English:
The case of West Memphis three was in 1994 against three young teenagers Jessie Misskelley Jr, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echol's who were convicted in court for murdering three young boys in 1993. This crime took place in West Memphis in Arkansas. According to the conviction, the three boys died because of satanic rituals. As a result, Jason Baldwin together with Jessie Misskelly Jr. were sentenced to life in prison while Damien Echol’s was sentenced to death. The three boys Michael Moore, Steven branch, and Christopher Byers had been reported missing after being seen playing together. The police together with friends and neighbours began conducting searches around the areas they were last spotted and the rest of West Memphis. In the afternoon, the day after the three boys had been reported missing, an officer saw a floating shoe in creek that was full of mud which was leading to Robin Hood’s drainage canal. The three boys were found dead, naked, tied down like hogs with hands and ankles tied behind their backs. They had been highly mutilated with multiple injuries on their bodies. Their autopsies indicated that two of them; Branch and Moore died of drowning as well as their injuries while Byers died because of injuries only. There was also suspicion that they had been raped, with DNA of sperms found in clothes found in the crime scene.
The three main suspects who were actually friends were linked to the murders mainly through Echolos who had previous involvements with occultism. He had once tried to sacrifice an infant he had had with his girlfriend and reports showed that he once sucked blood from the arm of another boy in school. With these cases together with other cases of shoplifting and vandalism, Damien Echolos became a suspect of the crime and linked the other two friends, Baldwin and Misskelley.
The main evidence to the crime was the fact that the murders were cultic which directly linked them to Damian. Others included the polygraph tests made by Damian that indicated deception and inconsistency. In addition to the evidences is Misskelly’s confession of involvement in the crime during interrogation by the police, which he later on denied stating that he had been coerced and threatened by the police. Another thing that highly incriminated Damian was his knowledge about rape and mutilation of the boy’s private parts, which he said, was because of what he saw on TV but this could not justify him because he knew many details that were limited to what was on TV. In 2011, they three were released from prison as a result of the Alford plea they admitted that the evidences presented by the prosecution would find them completely guilty but still denied involvement in the criminal act proclaim that they are innocent.
In this whole murder case, one major aspect seen is the police involvement in it. It shows how they have been influential in the convictions of the three teenagers. With situations such as leaked information to the media, loss of various evidences, cases of threatening and coercion and also inaccurate details and information, make one highly doubt whether the teenagers convictions were valid or not. There are a number of evidences that incriminated other people, but were not accepted such as the role of John Mark Byers who was Christopher Byers’ stepfather. He presented a knife to the police that had Christopher’s blood type. He also had anger issues and there were suspicions about the death of his wife but then with all this, the police have never opened a case against him to further investigate his involvements. It is very clear that the police had a big role in the conviction of the three teenagers where they concluded that the crimes were because of satanic murders and therefore rejected all other evidences that disagreed with this.
Works Cited
Echols, Damien. Life after death. New York: Blue Rider Press, 2012. Print.
"Free The West Memphis Three." Free The West Memphis Three. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2014. <http://www.wm3.org/WM3>.
Leveritt, Mara. Devil's knot: the true story of the West Memphis Three. New York: Atria Books, 2002. Print.
