0:00 A reporter leans in, pushing a microphone forward.0:04 The room is hot, packed with cameras and anxious faces.0:08 At the podium stands prosecutor Gary Gitchell, the man who believes he has solved the most horrific crime his town has ever seen.0:19 He’s asked to rate his confidence in the case.0:22 On a scale of one to ten.0:24 He doesn't hesitate.0:26 His answer is a single word.0:28 “Eleven.” Last week, we explored the shadows of Los Angeles and the unsolved mystery of Elizabeth Short, a case where a story was created to fill a void of facts.0:41 Here, in a small Arkansas town, a different kind of story was about to be written.0:48 One born not from a void, but from a surplus of fear.0:52 The story begins on May fifth, nineteen ninety-three.0:57 Three little boys, all of them eight years old.1:00 Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers.1:05 They were doing what eight-year-old boys do on a warm spring evening.1:10 Riding their bikes.1:12 Laughing.1:13 Disappearing into the dimming light.1:15 When they didn’t come home for dinner, a search began.1:20 A frantic, desperate search that pulled in the whole community of West Memphis, Arkansas.1:27 The next day, their worst fears were realized.1:31 The boys were found in a muddy drainage ditch.1:35 They had been brutally assaulted.1:37 They were hog-tied.1:39 The town wasn't just in shock.1:41 It was terrified.1:43 A monster was loose in West Memphis.1:46 And people needed that monster to have a name.1:49 They found their monsters in three local teenagers.1:53 Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Junior.1:58 They were outsiders.2:00 They listened to heavy metal.2:02 They wore black.2:03 Damien Echols, articulate and intense, was interested in Wicca and the writings of Aleister Crowley.2:12 In nineteen ninety-three, in the heart of the Bible Belt, during a nationwide moral panic about devil worship… that was enough.2:22 It was a perfect storm of fear and suspicion.2:26 These weren't just kids.2:28 They were, to the terrified eyes of the community, a satanic cult.2:33 The police had their theory.2:35 Now they just needed evidence.2:38 They brought in Jessie Misskelley Junior.2:41 Jessie had known intellectual disabilities.2:44 They interrogated him for twelve hours.2:48 No lawyer.2:48 No parent.2:49 Just Jessie and a room full of officers who already knew who was guilty.2:55 What came out of that interrogation was a confession.2:59 A rambling, contradictory story that implicated himself, Damien, and Jason.3:05 The confession was riddled with errors.3:09 He got the time of the murders wrong.3:12 He described details of the crime that didn't match the evidence at the scene.3:18 But it didn't matter.3:20 It was a confession.3:21 It was all they needed.3:23 On June third, nineteen ninety-three, the three teenagers were arrested and charged with three counts of capital murder.3:33 The trials were a formality.3:35 The prosecution didn’t have forensic evidence.3:39 They had no DNA, no fingerprints, no murder weapons.3:43 What they had was a story.3:45 A terrifying, lurid story of a satanic ritual.3:49 They presented Damien Echols’ library books as evidence.3:54 They talked about his black clothes.3:57 They used his interest in magic to paint him as the ringleader of a murderous coven.4:03 It was a narrative of good versus evil, and in a courtroom fueled by community outrage, that narrative was more powerful than any lack of physical proof.4:16 The collision between story and science was happening, and the story was winning.4:22 Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were sentenced to life in prison.4:28 Damien Echols, the supposed mastermind, was sentenced to death.4:33 The town of West Memphis breathed a sigh of relief.4:37 The monsters were caged.4:39 But some people weren't so sure.4:42 And they had brought cameras.4:44 A documentary film crew from HBO had been there, filming the trial.4:50 The result was a film called Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.4:56 When it aired, it didn't just show the trial.5:00 It showed the town.5:01 The grief.5:02 The fear.5:03 And it showed, for the first time to a national audience, the gaping holes in the prosecution's case.5:11 It raised a terrifying question: What if they got it WRONG?5:16 The film sparked a movement.5:18 People across the country, then the world, began to look closer at the West Memphis Three.5:26 Celebrities like Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp started speaking out, raising money for a new legal defense.5:34 The story was no longer just about three dead boys and three convicted teens.5:40 It was about a justice system that seemed to have failed.5:45 And then came the science.5:47 Years after the convictions, new rounds of DNA testing were performed on the evidence from the crime scene.5:56 The technology was far more advanced than what was available in nineteen ninety-three.6:03 Everyone held their breath.6:05 The prosecution was sure it would confirm their case.6:09 The defense was praying it would set them free.6:13 The results came back.6:15 Not a single trace of DNA from Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, or Jessie Misskelley was found at the crime scene.6:24 None.6:24 The scientific foundation of the state's case had just evaporated.6:30 After eighteen years.6:31 Eighteen years of appeals, of advocacy, of life in a cage.6:36 Eighteen years with a death sentence hanging over Damien Echols' head.6:42 The state of Arkansas was in a difficult position.6:46 The evidence that convicted the three men had disintegrated.6:51 But admitting a mistake of this magnitude… that was something else.6:56 So they offered a deal.6:58 A peculiar legal mechanism called an Alford plea.7:02 It’s a strange bargain.7:04 You plead guilty, while simultaneously maintaining your innocence.7:09 You're essentially saying, "I didn't do it, but I acknowledge the state has enough evidence to convince a jury that I did." It's not an exoneration.7:21 It's a compromise.7:23 It's a way out.7:24 For Damien, Jason, and Jessie, it was an impossible choice.7:29 Accept the deal and walk free, but forever be branded as convicted killers in the eyes of the law.7:37 Or refuse, and risk spending the rest of their lives in prison, with Damien still on death row.7:44 On August nineteenth, twenty-eleven, they took the deal.7:49 Standing on the courthouse steps as a free man for the first time since he was a teenager, Damien Echols said it all.7:59 “I am innocent, as are Jason and Jessie, but I made this decision because I did not want to spend another day of my life behind those bars.” They walked out into the sunlight.8:13 Free.8:13 But not cleared.8:14 The case remains, to this day, legally unresolved.8:19 The Arkansas Supreme Court has since granted new hearings to review ALL the evidence, a step toward potential exoneration.8:28 The fight continues.8:30 Because for the West Memphis Three, freedom isn't enough.8:35 They want the truth.8:36 And for the families of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers, justice has remained agonizingly out of reach.8:46 The story of the West Memphis Three is a warning.8:50 It’s about how easily fear can be weaponized, how a community’s need for a monster can create one out of thin air.9:00 It’s a story of a justice system that saw what it wanted to see.9:05 And it’s the story of three men who lost their youth to a narrative.9:10 Three men who are now out in the world, trying to piece together lives from the wreckage, forever tied to a crime in a quiet, muddy ditch.
