Devil's Knot, page 43
106. No one discussed Aaron’s initial statement, about the tall black man with yellow teeth driving the maroon car who’d picked up Michael Moore after school, nor was that initial report questioned in subsequent interviews, in which Aaron gave sharply different accounts of what happened that afternoon.
107. When the West Memphis detectives questioned Aaron that day in Bray’s office, the boy told them that on at least five occasions, he and his friends had witnessed, from a distance of about five feet, five men with black-painted faces. He said the men had chanted in Spanish around a fire, smoked strange cigarettes, killed animals, talked about “bad stuff,” and done “nasty stuff.” The detectives pressed for details, but Aaron was vague. Ridge asked, at one point, “What kind of bad stuff were they talking about?” “Um, Jesus and God,” Aaron said. “I mean, the devil and God.” Aaron added, “They said they like the devil and they hate God.”
108. Misskelley’s statements drawn from an author’s interview with him, February 2, 2001, at the Varner Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction.
109. Jessie’s friend Kevin Johnson had helped in the search.
110. Statements by Bray in this chapter are from an undated three-page typewritten report prepared by Bray for the West Memphis police.
111. Jessie had known Allen for most of his life, just as he had known Gary Gitchell. As Jessie later explained, “They knew me since 1980, when I was five years old, ’cause that’s when I first started getting in trouble with the police. I got in trouble for stealing and fighting. That’s it: stealing and fighting. I stole toys, bicycles, flags. And I got into fights. When I got older, I’d fight anything; walls, mailboxes, bottles, stop signs, window—anything. Whenever I got mad, I hit something. If it was a person, I hit them.” Since Jessie hadn’t hit anyone lately, he said, he wasn’t worried about this visit. (The times noted in this paragraph are from a report of Misskelley’s questioning written by Detective Bryn Ridge.)
112. Most of the questions put to Jessie before the polygraph focused on Damien. According to notes Allen wrote at eleven that morning, Jessie stated that he had known Damien for about a year; that Damien was “sick”; that once, when Jason had gotten a bloody nose, “Damien stuck his finger in the blood and licked it.” Jessie also reported that he’d met Hutcheson after the murders occurred; that she had, in fact, asked him about Damien; and that he had never been in Robin Hood. Ridge also jotted a report. He noted that Jessie had been picked up in the first place because “it had been previously discovered that Jessie, Damien and Jason were members of a cult-like group of youngsters who had previously had meetings in various locations in the state.” Ridge added that when he entered the room while Allen was questioning Jessie, the boy had appeared “nervous and failed to look at me in the eyes, and had the gestures that he was being deceptive.” Contrary to anything that either detective wrote in their early notes, Ridge later wrote in his typed report that, “Jessie stated that he thought that Damien had committed the murders with a friend of his being a partner in the murders. Again he was nervous throughout the interview from this point, and he appeared to be withholding information.” It was after this, Ridge reported, that he asked if Jessie would be willing to submit to a polygraph examination.
113. There is a discrepancy regarding time between Ridge’s typewritten report and the forms signifying waiver of rights. Ridge reported that Durham began the polygraph exam “at about 10:30 A.M.,” but the time on the waiver of rights form that Durham gave Jessie prior to the exam lists the time as eleven-thirty.
114. For Ridge, Jessie’s response to the child’s voice on the tape recording marked the turning point in the case. Here is how Ridge described the moment in his report: “Jessie told of one occasion he had gone to the scene of the murders and sat down on the ground and cried about what had happened to the boys. He had tears in his eyes at the time, telling of the incident. I felt that this was a remorseful response about the occurrence and that he had more information than what he had revealed. At about 2:20 P.M., Jessie told Inspector Gitchell that he was present at the time of the murders and began crying about what had happened. Jessie seemed to be sorry for what had happened and told that he had been there when the boys were first coming into the woods and were called by Damien to come over to where they were. At this time, myself and Inspector Gitchell gave Jessie some time to compose himself and for me to compose myself, due to the emotional situation that had just began. We then prepared for the interrogation to be taped, due to this being the first indication that Jessie had actually taken a part in the murders and was present in the woods at the time.”
