The only possible culprits were 18-year-old Damien Echols, a poor teen with an interest in the occult and a record of mental illness, his friend Jason Baldwin, a quiet kid whose talent for art tended toward dark subjects, and Jessie Misskelley, a 17-year-old misfit with an IQ of 73. But on the subject of Paradise Lost, he speaks emphatically: He understands how important the movies were in helping him, Echols, and Misskelley walk free 10 years ago this August. Paradise Lost is a narration-free documentary filmed with a journalistic remove. Further down, it includes names such as Rick Dior, a sound mixer who worked on Apollo 13 and Dirty Dancing, and Bob Richman, a three-time Emmy-nominated cinematographer whose rsum also includes renowned docs like An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman. Pam Hobbs divorced Terry Hobbs in 2004 and has reversed her position on the West Memphis Three's guilt. Bakken immediately showed her friends Burk Sauls and Grove Pashley, who were both equally gripped by what they had just watched. We are sad to announce that on September 11, 2021 we had to say goodbye to Terry Hobbs of Sweetwater, Texas. That type of support made observers question the verdicts perhaps more so than any rock star who shouted Echolss name into a mic because of an HBO documentary. All of those factors combined to create a tipping point, says Leveritt. What a story it is. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. In fact, for the better part of 1993, it was nearly impossible to find anyone who believed they were innocent. By staying on this subject for the next couple of decades, they gave these men a chance and really decades of freedom afterward. Titled West of Memphis, the film, directed by Amy J. Berg, presents an overview of the West Memphis Three's 18 years in prison, the revelation of new evidence, and explores the possibility of an alternate suspect. When he was released in 2011, he met John Hardin, who worked with the West Memphis Three support group Arkansas Take Action, and the two bonded over a desire to do for others what had just been done for Baldwin. Because I was thinking, if you haven't done anything, then they can't prove you did something you haven't actually done. Hide Self (6 credits) 2012 48 Hours: Hard Evidence (TV Series) Self. 21, 2021 at 1:51 PM PDT CALHOUN COUNTY, Fla.. The bodies of Branch, Byers, and Moore were found in a drainage ditch in West Memphis May 6 . Critics were effusive in their praise and stunned by the footageparticularly Roger Ebert, who wrote in a four-star review that at the end of the film I was unconvinced of their guilt. The film won Emmy and Peabody awards to go with more than a dozen other nominations. A hair found on one of the ligatures to bind the boys, however, was found to be consistent with the DNA of Hobbs, according to court documents obtained by Oxygen.com. They even hired experts to examine the case, including a forensic criminal profiler who discovered what appeared to be bite marks on one of the victims that didnt match any of the convicted. And then there was the public pressure: In August 2010, Vedder and Maines headlined yet another benefit concert, this one in Little Rock. Hobbs described what it was like the day the three walked free. That story line would make up the bulk of 2000s Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, a rare sequel for a documentary, especially before the streaming era proved that true crime series like Making a Murderer and The Staircase could maintain audience interest for years. Jesse was gonna take it anyway. Bray asked her if she knew about rumored cult activity in the community. The idea, Berlinger says, was to tell a story of disaffected youthabout kids killing kids., There was no reason not to believe the press, Berlinger says. The three teens were arrested after Misskelley said they committed the crime after 12 hours of interrogation. For the next two hours and 29 minutes, the two inmates sat in near silence watching Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, the landmark documentary released on HBO 25 years ago this week that captured the trials of Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Damien Echols, the three teenagers convicted in 1994 of the crimes that ripped through the small, working-class community of West Memphis, Arkansas. Baldwin remembers the dire circumstances laid out during the call. But they never had any physical evidence that connected us to this crime, Echols said in 2012. Additionally, the judge in the original trialswho under Arkansas law presided under the requests for retrials in the years following the convictionshad been elected to the state Senate that December, meaning someone new and possibly more sympathetic would oversee the case. Berlinger contrasts this with the approach taken by Bakken, Sauls, and Co., who considered the truth sacrosanct and avoided rumor and innuendo in part because similar speculation helped convict the West Memphis Three. This is a brand new website dedicated to the internationally famous musician, Terry Gibbs. She also stated that beyond the single meeting at her trailer, she had no further contact with Echols. In this first confession, Miskelley often agreed to details suggested by the police or attributed to prior statements which he did not make. (At one point, Sauls says, it landed on Yahoos list of the top 100 websites.) The causes most high-profile moment came in 2000, when Trey Parker said the slogan at the MTV Movie Awards while collecting an award for Best Musical Sequence. More than 25 years after the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis,a new book gives a first-person account of what was happening behind the sce More than 25 years after the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis,a new book gives a first-person