Johnny Depp: Free The West Memphis Three
Produced by Gail Zimmerman and Lisa Freed
(This story originally aired on Feb. 27, 2010)
Damien Echols, 35, has spent his entire adult life on Arkansas' death row. Every day, he faces the possibility of execution. But there is a bright spot in his life.
"She's like a living, breathing miracle in human form," Damien says of Lorri Davis, his wife of 10 years.
Lorri met Damien after she became aware of his controversial case. She wrote to him, traveled from New York to see him and offered her help. "It was the right thing to do," she says, "because he is innocent."
"I can understand you believing that he's innocent and wanting to work on his case. But what made you actually decide to marry him?" asks "48 Hours Mystery "correspondent Erin Moriarty.
"Well, I mean, the simple answer is I loved him. He's an amazing person. And he's going to be worth this."
Lorri is now familiar with every facet of Damien's case and works day and night with the legal team, fighting not only for Damien on death row, but for Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, the other convicted men who are serving life sentences.
"We have gone through every aspect of this case and there was never been anything that pointed to their guilt," she explains.
They are known as the West Memphis Three, and they are now actively supported by people who could really make a difference, like Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and actor Johnny Depp.
"I'm here because I firmly, truly, 1000-percent believe that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley are totally innocent," Depp tells Moriarty.
Photos: Star Support for the West Memphis Three
Video:More of Depp's "48 Hours" interview
Despite all that, the Arkansas courts have upheld all three convictions for more than 16 years. Prosecutors maintain that Damien, Jason and Jessie are responsible for the cold-blooded murder of three 8-year-old boys.
On May 5, 1993, Chris Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch were out playing together.
"Stevie was very outgoing, a brilliant child. Anyone who knew him loved him," says his mom, Pam.
A waitress back then, Pam didn't worry very much when her son wasn't home before her 5 p.m. shift began. "I just figured that he might of lost track of time and was on his way home."
It was when her husband, Stevie's stepfather, picked her up at 9 p.m. that she heard for the first time that the boys had still not returned. "I just started cryin' and sayin', 'God, no, no. Why isn't he home?'"
Pam searched straight through the night along with other panicked parents, including Chris Byers' father, Mark.
Then, at 1 p.m. the next day, police made a grim discovery in a wooded strip by the interstate known to the kids as Robin Hood Hills. Stevie, Michael and Chris were found bludgeoned and drowned in a drainage ditch. Their bodies were naked and hogtied with their own shoelaces.
"I hit the ground screaming, 'God, no, no!" says Pam.
"Just a gut wrenching moment to put into words... the disaster, the devastation," Byers recalls.
Six days later, he buried his son, Chris.
"When these murders happened, it was something that was almost like an atomic bomb going off," Damien explains. "You have three children that are murdered. I mean, that in itself is a pretty horrific thing...And then slowly, details start comin' out about how they were found. Now, a lot of these details weren't true."
Byers says there were a lot of rumors. "I heard that one of 'em was skinned. I heard that one of 'em's face was cut off."
"Then you start hearin' all these, you know, people whispering about, maybe it was Satanists that did this," says Damien.
That theory did not seem so farfetched at the time. A media-fueled hysteria about satanic cults was sweeping the country.
An FBI investigation found no such satanic murders, but in 1993, West Memphis juvenile officer Jerry Driver was concerned about cult activity, saying, "It seems to be a trend right now."
Video: Retired Agent Ken Lanning on the FBI investigation
Video: Damien Echols speaks out
Driver had Damien, an 18-year-old dropout, in his sights.
"I think I was the closest thing he could come to conceiving of what he thought a Satanist would look like... all black was the only thing I ever wore. Ridiculous hairstyles. I was a stupid teenager. I really was a smart ass," he says, admitting he didn't help his case at all.
Driver was convinced that the murders were the work of Damien Echols, and he told that to the police.
Damien was now a prime suspect and he says word of that leaked out. "I walked into a softball game. I went around the concession stand and I hear people sayin', 'There he is. That's him.'"
