Law & Disorder

by Douglas, John

  Ultimately Jessie told police the story they wanted to hear. It had to do with him getting a call from Jason early on the morning of May 5, asking him to go with Jason and Damien to Robin Hood Hills. The three of them were in the creek when the three boys rode up on their bicycles. Damien and Jason had called them over; and when they came, they overpowered and beat all three, then forced at least two of them into performing oral sex on them, then anally raped all three. During this time, Michael Moore tried to run away, but Jessie, up to this point only an observer, grabbed him and brought him back.

  Jason pulled out a knife and cut his victims’ faces; then he used it on Chris Byers’s genital area. Damien hit one of the other two with a “big ole stick” he had found and strangled the other one. Then they stripped off the boys’ clothing and tied them up. That was when Jessie said he left.

  Later, when he got home, he got a call from Jason, who exclaimed, “We done it!” but then worried out loud what they would do if someone had seen them.

  The detectives asked if this was part of a cult. Jessie said he, Jason and Damien had formed a cult about three months before, and that they met in the woods, held orgies and participated in ceremonies involving killing and eating dogs.

  Of the twelve hours police questioned Jessie, they only recorded two sessions totaling about forty-five minutes. This in itself is extremely suspect. What we hear is more than troubling. For starters, here’s what Jessie got “wrong” in his supposed confession:

  1. He said that the crime took place in the morning, when the three boys and Jason would have been in school.

  2. He said the boys were bound with brown rope. In fact, they were bound with their own shoelaces.

  3. He described Michael Moore trying to run away, when that would have been physically impossible, given that he and the other boys were bound hand to foot.

  4. The medical examiner’s report showed no evidence of anal penetration, contrary to Jessie’s description.

  5. There was no evidence of strangulation, as Jessie had described.

  6. Jessie contradicted himself on whether Jason had called him that morning or the night before.

  On “important” points, like the time and the means of binding, the interrogators tried to “correct” Jessie and steer him back to a narrative that conformed better to the evidence. Not only did Jessie tell the police nothing they did not know, which is unusual in a genuine confession, they clearly told him things he did not know, and added them to his story as they were supplied.

  “I figured something was wrong,” he said later, “ ’cause if I’da killed ’em, I’da known how I done it.”

  He knew he had been at a roofing job with some other buddies the morning of May 5; but if the police wanted him to tell a different story, he would do that.

  When he finished telling them what they wanted to hear, Jessie assumed they would let him go home, and he still hoped to get some of the reward money for a new truck for Big Jessie. With his simple logic, it did not occur to him that he had just implicated himself in the murders. For the police to claim they did not understand the level of simplicity and susceptibility they were dealing with is as far-fetched as the story they got him to tell. These officers were not stupid or unaware of what they were doing, so we can only conclude that they needed a confession from someone and set out to get it out of this simple soul.

  The other tip-off is the total noninvolvement and emotive detachment with which Jessie told the story. It was totally matter-of-fact, almost without affect—not anger, remorse, pity, lust, defensiveness, introspection. There was nothing. The interrogators would have had to be as simple as he was not to realize how strange his demeanor was. But here again, theory led evidence. One thing that forty years of immersion in the criminal justice system has taught me is that if you try hard enough, you will get the answers you seek.

  Had I been the primary interrogator, I could have gotten Jessie Misskelley Jr. to confess to having witnessed and participated in the alien abduction of the three boys and then depositing their bodies in the drainage creek when the extraterrestrial experiments on them were completed. But that wouldn’t make it true.

  Instead of getting reward money and going home, Jessie Misskelley Jr. was arrested and charged with murder.

  No sooner had they booked Jessie than Crittenden County deputy prosecutor John Fogleman appeared before municipal judge William Rainey to claim the police had probable cause to arrest Damien and Jason for murder and to request search warrants for their homes, along with Jessie’s and that of Damien’s girlfriend, Domini Teer. Part of their probable cause case was the statement William Jones had made to Detective Ridge that Damien had confessed to him. Like others in this strange case, Jones later recanted, but his comments against Damien were effective.

  The police didn’t wait until morning to move into action. They found Damien and Jason together that night at Damien’s trailer, along with his sister, Michelle, and Domini. Damien was wearing a black Portland Trailblazers shirt and Jason was wearing a black Metallica shirt. They arrested the two boys and put them in handcuffs. Jason later said he was shocked. Damien said he was not surprised, because the cops had been virtually camping out on his doorstep for weeks. They took various articles of clothing from the residences, including a number of black T-shirts. In Damien’s home, they found two notebooks in which he had put various writings and drawings that seemed to be satanic or occult-like.

  Damien never tried to deny his involvement in Wicca, which he interpreted as a positive life force, or his interest in the occult. But when you look at his background, it is easy to conclude that what he was really looking for was an escape from what he considered the banal reality of his life in West Memphis. It was also the likely reason he grew attached to Jason, a mild-mannered and creative kid who shared his interests in ideas beyond the norm.

  When they searched the homes, the only evidence the police found in any way linking either boy to the murders were some fibers from Jason’s mother’s bathrobe and from a child’s shirt in Damien’s home that were similar to fibers from Michael Moore’s shirt. These were common fibers, though, that were used in a lot of inexpensive clothing. No blood or biological evidence was found in either location.