account of what was happening behind the scenes. Inevitably, the West Memphis Three case always comes up. He died on April 4, 2019 in Panama City Beach, Florida, USA. Filming the activists work seemed like the best place for Berlinger and Sinofsky to turn their attention; what better way to show the continued plight of the West Memphis Three than to show regular people dedicating their free time to fighting for them? every single person in my class was either . Two questions plagued the conservative, middle-class community: Why would anyone commit such a heinous act, and, more importantly, who? Published: Dec. 21, 2021 at 9:56 PM CST WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. The next day, their bodies were found in a nearby canal. Then youd try to find it, and it didnt exist, because when we went out to discussion groups, no one knew about the case yet., After learning that the teens were still in prison, Bakken, Sauls, and Pashley decided to make full use of the budding technological revolution. The next to be found was Stevie Branch, quickly followed by Christopher Byers. The districts current prosecuting attorney, Keith Chrestman, did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but his predecessor Scott Ellington, whose office negotiated the deals, told The New York Times in 2011 that while new trials would have likely resulted in acquittals, We dont think that there is anybody else. The Moore family has been outspoken about the end result, vehemently protesting the 2012 Oscar nomination for the third Paradise Lost installment. Terry Hobbs passed away in Nampa, Idaho. They saw the same thing you did. Funeral Home Services for Terry are being provi. We have estimated Terry Hobbs's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. Theyve had several victories, including the case of Daniel Villegas, who was acquitted of capital murder in 2018 after a 25-year legal saga. Investigators never found any evidence that tied him, Jason Baldwin, or Jessie Misskelley to the murders of the boys, Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers. Terry. The prosecutor would later say, There was a lack of physical evidence to tie anyone or anything to the crime scene, while the lead investigatorthe same one who told the press the case was an 11 out of 10would concede, Youve got a lot of circumstantial evidence is what youve got. Hobbs denied the accusation, saying that his family does have secrets, but none of them have to do with murder. I'm not stupid." West Memphis is pretty much like a second Salem," Echols stated in the 1996 documentary Paradise Lost: The Murders at Robin Hood Hills. People would drive by and yell at us, Theyre going to burn in hell, Sauls says. He says his dad and Berlinger werent seeking notorietydocumentaries certainly werent a means to get rich or famous in those days. A later confession during the trial phase would prove equally problematic. But most notably, his initial timeline of events didnt match what was known about the crimes, and every time he offered a detail that diverged from the accepted chronology, the interrogating officers seemed to steer him back in the direction of the official version. Certain that, under what he felt were ridiculous circumstances, Echols' confidence and, on occasion, flippant attitude during the trial was often misinterpreted as evidence of his coldness toward the victims and their families. As part of the deal, they cannot file wrongful-conviction lawsuits, which both Berlinger and Baldwin say couldve cost the state tens of millions of dollars. '", In 1999, a more mature Echols explained the comment. All three had been submerged face down in the mud, stripped naked, and bound with their shoelaces. On the evening of May 5, 1993, 8-year-olds Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore went missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. Auburndale, FL - TSGT Terry Lee Hobbs, USAF, ret. Its gone from a controversial legal theory to an accepted phenomenon. (WMC) - Its a case that has captured the nation and certainly the Mid-South. Wading into the murky water, Allen unknowingly dislodged the pale, grotesquely arched form of Micheal Moore. It was also revealed in 2012 that Hobbs nephew allegedly told his friends, My Uncle Terry murdered those three little boys," and that the killings were a Hobbs family secret, according to WMC-TV. A spiritual successor to Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line, and a forerunner of more recent documentaries like Making a Murderer, the film stands today as the most affecting examination of one of the most studied legal cases in U.S. historyone that put heavy metal lyrics and black T-shirts on trial and helped lay the groundwork for the current thinking around false confessions. The nonprofits work hasnt always been easyfundraising is hard, and because hes a convicted felon, hes unable to visit clients in prison or discuss pleasbut its been essential for him as he strives to live the words by 14th-century Persian poet Hafez that he keeps as an email signature: The small man builds cages for everyone he knows / While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low / Keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful rowdy prisoners. Baldwin says hes learned that justice isnt a computer programthat you can input all the evidence and testimony and still get the wrong results. The reason for the credit gets less curious when hes asked about it: He was a huge Metallica fan. Lying in the open air in near 80-degree temperatures accelerated the decomposition of the bodies. In May of that year, police discovered the bodies of Michael Moore, Stevie Branch, and Christopher Byers in the Robin Hood Hills, a small wooded area near the I-40/I-55 exchange. West Memphis 3 / Terry Hobbs 2022 Update New Scott 94.5K subscribers Subscribe 241 Share 20K views 8 months ago https://www.crimeonline.com/2022/05/. The sneaker ligatures in which Terry Hobbs' DNA was found in," Soury said . Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, defense attorneys working for the West Memphis Three filed multiple appeals on their behalf scrutinizing the lack of physical evidence against them. To authorities working in West Memphisa largely Southern Baptist communitysatanic activity seemed to be the most likely cause for the killings, in part because the boys bodies were bound and appeared to have been mutilated. I deeply admire that and I thought it was worthy of putting on film.. Its something that Baldwin couldnt envision when he first agreed to let the documentarians interview him in jail in exchange for an honorarium, or even when Mojo played that VHS tape for him in 1997. As the appeals processes stretched across several years and the buzz of the initial film faded, the directors began looking for ways to keep the story alive. For Rollins, it was a moral imperative: Id find myself up at 3:30 a.m. thinking about Damien. And yet Hobbs was not interviewed at all in the months after the crimes. The Latest CD: 92 YEARS YOUNG: JAMMIN' AT THE GIBBS HOUSE. The final scene Berlinger and Sinofsky filmed may have been the piece that stuck with viewers the most: the image of Baldwin and Echols being led out of the courthouse in handcuffs and bulletproof vests, now property of the state. It was so emotionally taxing to watch and go through it again, he says. They were releasedfrom prison in 2011 on whats called an Alford plea, after new forensic evidence was presented as part of the case. My first thought is, I hope this dude isnt trying to pull me into some type of escape, Baldwin says nearly a quarter-century later. Among those active in the cause were singer Eddie Vedder of the band Pearl Jam, the country music trio The Dixie Chicks, punk rock icon and poet Henry Rollins, and actor Johnny Depp. La Mirada, California. The test results showed that no genetic material on the crime scene evidence was a match to Echols, Baldwin or Misskelley, reported the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. They didnt even think he would physically survive through December, Baldwin says. This article was updated after publication to add more context about the honorariums paid to the families of the victims and the West Memphis Three and also to correct the time frame in which Berlinger and Sinofsky informed HBO about the changing scope of the documentary. In West Memphis, Hobbs worked as an ice cream delivery man and Hicks worked at a restaurant. Make a life-giving gesture Pam Hobbs divorced Terry Hobbs in 2004 and has reversed her position on the West Memphis Three's guilt. (2 weeks at #1, on for 19 weeks!) They had a daughter together, Amanda Hobbs, who was 4 years old at the time of her brothers death. 24 to Jun. He says his students seem to have a better grasp on the idea of coerced confessions than any of his peers in 1994. I went to a Baptist school and I got accused of being a devil worshiper because I was trying to learn how to write hieroglyphics, says Sauls, today a screenwriter and VFX designer. In 2007, new DNA and physical evidence arose that seemed to further distance the West Memphis Three from the murders. " Every crime, no matter what it is, gets blamed on Satanism.". Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. Knowing that the police were already focusing on Damien Echols, Hutcheson asked her neighbor, Jessie Misskelley Jr., about the brooding teen and his occult connection. 25, 2021. Unaware of what was to come, Allen explained that he just wanted to ask him some questions. The concept of citizen investigations intrigues Berlinger just as much as it did in the 1990s, though today hes often more concerned with the moral implications. According to Dan Stidham, the attorney for Misskelley, that money became essential for the cash-strapped defense teams, who needed to pay for expert witnesses and other expenses. The bodies had been removed from the water and placed on the adjacent embankment, possibly disturbing physical evidence or otherwise contaminating the scene. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. The great irony of the 18-year quest to free the West Memphis Three is that it didnt begin as a crusade. Its no surprise the juries found the prosecutions narrative compelling, Leveritt says: For them, the image of killer satanists headbanging to Metallica was more than plausible. "They said close to the crime scene because at one time I did walk near where they had found the kids with Terry Hobbs But I didn't wear hats back then, my hair could have blown around anywhere, Jacoby told Memphis NBC affiliate WMC-TV in 2013. But for every Your Own Backyard or Ill Be Gone in the Dark that has applied journalistic rigor to their research in the past two decades, theres an Up and Vanished, which has been at the center of ethical debates since the podcast debuted in 2016. . It'll be sort of like I'm the West Memphis boogeyman. In 1994, Dr. Dale W. Griffis was a retired police officer who had embarked on a second career as a self-styled consultant on occult and cult-related crime. I had a big box. Theres no smoking gun. The sheer mountain moving amount of money it cost to prove the obvious innocence of Jessie, Jason, and Damien still staggers me. On the evening of May 5, 1993, three 8-year-old boys disappeared from the streets of West Memphis, Ark. It hurt all over again, he said. That the slain boys were each 8 years-old was important because eight was a "witch's number." Rather, they were fighting for something they believed in. That November, he says, HBO agreed to give an honorariumroughly $5,000to the families on both sides.
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