Still, police had no physical evidence or anything else to connect him to the crime; not until someone Damien knew spoke out.On June 6, 1993, just one month after the three 8-year-old boys were found dead in the woods, there were arrests.
In custody were 17-year-old Jessie Misskelley, 16-year-old Jason Baldwin, and the alleged ringleader, 18-year-old Damien Echols.
Damien says he was angry and scared. "Everything in the world just went wrong and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it."
The police were confident they had the killers. The key evidence: a statement that Jessie Misskelley gave them. In it, he said he saw Damien and Damien's best friend, Jason, abuse the three boys in a devil worshipping ritual.
"Did you consider Jesse Misskelley a friend?" Moriarty asks Damien.
"To be honest, I didn't really think of him at all," he replies. "He was just someone that was sort of on the fringes of mine and Jason's life."
Dan Stidham, now a state judge, was Jessie Misskelley's lawyer.
"The best way to describe Mr. Misskelley's capabilities is he is operating at about the level of a 5-year-old child," says Stidham.
He says it was clear his client knew very little about occult rituals.
"[Jessie] walked in one day and he hands me this book. On the cover, it had a picture of the devil and [he] said, 'Dan, who is Satin.' Satin," Stidham recalls. "Here's a kid who's supposed to have committed the very first ever satanic ritualistic homicide, yet he didn't know who Satan was."
At first, Jessie told the police he knew nothing. But after hours of pressure, Jessie finally implicated Damien and Jason, saying, "I saw Damien hit this one boy real bad. Then Jason hit Steve Branch."
Then, Jessie implicated himself by saying he chased down a boy who ran away.
"He thought he was helping by adding to the story," says Stidham, "but he turned himself from a witness to an accomplice."
A lot of what Jessie said was just wrong. For example, he first said the crime took place early in the morning, but the victims were at school all day. Nevertheless, all three teens were charged with murder.
In January 1994, eight months after the crime, Jessie Misskelley was the first to go on trial.
Defense attorney Stidham attacked the police - not only for the tactics they used on Jessie, but for the major mistake they made.
"On the night that the homicides occurred, someone had stumbled into a fast food restaurant covered in mud and blood," he tells Moriarty.
That night, the Bojangles' restaurant manager reported the bloody man to police. But detectives waited until the next day to collect evidence. And then, they lost it.
"They had actually taken a blood sample. Never got to the crime lab," says Stidham.
Police never identified or found that potential suspect. At trial, their blunder was overshadowed by Jessie's own words.
Jurors heard the recorded parts of his statement:
Officer: Did you see any of the boys being killed?
Jessie: Yes, that one right there.
It was enough. Jessie was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Less than three weeks later, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin went on trial together.
"I had people standing out there screaming, telling me every morning when I went into court how I was going to die, how the state was going to fry me," Damien recalls.
Jessie Misskelley refused to testify against Damien and Jason. Prosecutors could not use his confession, because it would have violated the defendants' right to face their accuser.
But the two girls who were at that softball game that Damien attended testified that they overheard him admit to the murders.
"I don't remember saying that at the time because to me, it - I didn't actually do it. It would have been like a joke," he says.
"Help me understand why you would think that's a joke back then," says Moriarty.
"It's the person I was and it's the way I thought at that time in my life, and I - I can't make excuses for it."
The state also introduced a knife found in the lake behind Jason Baldwin's home. Nothing connected that knife to the crime or the defendants.
But the state pathologist testified that some of the wounds could have been made with a knife like it.
More disturbing, the pathologist said one boy was sexually mutilated. That fit with the state's belief that the crime was occult related.
Witness Dale Griffis claimed to be an expert on the occult.
"This guy had a mail order mail order Ph.D," says Stidham.
During the trial, Griffis was asked, "Are you saying that this murder was held at an occult service?" His reply: "Yes."
There were no signs of any service - occult or otherwise - at the scene. Still, Griffis noted that the moon was full and he offered an opinion about why the police didn't find much blood: "They will take it and store it. They will use it to bathe in. They will use it to drink."