115. While no law requires that police interviews with citizens be recorded, police organizations in Arkansas won passage of legislation requiring that if an officer is questioned by police, that interview or interrogation must be recorded in its entirety.
116. Under the heading “Neck Injuries,” the medical examiner reported: “Situated on the left side of the neck were a few scattered abrasions. Subsequent autopsy of the neck showed no hemorrhage in the strap muscles of the neck. The hyoid bone and larynx were intact. No petechial hemorrhages were noted. No fractures were noted.”
117. After the tape recorder was shut off, according to an unsigned, undated chart in the files of the West Memphis police, “Work was started in reference to obtaining search warrants and arrest warrants.”
118. After the time chart was typed, someone wrote “incorrect” across an entry that claimed that the second recorded interview began at 3:45 P.M. (The Arkansas Supreme Court later concluded that Jessie had been questioned “off and on” for more than seven hours.) A typed transcript of the second recorded interview did not mention the word “discrepancies.” It was simply titled “Second interview conducted to clarify previous statements.”
119. Misskelley’s strange way of referring to Christopher Byers and Stevie Branch may have reflected both his confusion (calling Byers “Myers”) and a mangled version of the manner of speech he had been hearing from detectives, some of whom referred to the victims as “the Byers boy” or “the Branch boy.”
120. During the pretrial testimony of Detective Bryn Ridge, Paul Ford asked, “Judge Rainey was assisting in preparing the search warrant affidavit. Is that what you’re telling me?” Ridge said, “Yes sir.” Ford asked how Rainey had assisted. “He was informing us as to the elements that needed to go in this affidavit in order for it to be a legal document,” Ridge replied. Ford asked, “So he told you what you needed to get and you went out and came back and met with Judge Rainey?” Ridge said that that was correct. “Who was present?” Ford asked. Ridge answered, “Myself, John Fogleman, Gary Gitchell, [James] Jimbo Hale, and the court clerk.”
121. Jason’s brothers, Matt and Terry, were fourteen and ten years old.
122. Long after his arrest, Baldwin would have time to reflect on the circumstances that had brought it about. “The way I figured,” he said, “the police had been accusing me and Damien of satanism for the longest. They’d spread the rumor that the motive for the murder was satanism. At that time, they were picking up a lot of people and talking to them. And one they talked to was Jessie. Now, Jessie’s got some hate and vengeance in his heart for me because of the girl thing. And maybe he thinks, ‘I’ll get a whole bunch of money.’ Maybe they came and talked to him and he had a spur-of-the-moment idea, and went along with it, and got his foot in his mouth. He didn’t understand the seriousness.”
123. He said that all that registered was that he was being led in handcuffs out of Damien’s house. “They took me to the police station,” he later recalled. “We went through all kinds of rooms, and ended up upstairs, in a room with blue walls, and pictures and certificates on them, and a ball bat in the corner. They handcuffed me to a straight-back chair. Ridge and Allen were there, and a uniformed officer. They came in and tried to get me to admit to murder. They had this statement already typed up and told me to sign it, but I wouldn’t sign. They told me there was no way out of it. I might as well admit to it. I was trying to tell them where I was at that day, but they said, ‘No, that’s a lie. We know different. Somebody’s already ratted on you. You committed the murders. We want you to admit it.’ Somehow, I fell out of the chair. I fell backwards. I think Allen pulled it out with his foot. He said, ‘You ain’t nothing but white trash.’ Later on, Ridge was in the room with me by himself. He said, ‘Nobody knows you’re here. We could throw you into the Mississippi River and write you off as a runaway; nobody would know the difference.’ ”
124. After he’d come home from school, Jason said, “Damien and Domini were already at my house waiting for me. They didn’t go to school. We went in and played Super Nintendo. I got something to eat. Then Dennis, my mom’s boyfriend, said I had a phone call. It was my uncle Herbert. He said, ‘You forgot something.’ I was supposed to mow his yard. I was supposed to have done it earlier, but I had an art exhibit at school, so I’d put it off. My friend Ken and Damien said, ‘We’ll go over there with you.’ I cut my uncle’s yard. And while I was there, Damien had to call his mom, and tell her to pick him up at my uncle’s house instead of at my house. He and Domini went to the Laundromat to call, and his mom picked them up there. It took an hour to finish the lawn. My uncle paid me $10. Me and Ken went to Wal-Mart. Then we went to Sam’s and bought ten-cent Sam’s sodas. We played Street Fighter for a quarter. Then we went back to my house. Ken left to go home, and then I went over to my friend Adam’s house. It was dark by then. He had this Iron Maiden tape I’d been wanting. I went over there to try to buy it. He sold it to me for $4. I had a necklace of a dragon with a silver ball that this girl had given me at the skating rink. He wanted me to sell it to him. By then it was getting close to ten or ten-thirty. I wanted to get back before curfew started, so I went back home. Matt and Terry and Dennis [Jason’s stepfather] were there.” Jason said he told the police all this the night of his arrest. “I told them I didn’t do it. But they didn’t want to listen.”
