The Anti Chive- Cogent, Relevant, Topical
2003-07-02 02:06:54 UTC
Musicians speak out for West Memphis Three
By Dan Nailen
The Salt Lake Tribune
In America, people don't go to jail because of the books they read,
the music they like or the clothes they wear.
But a decade-old murder case in West Memphis, Ark. -- rife with
small-town politics, religious overtones, issues of social class,
adolescent turmoil and rock 'n' roll -- challenges that presumption.
The case, in which three teens were convicted -- many people believe
wrongly -- of the sadistic murders of three 8-year-old boys, has
produced two documentaries, a Hollywood film slated for release next
year, an investigative book by an award-winning Arkansas journalist, a
Web site devoted to the trio's defense, two major benefit albums and a
national groundswell of support from musicians, including two punk
legends stopping in Salt Lake City tonight to do a benefit concert.
Keith Morris and Henry Rollins were the first and last singers of
Los Angeles '80s punk legends Black Flag, and they are currently touring
with Rollins' band, doing songs that have not been heard live in years.
Proceeds are helping pay for DNA testing that could either exonerate the
so-called "West Memphis Three" or prove that Arkansas authorities were
right all along.
"Innocent, guilty, we don't know, just like no one on the street
knows," Rollins said in an interview. "What will help us out is
conclusive DNA evidence . . . and if the DNA evidence implicates them,
then now we know for sure.
"As it is now, no one knows."
The murders: On May 5, 1993, second-graders Stevie Branch,
Christopher Byers and Michael Moore disappeared while riding their bikes
after school. A search that night of their West Memphis neighborhood and
a nearby patch of woods known as Robin Hood Hills yielded nothing. But
the next afternoon, police discovered their naked bodies submerged in a
nearby stream, hogtied with their own shoelaces. They had been severely
beaten, and one of the boys was castrated.
Almost immediately, police began publicly discussing the possibility
that the boys were the victims of a satanic cult-inspired ritual
killing. That wasn't far-fetched for many of the area's fundamentalist
Christians: How else to explain the sexual mutilation and scant blood at
the place the bodies were found?
Nearly a month later, with the community growing increasingly
anxious, the West Memphis police announced three arrests: Jessie
Misskelley Jr., a 17-year-old, had confessed and implicated 16-year-old
Jason Baldwin and 18-year-old Damien Echols. Echols in particular fit
the police department's occult theory, as he often wore black and was
considered a strange character in the small town.
Police were asked how confident they were, on a scale of 1 to 10,
that Misskelley, Baldwin and Echols were guilty. "Eleven," boasted chief
inspector Gary Gitchell. The case seemed so airtight that Judge David
Burnett allowed a documentary crew from HBO to film the trials of the
accused killers.
It was a decision the judge would later regret.
'Paradise Lost': Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky filmed
the trials of Misskelley, Baldwin and Echols through the winter of 1994.
The teens were convicted, with Misskelley and Baldwin receiving life
sentences and Echols the death penalty. But it wasn't until "Paradise
Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" debuted two years later at
the Sundance Film Festival and subsequently screened on HBO that the
world outside Arkansas got a glimpse of the proceedings.
Absent any physical evidence linking the West Memphis Three to the
crimes, prosecutors made the argument that the boys were involved in
satanic cults. Their proof? The teens listened to music like Metallica
and Megadeth, dressed in heavy-metal T-shirts and black trenchcoats and
read authors like Stephen King and Anne Rice. Echols had shown interest
in the Wicca religion, which was apparently enough for the jury to buy
that he was a cult ringleader of some sort.
Misskelley's confession, elicited after 12 hours of interrogation
and riddled with inaccuracies, was all that linked the trio to the
crime. The 17-year-old Misskelley, whose IQ measured in the low 70s, had
dropped out of school in ninth grade, with skills barely at the
fourth-grade level. Psychologists classified him as "slow" or "mildly
retarded" throughout his childhood. Arkansas investigative reporter Mara
Leveritt's book on the case, Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West
Memphis Three, said the 12-hour interrogation included coercion by the
police, forcing Misskelley to look at a photo of one of the murdered
children, a polygraph test Misskelley passed -- but was told he
failed -- and offers that things would go easier for him if he helped
get Baldwin and Echols. Only 34 minutes of the 12 hours were recorded.