But police didn't find any blood in Jason and Damien's homes.
"You can't believe that anybody's gonna take that kind of stuff seriously when you're going through it, but evidently they did," Damien says. "Dale Griffis was the gasoline that they threw on the fire."
Damien took the stand at his trial and was asked, "Have you ever participated in any human sacrifice?" His reply: "No, I have not. I'm not a Satanist. I don't believe in human sacrifices or anything like that."
Chris' father, Mark Byers, watched as Damien explained himself. Byers described Damien's demeanor at trial as "arrogant... like a big game to him, kind of."
"I behaved in ways that were very, very stupid," Damien admits. "There were times when I was really inappropriate."
Jason Baldwin didn't take the stand, but everyone knew he was Damien's best friend. Although no physical evidence linked them to the crime, Damien and Jason were convicted.
Jason got life. Damien, believed to be the mastermind, got death.
"That was the absolute worst, absolute crushing despair," Damien tells Moriarty. "And knowing that you didn't do what they sent you here for."Condemned to death row in 1994, Damien Echols had little hope. "I had come to feel absolutely hated and loathed by the world."
Then, two years later, "Paradise Lost," an HBO documentary about his case was released.
"That is probably what has saved my life," Damien tells Moriarty. "I really do believe without that footage of the trials, the state would've probably already killed me by now."
The floodgates opened, he says, as outrage spread. People moved by the case organized Web sites, reporter Mara Leveritt detailed its flaws in a book, and Damien heard from people around the world, including Lorri Davis - the New York landscape architect who would later become his wife.
Video: Hear from members of Arkansas Take Action
Free the West Memphis Three
Free West Memphis 3 (Arkansas Take Action)
West Memphis Three Case: Document Archive
"After she found me, I just decided I'm not gonna stop growing. I'm not gonna stop learning," Damien says.
"I had never met anyone as fascinating and anyone who captured my attention as much as he did, so, I wasn't gonna let him go," Lorri says of the man she married without ever having touched or kissed prior to their wedding. "It wasn't a tough decision at all... and there's never been a moment of doubt about it."
Damien explains that the relationship requires some creativity, "because there is no physical intimacy, like people depend on. So we may, for example, set a time every single night and drink water at the exact same time... We're both doing this. We're both connected in this moment. "
"What do you say to people who say, 'You haven't had a real marriage, you haven't had a real relationship yet?'" Moriarty asks Lorri.
"I'd say you don't know us," she laughs. "That's what I would say."
Lorri doesn't entertain the possibility that Damien may never get out. Her confidence is based partly on attention people like Johnny Depp have brought to the case.
"Is there something about the way that Damien Echols was treated as a teenager that you can relate to?" Moriarty asks Depp.
"Oh, I immediately related to Damien, what he went through growing up," he replies. "He comes from a small town in Arkansas. I come from a relatively small town in Kentucky. I can remember kind of being looked upon as a freak. Or, you know, different, because I didn't dress like everybody else. So I can empathize with being judged on how you look, as opposed to who you are.""Is there any side of you that is concerned that, if in fact these guys are innocent, why wouldn't there be a new trial?" "That's a mystery to me," Depp says. "The most courageous action that the state could now take is to admit that they made mistakes and then correct these errors."
High-profile attorney Dennis Riordan now heads Damien's legal team. "This was a death conviction that was returned without one single piece of credible evidence," Riordan says.
Take that knife that was fished from the lake. Riordan says the state pathologist testified that before the victims drowned, they could have been tortured with it. But when the current defense teams asked seven prominent forensic scientists to examine the evidence, all seven came to the same stunning conclusion: animals - not humans - caused the wounds and scratches on the boys' bodies after the victims were dead.
"If the injuries to these children were caused by animals after they died, then did the knife play any part in this at all?" Moriarty asks Riordan."No, there's absolutely no evidence in this case - credible evidence - that ties this or any other knife to these offenses," he says. "The focus of this is so important, because the notion that there was a sexual mutilation of one of these children naturally just shook the state of Arkansas and it added fuel to this whole notion of Satanism."Prosecutors turned down "48 Hours'" requests for interviews.