125. Officers who booked Jason noted that he did have a tattoo, but not the E-V-I-L that Vicki Hutcheson claimed to have seen. According to a police intake form, he had small ankh, the Egyptian symbol of life, in the web between the thumb and index finger of his right hand.
126. Author interview with Fogleman, April 2001.
127. One of the young people who’d accused Damien was William Winfred Jones, a teenager who lived in the Lakeshore trailer park near Jason. As was common in the investigation, Ridge had questioned William, then questioned him again on tape. In the portion of the interview that was taped, William stated that he and Damien had been friends for the past five years. He said that Damien had not been “weird” at first, but that he’d started acting strange after he’d gotten into “that satanic cult stuff.” William said that one night when Damien was drunk, he’d asked Damien if he’d murdered the boys. William said Damien admitted that he had. William told Ridge that Damien loudly proclaimed that he’d had sex with the boys, and then killed them with a “little,” eight-to-ten-inch knife. William added that “everyone” in the Lakeshore trailer park had heard the drunken claim. However, when Ridge asked William for the names of others who’d heard the alleged confession, William modified his statement. On second thought, he said, only he, Damien, and Domini had been present.
128. Ridge listened as Gail Grinnell recited some of what she’d heard. She told him of one instance when some girls had told a neighbor “that the police had been telling them to stay away from that boy named Damien—that he was a member of a gang.” But Ridge was not interested in hearing complaints about police conduct. Without addressing her remarks, he told Grinnell, “It’s really not complicated—the position we’re in and the position that Jason is in. If he’ll tell us a story, if he’ll tell us where he was that day, what time he got places, and we’ll check with those people that say he went to those places. If we prove that his story is true and correct, then Jason is a free person. But we can’t even start until Jason tells us what happened and where he was. . . . If we can prove that that’s where he was, I’m more than willing to see him be a free man. I mean, that’s the truth. But I can’t even start until Jason tells me something.”
129. Normally, arrest and search warrants, along with the affidavits submitted to support them, are open to public review. The practice, which has existed for centuries, is intended to safeguard citizens against unfounded arrests. But now Rainey was announcing that that normal level of openness would not be allowed in this case. He justified his order to seal the records, saying that the “high level of publicity” the case had attracted threatened “the defendants’ right to a fair trial.”
130. Bruce Whittaeker, of WMC-TV, channel 5, in Memphis, said he had turned down the offer because “we don’t buy news.”
131. This article was written by Bartholomew Sullivan, the Commercial Appeal’s lead reporter on the case. Another of the paper’s reporters who wrote extensively about the case was Marc Perrusquia. Sullivan and Perrusquia teamed up with Guy Reel to write a book about the case, The Blood of Innocents, which was published by Pinnacle Books in 1995.