"Paradise Lost" showed Misskelley's lawyer questioning the West
Memphis Police Department's methods, and lawyers for Baldwin and Echols
asking for any physical evidence that linked their clients to the crime.
But the movie ends with the teens being chained and driven to prison,
convicted of murder.
www.wm3.org: "You just assume they did it," said Burk Sauls, a Los
Angeles writer and visual consultant in the entertainment industry,
about watching "Paradise Lost" for the first time. "They got convicted.
The jury must have heard something I didn't hear. Of course, films don't
show you everything.
"It was one of those things that just bugged me, though. Like, 'Why
are these filmmakers so bad that they don't show any of the evidence
against these guys? Didn't they have access to any information? They had
cameras right in the courtroom -- why didn't they show us any evidence?'
"
Sauls and two friends, Kathy Bakken and Ogden native Grove Pashley,
saw the film when Bakken's graphics company was hired to create the
movie poster. They thought it was simply a creepy movie about
heavy-metal teenagers dabbling in satanism and committing a sensational
murder.
"I grew up in the South, and I always heard about devil worshippers
and stuff, and I always thought it was kind of stupid and funny, how
easy it was to scare some people," said Sauls, a Florida native. But
they were struck by how strange the case seemed on film.
"Maybe within six months of seeing the film, we had gone out to
Arkansas," Pashley said. "We were interested in talking to the guys
directly about it and talking to anyone else we could talk to about it.
There was an idea back then that maybe we should start a support group
for these guys, but we did have to do our own research first."
Sauls, Pashley and Bakken were allowed to meet with the boys in
their respective prisons and bring cameras and tape recorders. They also
met with Misskelley's attorney, Dan Stidham, who showed them autopsy
photos.
"It had a huge impact on us to see how horrible this crime was, and
that not only were there these three kids who were convicted of this
crime, but there were these victims, these children and their parents,"
Pashley said. "Dan, at the end of this meeting, said, 'The only people
that are here to help these guys are sitting in this room.' And that was
kind of a responsibility that I didn't want to take on. I didn't want to
believe that. But I felt we were the first ones to discover that, 'Hey,
these guys probably aren't guilty at all, and there are still murderers
out there.' "
Sauls, Pashley and Bakken created www.wm3.org, an informational
clearinghouse about the case. The efforts of the wm3.org group were a
major part of "Paradise Lost 2: Revelations," the 2000 sequel that
advocated the innocence of the West Memphis Three.
Rock 'n' roll reacts: The Supersuckers' Eddie Spaghetti watched the
first "Paradise Lost" expecting a movie about "deranged heavy metal kids
[who] go off the deep end and commit a satanic murder."
What Spaghetti saw was something else, a story of three kids who
were apparently railroaded because they were outcasts in a small town,
listened to rock music, read horror books and came from families too
poor to mount a defense. The band and its then-manager, Danny Bland,
contacted the creators of the Web site and eventually produced a benefit
CD in 2000, "Free the West Memphis Three," that featured such artists as
Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and L7.
Spaghetti has stayed in touch with the inmates through letters and
visits and continues to spread the word about the case however he can.
When the Supersuckers headlined a show at the Zephyr Club last week,
Spaghetti wore a "Free the West Memphis Three" T-shirt, a regular piece
of his stage attire.
"It started with just a little interest in this, and the feeling
that it could have been me, it could have been you, it could have been
anybody who's ever had a left-of-center thought in a small town,"
Spaghetti said. "Wearing your Ozzy T-shirt, walking down the street
being spit on by the baseball team,. . . I totally related to it. To see
that it's gone this far is really disturbing."