Read a statement from the Arkansas Attorney General's Office
In court documents, they defend the state's trial evidence and accuse the new experts of "second guessing." But faulty testimony, says Riordan, was just one of the reason that Damien Echols was convicted. He charges there was also jury misconduct. Riordan points to a juror's notes, which seem to indicate that the jury improperly discussed Jessie Misskelley's confession. He says it proves that even though the confession was never introduced at trial, it was part of the deliberations.
Riordan says, "The jury foreman said to himself and other jurors, 'He's guilty because Jessie Misskelley said he is. I read about it in the newspaper. I saw some report of this on television.'"According to four sworn affidavits obtained over the past six years, that foreman admitted taking Jessie's confession into consideration - even calling it the "primary factor" for his decision."
That was absolutely scandalous to convict somebody on evidence that hadn't even been produced in the court," Riordan says. "The irony of it is that the jury didn't learn what hogwash the Misskelley confession was because they weren't supposed to be dealing with it at all.
"It's not just the defense calling it hogwash. An independent academic analysis of Jessie's confession concludes that he did not appear to have "knowledge of the crime."
Lorri says that's because Damien, Jason, and Jessie did not commit the crime.
"Three teenage boys? There's no way they would have been able to come home not being covered in mud, their clothes, their shoes, and possible blood spatter," she says. "I don't think for a minute they would have been able to cover up their tracks."
Now, more than 16 years after the murders, the defense is focusing on its new evidence - DNA evidence that points away from the all three convicted men.
That DNA may be all that Damien needs."When children are murdered," says Lorri, "when do you not look at the families?"
Private investigator Rachael Geiser has been working on Damien Echols' case for 10 years.She's sought out anyone who might shed new light on it, like Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the victims, Stevie Branch.
"Terry has told me that he was never interviewed by the police," says Geiser.
At the time of the murders, Terry was married to Stevie's mom, Pam.
Geiser says, "I walked away from that interview with Terry Hobbs thinkin', 'Wow, he's a really nice guy."
Then there was Chris' father, Mark Byers. Byers was volatile and acted oddly in the documentary "Paradise Lost."
From the beginning, some of Damien's supporters suspected Byers may have been involved in the crime.
"Don't you have a little bit of violence in your background?" Moriarty asks. "Your first wife accused you of assault."
"Yes, she did. I - I did assault her," says Byers.
His second wife died of undetermined causes three years after her son was murdered. "She died layin' in bed beside me. She was in bad health," Byers tells Moriarty. "I watched other people give up their will to live."
Byers' hard times continued. He was convicted of burglary and spent 15 months in prison. When asked why he thinks his life took such a bad turn, Byers explains, "I brought it mostly on myself because of the rage and anger. When I got up in the morning I was mad, when I went to sleep I was mad."
In 2007, new forensic tests found DNA on several pieces of crime scene evidence. It didn't match the victims and, importantly, it didn't match Damien, Jason and Jesse.
But what about the victims' fathers? Geiser needed to get DNA samples from both Byers and Hobbs - and she did.
"I took cigarette butts out of the ashtray, and then we sent them off to be tested," she tells Moriarty.
The results were startling.
Mark Byers was eliminated as a source of any of that DNA, but DNA from a hair found in the knot of the ligature that bound Michael Moore was consistent with Terry Hobbs, Stevie's stepfather. What's more, another hair found on a nearby tree stump was consistent with David Jacoby, a friend that Hobbs was with the night of the murders.
"I felt like an idiot, honestly. I was immediately floored," Geiser says. "And so, a lot [of] everything at that point turned to Terry."
Terry Hobbs says his hair could have been carried to the crime scene by one of the victims. "They played in our homes. If it got there by transfer, that's how it happened if it was even my hair."
"Do you think it's possible it is your hair? Moriarty asks.
