The West Memphis Three, The Accused “Satanic” Child Killers
Court Documents/West Memphis Police DepartmentTop row: victims Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore. Bottom row: the West Memphis Three — Jessie Misskelley Jr., Damien Echols, and Jason Baldwin.
In May 1993, the town of West Memphis, Arkansas was rocked by the gruesome, tragic murders of three eight-year-old boys named Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Stevie Branch. The boys’ bodies were found naked in a drainage ditch, hogtied with their own shoelaces and covered in cuts and bruises — and the bizarre nature of their killings caused many people to question what exactly happened. Some quickly decided that the murders must have been part of some sort of Satanic ritual.
Police soon turned their attention to three troublemaking teenagers. To locals in a conservative area amidst Satanic Panic, these teens seemed like they could be suspects. Now known as the West Memphis Three, the teens were Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelley Jr., misfits who had previously been caught shoplifting and committing vandalism.
Echols in particular seemed to clash with the more conservative nature of the town. He dressed in black, listened to heavy metal, and seemed to have some type of pagan beliefs. And while Baldwin was generally considered to be a bright, promising student, he was friends with Echols. Misskelley, meanwhile, was seemingly just an acquaintance of the other two boys, but he had similar interests — and a learning disability, which unfortunately made him very easy to manipulate in his police interview.
In fact, Misskelley’s interrogation lasted a full 12 hours, and despite him only being 17 at the time, neither his parents nor a lawyer were present. Only 46 minutes of the interview were actually recorded, but even those 46 minutes alone show that Misskelley’s confession was full of inconsistencies. Investigators were clearly using coercive questioning techniques to manipulate Misskelley into confessing, dooming the West Memphis Three.
But one crucial thing that investigators lacked was forensic evidence. They had, effectively, no hard evidence to connect the teens to the crime, yet when it went to trial, all three were found guilty, with Baldwin and Misskelley receiving life sentences and Echols being sentenced to death.
Then, in 1996, an HBO documentary titled Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills cast a national spotlight on the case, highlighting the numerous issues with the convictions. People across the United States soon began to advocate for the release of the West Memphis Three, believing that they were victims of wrongful convictions, and in 2009, new advancements in DNA testing showed that there was no genetic material at the crime scene that linked the West Memphis Three to the crime.
Shockingly, the DNA evidence found at the scene did link Terry Hobbs, Stevie Branch’s stepfather, to a ligature at the crime scene, and a hair found on a tree stump nearby belonged to Hobbs’ friend David Jacoby. Both men have denied being involved in the murders, and police have never named them as suspects. But three eyewitnesses also said they saw Hobbs with the three victims the night before police found their bodies — despite Hobbs claiming that he hadn’t seen his stepson the day of the murder.
Even then, these revelations didn’t grant the West Memphis Three their freedom. It wasn’t until 2011 that they were offered a rare legal deal known as an Alford plea, which did not fully exonerate the men but allowed for them to be released from prison while asserting their innocence — but also acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them.
While they weren’t technically exonerated, this move did save Echols from his death sentence. The Memphis Three are continuing to seek full exoneration to this day, but the saddest part of this story is that the three young victims have never gotten the justice they deserved.
