0:00 The medical examiner swore on the stand that the bodies of the three eight-year-old boys had been mutilated by a serrated knife.0:11 It was later proven to be turtle bites.0:14 Last week, we explored the hidden motives in the Chris Watts case, a story where the terrible truth was all too clear.0:24 Today, we go to a place where the truth was buried for eighteen years, and the evidence was an illusion.0:34 May sixth, 1993.0:35 West Memphis, Arkansas.0:37 A small town perched on the edge of the Mississippi River.0:42 The police call comes in about a child’s shoe floating in a muddy ditch at the edge of a patch of woods called Robin Hood Hills.0:53 By one thirty PM, searchers find what they’re looking for.0:58 The bodies of three second-graders—Steven Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers.1:06 They are naked, hog-tied with their own shoelaces.1:10 The town… breaks.1:12 A grief-stricken community demands an answer.1:16 They demand a monster.1:18 And the police were about to give them three.1:22 They didn’t look far.1:23 They looked for the outsiders.1:26 The weirdos.1:27 The kids who wore black trench coats in the Arkansas heat and listened to Metallica.1:34 They found Damien Echols, eighteen years old, a smart, cynical kid who dabbled in Wicca.1:42 They found his best friend, Jason Baldwin, sixteen.1:47 And they found Jessie Misskelley Jr., seventeen, quiet, with a reported IQ of just seventy-two.1:55 They were poor.1:56 They were different.1:58 And in the grip of a nationwide Satanic Panic, that was enough to make them guilty.2:05 The entire case was a house of cards built on a single, terrifying foundation.2:12 On June seventh, police brought in Jessie Misskelley for questioning.2:18 He didn't have a lawyer.2:20 He didn't have his parents.2:23 For twelve hours, they interrogated him.2:26 A boy who could barely read.2:28 He told them what they wanted to hear.2:32 He confessed.2:33 He implicated Damien and Jason.2:36 The confession was a mess.2:38 It got the time of the murders wrong.2:41 It got the details of the crime wrong.2:45 It didn't matter.2:46 The police had their story.2:48 Jessie recanted almost immediately, refusing to testify.2:53 It was too late.2:55 The prosecution painted a picture of a satanic cult, of human sacrifice.3:01 Their evidence?3:02 The boys' black t-shirts.3:04 Their interest in Stephen King novels.3:08 A single, ambiguous statement Damien Echols made to a police officer.3:14 And the testimony from that medical examiner, the one who saw satanic rituals where there were only animal bites.3:24 Damien Echols, the supposed ringleader, was sentenced to death.3:29 Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley got life in prison.3:34 The courtroom doors slammed shut.3:37 The town thought justice had been served.3:40 And for years, the world forgot about them.3:44 Almost.3:45 Then, in 1996, a documentary crew from HBO shows up.3:49 Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky.3:52 They thought they were making a film about guilty, disaffected kids.3:58 That's what the local news was telling them.4:02 But they just kept their cameras rolling.4:06 And the footage they captured told a very different story.4:11 The film was called Paradise Lost.4:14 It didn't have a narrator telling you what to think.4:18 It just showed you.4:20 It showed you the grieving parents.4:23 It showed you the flimsy evidence.4:26 It showed you the teenagers, baffled and scared, railroaded by a system that had already decided their fate.4:35 And for the first time, people outside of West Memphis started asking questions.4:42 The film became a cult hit.4:45 And it started a movement.4:47 Musicians like Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp started talking about the case.4:54 They wore t-shirts on stage.4:56 They used their fame to keep the story alive.5:00 Peter Jackson, the director of Lord of the Rings, and his partner Fran Walsh, saw the documentary and were horrified.5:10 They quietly began funding a new, private investigation.5:15 They spent millions of dollars.5:18 They hired the best forensic experts in the world.5:22 Experts who looked at the crime scene photos and said… those aren't knife wounds.5:29 Those are turtle bites.5:31 Experts who tested the DNA found at the scene… and found no match to Echols, Baldwin, or Misskelley.5:40 The house of cards began to sway.5:43 After eighteen years, nine months, and fourteen days, the state of Arkansas made an offer.5:51 A strange, legal paradox called an Alford Plea.5:55 The men could plead guilty, while legally maintaining their innocence.6:01 It meant the state acknowledged it had enough evidence to convict them—the original, flawed evidence—but the men didn't have to admit to a crime they didn't commit.6:15 In exchange, they would be sentenced to time served and released immediately.6:22 It was a devil's bargain.6:24 If they accepted, they could never sue the state for wrongful imprisonment.6:31 They would walk free, but the word "guilty" would follow them forever.6:37 If they refused, they risked dying in prison while their appeals crawled through the courts.6:45 Jason Baldwin initially refused.6:48 He screamed at his lawyers.6:50 He would not admit to something he didn't do.6:54 But Damien Echols, sitting on death row, begged him to reconsider.7:00 So he did.7:01 On August nineteenth, 2011, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr.7:08 walked out of the Jonesboro courthouse as free men.7:13 Jason Baldwin said it best.7:15 "It took a false confession to put us in prison… and it took a false confession to get us out." They were free, but not exonerated.7:26 The murders of Steven Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers remain, officially, unsolved.7:35 The real killer has never been brought to justice.7:39 Damien Echols spent his entire adult life in a cage, and when he got out, he had to teach himself how to use a cell phone.7:50 He had to learn how to live in a world that had moved on without him.7:56 And somewhere, in the woods of Robin Hood Hills, the truth is still waiting.