"I don't know. The police never told me it was my hair.
"In 2007, 14 years after the murders, the police finally questioned Terry Hobbs. For the first time, he went on the record about his whereabouts that day and where he searched to find Stevie.
Officer: Did you go into the woods before you picked up Pam?
Hobbs: Sure
Officer: You did. Do you remember about what time that was?
Hobbs: 6, 6:30.
Officer: And who was with you at that time?
Hobbs: David.
Hobbs has told varying stories that often contradict what other people have said. For example, his friend, David Jacoby, in a sworn affidavit, said he was in the woods with Terry after dark, but not between 6 and 6:30, as Hobbs said.
"You know that David Jacoby says that you left and you went off by yourself," Moriarty tells Hobbs.
"Well, I went off with David. David left with me," he says.
"He is then lying when he says that?"
"David didn't say that."
"So you say you were never by yourself?"
Correct."
When asked if she thinks her ex-husband Terry Hobbs is an honest guy, Pam replies, "No. I've caught him in quite a few lies over the years."
In 1993, Pam lashed out at the teenagers she believed killed her son. Now, she has doubts - troubled that DNA consistent with Hobbs' was found in the ligature.
Since their divorce, they've had a contentious relationship. Looking back, Pam says that Stevie was well behaved, but that didn't stop Terry from frequently punishing him and their 4-year-old daughter.
"They probably got a whippin' every other night." Using a belt, Pam says, "He would make 'em hold their hands in the air."
"Did you hit him with a belt often, with his hands up, hit him with a belt?" Moriarty asks Hobbs.
"No."
"So you didn't hit him with a belt, with his hands up?"
"Well, if I ever whipped him with a belt I wanted his hands up because I didn't want to hit him on his hands," he explains.
When asked if she believes Hobbs was capable of killing her son, Pam says it's "a possibility. I hate to sit here and say that and know that I stayed with the man as long as I did."
"Why is this tough for you to think about?" asks Moriarty.
"He wouldn't be alive. He would not have the chance to breathe again if I dwell on it and I let it enter here, here in my heart," Pam says. "So I try not to think of it."
What troubles Pam is that years after the murders, she found Stevie's small pocketknife with Terry's belongings. Hobbs says he took it from Stevie long before the crime.
"As a parent, you don't want an 8-year-old to carry a pocketknife around," Hobbs tells Moriarty.
"Right, but Pam says he did carry it around."
"'Til I took it away from him."
"When exactly did you take it away from him?"
"I don't know exactly when, but I did."
"And as far as you know, did Stevie have that knife up until the day he died?"
"Uh huh."
"Are you saying that Terry lied about that?"
"Terry did lie."
Hobbs bristles at the way the defense team has cast suspicion upon him. "To have your name dragged into it like they dragged my name into it, you bet I get mad about it."
He insists he had only one purpose the night the boys disappeared. "I was on a mission to find Stevie," Hobbs tells Moriarty.
"But you don't have any way to actually verify what you were doing between 6:30 and 8:30 that night."
"Oh, there's lots of people that seen me out there, but I don't know them people. I didn't know 'em."
"If you were really worried and Stevie had never been out that late, you didn't call Pam and say, 'Look, your son still isn't home?'"
"Pam was working," he replies.
There is one matter on which Hobbs has been very consistent: he has always said he didn't see his stepson, Stevie, at all the day he disappeared.But someone's about to challenge that.
Debby Moyer lived just three houses away from Stevie Branch when he was murdered. She worried for her children's safety.
"We were limited to the front yard or the backyard," says her daughter, Jaime Ballard, who was 13 at the time.
According to Debby Moyer, police never came to her door and never asked questions about whether she had seen the boys.
When asked if police ever canvassed the neighborhood, she replies, "If they did, I did not see 'em."
The Moyers had no role in the case, at least until July 2009, when they called a tip line set up by Damien Echols' supporters to report something they remembered seeing on May 5, 1993. West Memphis 3 Confidential Tip Line: (501) 256-1775
Early that evening, they say they saw the boys playing in their backyard. As Jamie was leaving for a church meeting around 6:30 p.m., she spoke with Chris Byers.