  (Recently, new analysis presented by Jason’s appeals attorneys John Philipsborn and Blake Hendrix undermines the state’s trial testimony that there was any commonality between these fibers. But that would be almost twenty years afterward.)

  Both boys were taken to the police station, given polygraph exams, questioned without attorneys and without being able to contact their families; then they were taken to separate cells in the county jail.

  Damien was never told whether he had passed or failed the polygraph, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered. He has admitted having been too much of a smart-ass at that age for his own good.

  “Back then, I prided myself on how much of an ass I was. If they would have come to me and said, ‘Oh, we just gave you this lie detector test and you failed it,’ I would have said, ‘So?’

  “If they had said, ‘We’ve got some trouble with your answer,’ I would have said, ‘Yeah, it sucks for you, don’t it?’ ”

  It will come as no surprise that cops don’t exactly cherish kids like that.

  Meanwhile, once he realized what he had done, Jessie recanted his confession. But it was too late.

  At nine o’clock the next morning, June 4, 1993, Inspector Gitchell held a press conference. While trumpeting the arrests, he uttered the single most memorable and provocative statement of the entire case. While reassuring the public that the suspects were safely behind bars, he actually revealed very little about the details of the investigation. When he took questions from the media, he refused to comment on a pointed query as to whether those arrested were members of a cult. The reporters were getting restless without a good quote to run with.

  Then it dropped on them like the proverbial manna from heaven. A reporter asked, “On a scale of one to t
en, how solid do you feel your case is?”

  Looking extremely earnest, Gitchell nodded solemnly, as if to show he comprehended the import of the question. Then the corners of this mouth turned up slightly as he replied, “Eleven.” He glanced around, saw that his response had been a hit and offered a dignified smile, which bordered on preening. In time, he would come to regret that one-word utterance, that golden nugget of “law enforcement theater.” But from that point on, the community was convinced that the case against the three teenagers was open-and-shut.

  As I reviewed the case, I hadn’t yet thought through a profile or crime analysis, but the link to the three suspects seemed awfully thin, more like a “one” or “two” than an “eleven.” Unless there was more to it than I knew about, Jessie Misskelley Jr.’s “confession” seemed as leaky as a sieve. Vicki Hutcheson’s story about Jessie and Damien seemed preposterous on its face, especially since it was a well-established fact that Damien couldn’t drive. And what else was there: the notion that Jerry Driver thought these kids were capable of doing something bad? Where I come from, we don’t call that evidence; we don’t call it anything.

  There had to be something more that I was missing, or else this was a hysterical and transparent rush to judgment. And as I studied the crime scene photos, I just didn’t see anything that said “cult” or “satanic,” or presented anything ritualistic in appearance.

  On June 7, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, which would get many of the scoops and exclusives in the case, published excerpts of Jessie’s statement to the police. Satanic panic had taken hold of West Memphis. A rumor circulated that Damien had saved Chris Byers’s testicles and had them in his trailer in a jar of alcohol. One neighbor said she had heard that Damien sacrificed babies and covered one of his girlfriends with blood while he made love to her. Domini’s mother, Diane Teer, tried to quell rumors that he drank her daughter’s and Jason’s blood.

  Jerry Driver said he’d noticed an increase in teen interest in the occult over the past few years, as witnessed by the charred remains of bonfires, animals and disturbing graffiti. The Commercial Appeal described how several teens had been following a mysterious leader known as “Lucifer.”

  “I’ve been looking for Lucifer for two and a half years,” Driver declared.

  Pam Hobbs was interviewed by a local television reporter, who asked, “Do you feel that the people who did this were worshipping—”

  Before he could complete the question, she responded, “Satan? Yes, I do. Just look at the freaks. I mean, just look at them. They look like”—and here a dramatic pause—“punks!”

  In a prison interview, Damien observed, “West Memphis is pretty much like Second Salem, because everything that happens here, every crime, is blamed on Satanism.” Like Bridget Bishop before the Salem Court of Oyer and Terminer almost exactly three hundred years earlier, Damien Echols wore black, acted oddly and had forsaken the commonly accepted church.

  He was different, an outsider. And even though he lived in their community, he was not really one of them. The perfect profile of someone to fear.

  “We were the obvious choices because we stood out from everybody else,” he commented. He admitted to occasionally spraying graffiti on the concrete sides of underpasses, but he said it was never satanic. He just liked to see his name.

  The same day that the Commercial Appeal published part of Jessie’s confession, a hearing was held in Crittenden County Circuit Court in Marion at which Judge David Goodson appointed attorneys to represent the defendants: Val Price and Scott Davidson for Damien Echols; Paul Ford and George Robin Wadley for Jason Baldwin; and Dan Stidham and Greg Crow for Jessie Misskelley Jr.

  There was another piece I found odd and troubling. Recall that the crime scene was an untended wooded area that can be expected to change on a daily basis. On July 4, nearly two months after the murders, Detective Bryn Ridge returned to the area and retrieved two sticks, which the prosecution later used as exhibits. There is an old saying in law enforcement that “the difference between evidence and garbage is chain of custody.” How these sticks, these pieces of garbage, were admitted into evidence is beyond me.