Henry Rollins, whose band is doing the Salt Lake City benefit
concert, came across the West Memphis Three case through "Paradise Lost"
as well. He is currently touring to raise money for DNA testing of
tissue found under one of the victims' fingernails that could
potentially prove whether Misskelley, Baldwin or Echols was involved in
the murders. Last year, he produced a benefit album, "Rise Above: 24
Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three."
Rollins, unlike Spaghetti, doesn't see the case as something that
could have happened to him as a punk-rocker growing up in Washington,
D.C. He sees the case as a murder that happened in a small community
unprepared to deal with such a heinous crime. The crime scene was poorly
managed, he says: bodies moved around and people tramping through the
area.
"The thing that burned me the most was the lack of due process, and
just the failure of the justice system to do its job," Rollins said.
"When you don't get your Miranda rights read to you, when you're
mentally challenged and you're yelled at by interrogators for 12 hours
and then the tape recorder is flipped on, that's just not how you try
anybody."
Rollins is hopeful that justice will eventually be done.
"The only thing separating these guys from a life of incarceration or
death is the will of good people to do the right thing. At this point,
that's all. The state of Arkansas will not pay for the [DNA] testing.
God will not pay for the testing. It's just down to you, me and anyone
who gives a damn." %%At DV8
Last year, Henry Rollins produced "Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to
Benefit the West Memphis Three," a compilation of his former band's
pioneering punk songs delivered by the likes of Public Enemy's Chuck D,
Iggy Pop, Hank Williams III, Ice T and Ryan Adams, as well as members of
Rancid, X, Ween, Slipknot and Slayer, among others.
To gain some attention for the cause and the completed album, the
Rollins Band played a few shows of all Black Flag songs at the end of
last year and invited original Black Flag singer and Circle Jerks leader
Keith Morris along for the ride. After raising about $10,000 for the
West Memphis Three Defense Fund, Rollins decided it might be worthwhile
to do a tour of the Black Flag material.
"The set works great live, it's fun to do and we can pull it off,"
Rollins said. "We raised a good chunk of dough in a little bit of time,
and we thought, 'What's wrong with this? Let's do some more.' "
The tour, stopping in Salt Lake City tonight with Morris aboard, has
been selling out across the country, even in Memphis, where Rollins said
ticket brokers were getting death threats for supporting the cause and
radio personalities were mocking the whole idea of the West Memphis
Three's innocence.
Money from this tour goes to the West Memphis Three Defense Fund,
specifically to help pay for DNA testing on 10-year-old evidence that
the defendants were denied funds to test during their trials. And that
DNA testing does not come cheap, as Rollins makes clear on his Web site,
www.henryrollins.com.
"I need you to show up at the show. I need you to tell a friend.
That's what I need. I need these shows packed out and the house rockin.'
From our side of things, I want to make this absolutely clear: We are
not going to be casually shuffling through these songs like it's some
kind of oldies show and you'll be into it because everyone's hearts were
in the right place. We are a trained assault unit.
"This is not a Black Flag reunion. [Black Flag founders] Greg Ginn
and Chuck Dukowski wrote some of the best songs ever, and we are
hell-bent on rendering them as best we can. If we didn't know for sure
the set was bomb-proof, we wouldn't be out all summer wasting
everybody's time. This is a one-time, one-time-only tour."
-- Dan Nailen
Learn more
http://www.wm3.org. This Web site is an informational clearinghouse
on all aspects of the West Memphis Three case. It includes recent legal
developments, sections on how to get involved, biographical information
on the defendants and links to books, films, T-shirts and other
products.
Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three by Arkansas
investigative journalist Mara Leveritt is a comprehensive look at the
case that brings to light the questionable police investigation and
trials of the West Memphis Three, with materials reporters did not have
access to at the time.
"Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills," the 1996
documentary termed "true crime reporting at its most bitterly revealing"
by the New York Times and the inspiration for the groundswell of justice
seekers who have since become involved in the West Memphis Three case.
"Paradise Lost 2: Revelations," a 2000 sequel that delves further
into the case and more strongly advocates the West Memphis Three's
innocence, details the efforts of their supporters and includes
interviews with the three accused after five years in prison.
