Review #138
On the evening of May 5, 1993, in the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas, three eight-year-old boys disappeared. The next afternoon, all three of the boys’ bodies were found submerged in a nearby stream. The boys had been bound from ankle to wrist with their own shoelaces and severely beaten.
The crime scene and forensic evidence were mishandled, but a probation officer directed the police toward Damien Echols, a youth with a troubled home life, anti-authoritarian attitudes and admiration for the "Goth" and Wiccan subcultures. Amid rumors of satanic cult activity, investigators browbeat Jesse Misskelley, a mentally challenged 16-year-old acquaintance of Echols, into providing a wildly inconsistent confession that he'd helped Echols and a third teen, Jason Baldwin, assault the boys.
All three boys were convicted on the basis of Misskelley's dubious statements and such "evidence" as Echols's fondness for William Blake and Stephen King. The oldest boy, 18, was sentenced to death.
In this book, Arkansas Times investigative reporter, Mara Leveritt, explores the murder convictions, (the subject of two HBO documentaries). The book is arranged chronologically, from the crime through the trial, and dispassionately dissects the prosecution's case against the three teens. Leveritt interviewed the principals, reviewed the police file and trial transcripts, and leads the reader to conclude from her exhaustive research (430 footnotes) that the case was botched, improperly based on a single confession from a retarded youth and the defendants' alleged ties to satanic rituals.
All three ‘boys’ are still in prison. A group to “Free the West Memphis Three” has been actively trying to get them out of prison for years. The authorities continue to ignore them.
Well written in descriptive language, the book is an indictment of a culture and legal system that failed to protect children as defendants or victims. Leveritt, also suggests an alternative suspect: one victim's stepfather, who had a history of domestic violence, yet was seemingly shielded by authorities because he was a drug informant for local investigators.
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