get up in the morning until the moment they go to bed. If I didn’t want to become a brain-dead, shuffling, obese Neanderthal, I had to nip it in the bud and not allow myself to fall into the pattern.

  I moved from one area of study to another. In addition to the Theosophy texts from Gene and the Buddhist texts from Ju San, I began practicing a kind of Christian mysticism described in A Course in Miracles. I was introduced to this school of thought by a gentleman named Mike. I never could figure out if the guy was a genius or a psychopath. He wasn’t actually a Dea
th Row inmate, he was what is known as a “porter.” He was doing a life without parole sentence, and his job was to keep Death Row clean. Sweeping, mopping, washing windows, scrubbing the showers, dusting, et cetera—those were his jobs.

  I awoke one morning at two because of a scritch-scritch-scritching noise. Getting up to see what it was, I saw Mike on his hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. When I asked him exactly what in the hell he was doing, he explained that he no longer needed sleep so he figured he might as well use his time constructively. That was a typical Mike answer. He said only the ego needs sleep. He was also prone to having visions. He once told me he was shown in a vision that if he fasted for a week, he could reward himself with ice cream. (If someone indeed sends you money for your account, the prison has a short list of things you can buy. Ice cream is one of them.) Just when you were positive he was insane, he would do something to stop you dead in your tracks with wonder.

  A Course in Miracles is a book of practices that takes you a year to complete if you follow each lesson. Its aim is to completely change the way your mind has been programmed to think since birth. You come to experience reality in an entirely different manner, in which anything is possible. It’s based on quantum physics but uses biblical terminology. It’s become rather popular in recent years, and there are study groups devoted to A Course in Miracles all over the country.

  Mike hung out in front of my cell every day, sitting on a five-gallon bucket. Our only topic of conversation was A Course in Miracles and how it related to the Kabbalah, a book of Jewish mysticism. The Kabbalah is what we dedicated our time to learning about after finishing Miracles. Mike was learning from a guy in general population who was a Kabbalist, then he would come and explain things to me. You’d be amazed by how many students of various forms of mysticism you can find in prison. These prisoners are usually determined to make the most of their time and not repeat the same mistakes. These are men starving for a kind of knowledge not given in the mundane world, ready to learn and pass on what they already know. I would continue my study alone for a while after Mike was sent to another part of the prison.