By Dan Nailen
The Salt Lake Tribune
In America, people don't go to jail because of the books they read,
the music they like or the clothes they wear.
But a decade-old murder case in West Memphis, Ark. -- rife with
small-town politics, religious overtones, issues of social class,
adolescent turmoil and rock 'n' roll -- challenges that presumption.
The case, in which three teens were convicted -- many people believe
wrongly -- of the sadistic murders of three 8-year-old boys, has
produced two documentaries, a Hollywood film slated for release next
year, an investigative book by an award-winning Arkansas journalist, a
Web site devoted to the trio's defense, two major benefit albums and a
national groundswell of support from musicians, including two punk
legends stopping in Salt Lake City tonight to do a benefit concert.
Keith Morris and Henry Rollins were the first and last singers of
Los Angeles '80s punk legends Black Flag, and they are currently touring
with Rollins' band, doing songs that have not been heard live in years.
Proceeds are helping pay for DNA testing that could either exonerate the
so-called "West Memphis Three" or prove that Arkansas authorities were
right all along.
"Innocent, guilty, we don't know, just like no one on the street
knows," Rollins said in an interview. "What will help us out is
conclusive DNA evidence . . . and if the DNA evidence implicates them,
then now we know for sure.
"As it is now, no one knows."
The murders: On May 5, 1993, second-graders Stevie Branch,
Christopher Byers and Michael Moore disappeared while riding their bikes
after school. A search that night of their West Memphis neighborhood and
a nearby patch of woods known as Robin Hood Hills yielded nothing. But
the next afternoon, police discovered their naked bodies submerged in a
nearby stream, hogtied with their own shoelaces. They had been severely
beaten, and one of the boys was castrated.
Almost immediately, police began publicly discussing the possibility
that the boys were the victims of a satanic cult-inspired ritual
killing. That wasn't far-fetched for many of the area's fundamentalist
Christians: How else to explain the sexual mutilation and scant blood at
the place the bodies were found?
Nearly a month later, with the community growing increasingly
anxious, the West Memphis police announced three arrests: Jessie
Misskelley Jr., a 17-year-old, had confessed and implicated 16-year-old
Jason Baldwin and 18-year-old Damien Echols. Echols in particular fit
the police department's occult theory, as he often wore black and was
considered a strange character in the small town.
Police were asked how confident they were, on a scale of 1 to 10,
that Misskelley, Baldwin and Echols were guilty. "Eleven," boasted chief
inspector Gary Gitchell. The case seemed so airtight that Judge David
Burnett allowed a documentary crew from HBO to film the trials of the
accused killers.
It was a decision the judge would later regret.
'Paradise Lost': Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky filmed
the trials of Misskelley, Baldwin and Echols through the winter of 1994.
The teens were convicted, with Misskelley and Baldwin receiving life
sentences and Echols the death penalty. But it wasn't until "Paradise
Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" debuted two years later at
the Sundance Film Festival and subsequently screened on HBO that the
world outside Arkansas got a glimpse of the proceedings.
Absent any physical evidence linking the West Memphis Three to the
crimes, prosecutors made the argument that the boys were involved in
satanic cults. Their proof? The teens listened to music like Metallica
and Megadeth, dressed in heavy-metal T-shirts and black trenchcoats and
read authors like Stephen King and Anne Rice. Echols had shown interest
in the Wicca religion, which was apparently enough for the jury to buy
that he was a cult ringleader of some sort.
Misskelley's confession, elicited after 12 hours of interrogation
and riddled with inaccuracies, was all that linked the trio to the
crime. The 17-year-old Misskelley, whose IQ measured in the low 70s, had
dropped out of school in ninth grade, with skills barely at the
fourth-grade level. Psychologists classified him as "slow" or "mildly
retarded" throughout his childhood. Arkansas investigative reporter Mara
Leveritt's book on the case, Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West
Memphis Three, said the 12-hour interrogation included coercion by the
police, forcing Misskelley to look at a photo of one of the murdered
children, a polygraph test Misskelley passed -- but was told he
failed -- and offers that things would go easier for him if he helped
get Baldwin and Echols. Only 34 minutes of the 12 hours were recorded.