132. When Gitchell was asked if parents in West Memphis could now allow their kids to “go out and play normally,” he answered obliquely. “I think all parents need to always know where their children are at,” he said. He added that “kids should stay away from” Robin Hood, which he described as “dangerous.”
133. An editorial in the West Memphis Evening Times noted that ever since the murders, “the rumor mill in Crittenden County has been grinding on overtime. The level of supposition reached wildfire proportions after the three teens were arrested last week, and community comment linked them with Satanism. Public curiosity being what it is, in the absence of any hard, cold facts other than the names, ages and addresses of the suspects, speculation is bound to continue.” The editorial advised that “giving the public a bare framework of facts surrounding these murders would have gone a long way toward suppressing the rumor and supposition. It seems to us that’s much more dangerous to these defendants’ eventual fair trial than the truth would be. But beyond that, the failure of the courts to allow the public even a limited knowledge of the facts in this case means Crittenden Countians have no choice but to take on faith the word of the police and prosecutors that this crime has been solved and that the community can breathe a sigh of relief. . . . While this community has no particular reason to distrust its law enforcement officials, a little reassurance wouldn’t hurt. But the case remains shrouded in secrecy, and the public’s questions remain unanswered. We hope, above all else, that our faith in the law enforcement and judicial system is justified. We just wish we knew for sure.”
134. Rainey’s order sealing the normally public records was affirmed by circuit judge Ralph Wilson Jr.
135. Reporters did ask a few questions about the variations in Jessie’s confession. One reporter for the West Memphis Evening Times asked Fogleman about the part in which Jessie had said that the boys were murdered at around noon, when it was known that they were in school. Fogleman’s answer was terse: “Obviously, the time is wrong.” The Commercial Appeal also took note of Jessie’s apparent “confusion about the issue.” The principal of Weaver Elementary School confirmed that the victims were in school all day, but the principal of Marion High, where Jason attended, refused to release attendance records that would have supported his claim that he had been in class there all day. In another article, the paper noted that the transcript of Jessie’s statement “places commas in unusual places.” For example, it reported that at one point the transcript quoted Jessie as saying, “Well after, all this stuff happened that night, that they done it, I went home about noon, then they called me at nine o’clock that night, they called me.”
136. The Reverend Rick McKinney warned, “Satanism is out there. Parents and young people need to be aware of its reality.” He advised that “a fascination with horoscopes is an early sign. If you go to the library and look for information on horoscopes, they will send you to the occult section.” And he added, “There is definitely a connection between hard metal music and Satanism.” The Reverend Tommy Stacy, another Baptist, said the situation in West Memphis called for “spiritual warfare.” But it was warfare, he advised, that was best left “in the hands of the Lord and law enforcement.” Yet another Baptist minister, the Reverend Tommy Cunningham, began a series of sermons on satanism. He told an overflowing crowd, “Satan wants us to believe he is a nonreality. If he convinces us of that, then his work is carried out best.”
137. The psychologist, Dr. Paul King, was identified by the paper as the author of Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll: Dealing with Today’s Troubled Youth.
138. Quotes about cults ran the gamut. “Cult experts gave warning in 1992,” a front-page Sunday headline in the Commercial Appeal read. John Mark Byers told the Commercial Appeal that even after the arrests, he and Melissa remained afraid that members of a satanic cult might be free in the community. The paper reported that Byers believed “that others may have seen the three defendants ‘all bloody and muddy and wet’ after the murders”—others who “knew that these three little boys were going to be sacrificed.” “My wife and I are scared,” Byers told the paper. “The devil is at work, and recently, Satan and his demons have been at work in West Memphis.” Crittenden County librarian Nelda Antonetti told the Commercial Appeal that “she was alarmed by a sharp increase a few years back in students checking out books on Satanism, the occult and magic.” In an article by Marc Perrusquia, on June 13, 1993, the paper went so far as to note that “one book inspected recently by a reporter had a dog-eared page that listed human fat in a recipe for a potion enabling witches to fly, and also mentioned the heart of an unbaptized baby as a delicacy following a black mass.”