  This was not the only example of questionable evidence gathering. On the morning of November 17, state police divers working with WMPD detectives set out to search a lake in the Lakeshore Trailer Park, near where Jason had lived at the time of the murders. TV and print reporters suddenly showed up. The divers were only in the water for a little over an hour, from 10:30 to about 11:35 A.M. Yet, they managed to locate the very knife—a large serrated model—that they were somehow convinced was the weapon that had left the vicious wounds on the three victims. Why then? Why there? Was it the only knife in the lake? How would they know? How could they tie it to the child murders without any physical markers? And did they just get lucky to find it so quickly? I’ve been involved in a number of water searches over the years and I’ve never seen one go that well. Another piece of law enforcement theater? As soon as I heard about the media being there, I knew this event had been staged for their benefit.

  As I say: If you try hard enough, you will get the answers you seek.

  On August 4, 1993, Damien, Jason and Jessie had all pled not guilty to capital murder charges. They had each told police they were home with their families the night of the murders. Members of both families confirmed this; though, admittedly, that doesn’t tend to be the most compelling alibi.

  Because his confession implicated the other two, Jessie was given a separate trial. On a motion from his attorneys Dan Stidham and Greg Crow to avoid prejudicial local publicity, the trial was moved north to Corning, Arkansas, near the Missouri state line.

  By the time I reviewed the case, it had emerged that Stidham was initially convinced of his client’s guilt, not believing anyone would give a detailed confession to a crime in which he did not take part. His strategy going in was to make the best deal he could by getting Jessie to testify against the other two. But the more he investigated, the more convinced he became that Jessie had nothing to do with the murders and had gotten a really raw deal.

  Jessie’s trial began in snow-covered Corning, with jury selection on January 19, 1994. He was charged with one count of first-degree murder in the death of Michael Moore and two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Christopher Byers and Steven Branch. Circuit court judge David Burnett presided and John Fogleman, who had applied for the search warrants, was the lead prosecutor. Despite the change of venue, it seemed as if the entire region was riveted on this satanic-cult murder.

  The Commercial Appeal reported that a juvenile officer from Missouri was attending the trial in hopes of learning more about teenagers who become involved in the occult, because “The people in rural areas who think this is not going on are sadly mistaken.”

  Throughout the trial, Jessie Misskelley Jr. mainly sat with his head down, staring at the floor, as if he really couldn’t comprehend the seriousness of what was happening around him. Arkansas Times reporter Bob Lancaster described him thusly: A passivity around him so profound it strains credulity; he sits all day facing away from judge and jury, staring at his feet, slumping farther and farther floorward in his chair as if he might ooze down and become a puddle between his shoes. Hard to see this scrap of person as an agent of evil. Various people interviewed afterward interpreted Jessie’s manner as if he didn’t want to be confronted with the enormity of his crime.

  Another unusual element raised the level of public and media frenzy. Two experienced documentary filmmakers out of New York, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, had received permission to record both trials and to interview the defendants and many of the key players for a prospective film they were producing for HBO. They made various deals to gain cooperation. For cooperation from Damien, Jason and Jessie, the filmmakers had made a contribution to their defense fund.

  The filmmakers, I was told, had gone into the project believing the three defendants had committed satanic murder. That was its juicy appe
al. Once they started filming the trial, though, their emphasis shifted as they realized the case was not what it had been cracked up to be.

  The focus of the trial, of course, was on Jessie’s confession. Under ordinary circumstances, a taped confession would be all the prosecution needed. But Dan Stidham, by now convinced of his client’s innocence, wanted to show the jury that in this case, appearances could be deceiving. He brought in Dr. Richard Ofshe, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a prominent expert on false confessions. Ofshe interviewed Jessie for three hours on December 15; then he attended a hearing in January in which police officers gave their own version of the confession. He was prepared to show all the ways that this was a “classic example” of a coerced confession. In a true confession, there would have been no attempt made by the interrogators to coach, lead, correct or guide what the subject was telling them. He cited eight separate police prompts on getting the time frame right.

  In what was only one of a large number of questionable calls in this trial and the one that would follow, Judge Burnett would only let the jury hear a small portion of Ofshe’s testimony, reasoning that letting an expert tell the jury what was true and what was false was taking the finding of fact responsibility away from them. I find this rationale to be bizarre, and so did Stidham, since all expert witnesses were going to try to convince a jury that what they said was correct and true.

  Another of Stidham’s witnesses was a polygraph expert and former Miami PD detective sergeant named Warren Holmes, who was prepared to testify as to the improprieties of Jessie’s examination and interrogation, since it was the false information he was given about the lie detector that led him to his confession. Holmes had conducted polygraphs for the FBI, CIA and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, among others. He had worked on such cases as the John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations and Watergate. But Judge Burnett would not allow him to testify, since polygraph results are not admitted into court. These two rulings effectively tied Dan Stidham’s hands on impeaching the only case the prosecution had against Jessie Misskelley Jr.