"Paradise Lost" showed Misskelley's lawyer questioning the West
Memphis Police Department's methods, and lawyers for Baldwin and Echols
asking for any physical evidence that linked their clients to the crime.
But the movie ends with the teens being chained and driven to prison,
convicted of murder.
www.wm3.org: "You just assume they did it," said Burk Sauls, a Los
Angeles writer and visual consultant in the entertainment industry,
about watching "Paradise Lost" for the first time. "They got convicted.
The jury must have heard something I didn't hear. Of course, films don't
show you everything.
"It was one of those things that just bugged me, though. Like, 'Why
are these filmmakers so bad that they don't show any of the evidence
against these guys? Didn't they have access to any information? They had
cameras right in the courtroom -- why didn't they show us any evidence?'
"
Sauls and two friends, Kathy Bakken and Ogden native Grove Pashley,
saw the film when Bakken's graphics company was hired to create the
movie poster. They thought it was simply a creepy movie about
heavy-metal teenagers dabbling in satanism and committing a sensational
murder.
"I grew up in the South, and I always heard about devil worshippers
and stuff, and I always thought it was kind of stupid and funny, how
easy it was to scare some people," said Sauls, a Florida native. But
they were struck by how strange the case seemed on film.
"Maybe within six months of seeing the film, we had gone out to
Arkansas," Pashley said. "We were interested in talking to the guys
directly about it and talking to anyone else we could talk to about it.
There was an idea back then that maybe we should start a support group
for these guys, but we did have to do our own research first."
Sauls, Pashley and Bakken were allowed to meet with the boys in
their respective prisons and bring cameras and tape recorders. They also
met with Misskelley's attorney, Dan Stidham, who showed them autopsy
photos.
"It had a huge impact on us to see how horrible this crime was, and
that not only were there these three kids who were convicted of this
crime, but there were these victims, these children and their parents,"
Pashley said. "Dan, at the end of this meeting, said, 'The only people
that are here to help these guys are sitting in this room.' And that was
kind of a responsibility that I didn't want to take on. I didn't want to
believe that. But I felt we were the first ones to discover that, 'Hey,
these guys probably aren't guilty at all, and there are still murderers
out there.' "
Sauls, Pashley and Bakken created www.wm3.org, an informational
clearinghouse about the case. The efforts of the wm3.org group were a
major part of "Paradise Lost 2: Revelations," the 2000 sequel that
advocated the innocence of the West Memphis Three.
Rock 'n' roll reacts: The Supersuckers' Eddie Spaghetti watched the
first "Paradise Lost" expecting a movie about "deranged heavy metal kids
[who] go off the deep end and commit a satanic murder."
What Spaghetti saw was something else, a story of three kids who
were apparently railroaded because they were outcasts in a small town,
listened to rock music, read horror books and came from families too
poor to mount a defense. The band and its then-manager, Danny Bland,
contacted the creators of the Web site and eventually produced a benefit
CD in 2000, "Free the West Memphis Three," that featured such artists as
Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and L7.
Spaghetti has stayed in touch with the inmates through letters and
visits and continues to spread the word about the case however he can.
When the Supersuckers headlined a show at the Zephyr Club last week,
Spaghetti wore a "Free the West Memphis Three" T-shirt, a regular piece
of his stage attire.
"It started with just a little interest in this, and the feeling
that it could have been me, it could have been you, it could have been
anybody who's ever had a left-of-center thought in a small town,"
Spaghetti said. "Wearing your Ozzy T-shirt, walking down the street
being spit on by the baseball team,. . . I totally related to it. To see
that it's gone this far is really disturbing."
Henry Rollins, whose band is doing the Salt Lake City benefit
concert, came across the West Memphis Three case through "Paradise Lost"
as well. He is currently touring to raise money for DNA testing of
tissue found under one of the victims' fingernails that could
potentially prove whether Misskelley, Baldwin or Echols was involved in
the murders. Last year, he produced a benefit album, "Rise Above: 24
Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three."
Rollins, unlike Spaghetti, doesn't see the case as something that
could have happened to him as a punk-rocker growing up in Washington,
D.C. He sees the case as a murder that happened in a small community
unprepared to deal with such a heinous crime. The crime scene was poorly
managed, he says: bodies moved around and people tramping through the
area.
"The thing that burned me the most was the lack of due process, and
just the failure of the justice system to do its job," Rollins said.
"When you don't get your Miranda rights read to you, when you're
mentally challenged and you're yelled at by interrogators for 12 hours
and then the tape recorder is flipped on, that's just not how you try
anybody."
Rollins is hopeful that justice will eventually be done.
"The only thing separating these guys from a life of incarceration or
death is the will of good people to do the right thing. At this point,
that's all. The state of Arkansas will not pay for the [DNA] testing.
God will not pay for the testing. It's just down to you, me and anyone
who gives a damn." %%At DV8
Last year, Henry Rollins produced "Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to
Benefit the West Memphis Three," a compilation of his former band's
pioneering punk songs delivered by the likes of Public Enemy's Chuck D,
Iggy Pop, Hank Williams III, Ice T and Ryan Adams, as well as members of
Rancid, X, Ween, Slipknot and Slayer, among others.
To gain some attention for the cause and the completed album, the
Rollins Band played a few shows of all Black Flag songs at the end of
last year and invited original Black Flag singer and Circle Jerks leader
Keith Morris along for the ride. After raising about $10,000 for the
West Memphis Three Defense Fund, Rollins decided it might be worthwhile
to do a tour of the Black Flag material.
"The set works great live, it's fun to do and we can pull it off,"
Rollins said. "We raised a good chunk of dough in a little bit of time,
and we thought, 'What's wrong with this? Let's do some more.' "
The tour, stopping in Salt Lake City tonight with Morris aboard, has
been selling out across the country, even in Memphis, where Rollins said
ticket brokers were getting death threats for supporting the cause and
radio personalities were mocking the whole idea of the West Memphis
Three's innocence.
Money from this tour goes to the West Memphis Three Defense Fund,
specifically to help pay for DNA testing on 10-year-old evidence that
the defendants were denied funds to test during their trials. And that
DNA testing does not come cheap, as Rollins makes clear on his Web site,
www.henryrollins.com.
"I need you to show up at the show. I need you to tell a friend.
That's what I need. I need these shows packed out and the house rockin.'
From our side of things, I want to make this absolutely clear: We are
not going to be casually shuffling through these songs like it's some
kind of oldies show and you'll be into it because everyone's hearts were
in the right place. We are a trained assault unit.
"This is not a Black Flag reunion. [Black Flag founders] Greg Ginn
and Chuck Dukowski wrote some of the best songs ever, and we are
hell-bent on rendering them as best we can. If we didn't know for sure
the set was bomb-proof, we wouldn't be out all summer wasting
everybody's time. This is a one-time, one-time-only tour."
-- Dan Nailen
Learn more
http://www.wm3.org. This Web site is an informational clearinghouse
on all aspects of the West Memphis Three case. It includes recent legal
developments, sections on how to get involved, biographical information
on the defendants and links to books, films, T-shirts and other
products.
Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three by Arkansas
investigative journalist Mara Leveritt is a comprehensive look at the
case that brings to light the questionable police investigation and
trials of the West Memphis Three, with materials reporters did not have
access to at the time.
"Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills," the 1996
documentary termed "true crime reporting at its most bitterly revealing"
by the New York Times and the inspiration for the groundswell of justice
seekers who have since become involved in the West Memphis Three case.
"Paradise Lost 2: Revelations," a 2000 sequel that delves further
into the case and more strongly advocates the West Memphis Three's
innocence, details the efforts of their supporters and includes
interviews with the three accused after five years in prison.