"He ran right out in the bushes in between the two houses," she explains. "And I said, 'Christopher, go home.' And he said, 'I don't have to do what you tell me to do.'
"Right then, Jaime says Terry Hobbs called out to the boys.
"And he said, 'Get back down here to the house.' And they went that direction."
"Terry Hobbs has said to me that he did not see the boys at all that day," Moriarty tells Jaime.
"If he says he did not see them, he's not tellin' the truth" she says. "He saw 'em. He was out there with 'em. He told 'em to come to his house."
"I did not see Stevie at all on May 5th," Hobbs tells Moriarty."
"Are they mistaken?" she asks.
"They're lying."
"Why would they lie?"
"I don't know why."
"Did you kill your stepson? Did you have anything to do with his death?"
"No. I did not."
"Why should somebody believe you?"
"It's the truth."
The West Memphis, Ark., police believe him. After Hobbs spoke with police in 2007, they told the press that he was not - and never had been - a suspect. Hobbs says the killers are in prison.
When asked why Damien would kill the boys, what was his motive, Hobbs replies, "I don't know."
But Echols' attorney Dennis Riordan argues in court documents that the evidence pointing to Hobbs would certainly help Damien, Jason and Jessie at a new trial.
"Proof beyond a reasonable doubt against Terry Hobbs? Perhaps not. Proof that would absolutely lead to the acquittal of these defendants at their trial? Absolutely, absolutely," Riordan tells Moriarty.
Also helpful is other unidentified partial DNA that was also found on the evidence.
Riordan says, if Damien and Jason abused the boys as Jessie said, their DNA would have been found. "So the absence of it really is a very powerful factor," he says. "These were not sexual motivated, satanic killings. There are other troubling questions and possible suspects: who was that muddy, bloody man at the Bojangles' restaurant the night of the crime? Did the killer make a quick get away on the interstate? Tens of thousands of trucks pass through here every day."
"The fact that I'm not guilty means that there has been a child murderer left to walk the streets for the past 16 years," Damien tells Moriarty.
Lorri Davis adds, "It's not our job as a legal team to prove who committed these murders. However, I want to know who did it. And I think everybody does."
Davis says support for the convicted men continues to grow as word of the dubious trial evidence, new forensics, and questions about jury misconduct spreads.
Video: More of Depp's "48 Hours" interview
Video: Damien Echols speaks out
"You want to do all you can to help right the wrongs and the clock is ticking," says Depp. "My biggest fear - I mean, it's almost unutterable, is that justice is not served, not only for those three innocent men in prison, but also for those three innocent boys."
Since the 1994 trials, most of the legal procedures - including a hearing in summer 2009, asking for new trials for Jason and Jessie - have been before Judge David Burnett, the original judge. Burnett denied the convicted men new trials.
Damien's case is before the Arkansas state Supreme Court. He is prepared to go to federal court.
"I just feel this momentum, says Lorri Davis."There's the will to just right this wrong and to get this done, and to get them out."
When asked if he thinks he'll walk out of death row some day, Damien says, "Yes, I do. I believe that with all my heart.
"I don't believe that everyone all the way up the line is just gonna sit on their hands and allow them to execute an innocent person," says Damien, who thinks about the families of Chris Byers, Steve Branch, and Michael Moore. "I've thought about 'em quite a lot over the years, actually," he says. "And I try to just remember where they're coming from and the hurt that they feel and what they've experienced that they'll probably never get over.
"Michael Moore's father, Todd, supports the state's battle to uphold the verdicts, but some parents of the victims have had a change of heart.
Chris Byers' father, Mark, who cheered the verdicts in 1994, now actively supports the West Memphis Three. Stevie Branch's mother, Pam, says her faith has helped her cope with her doubts about the case. She now believes Damien, Jason, and Jessie were railroaded.
"Arkansas will never admit that they made a mistake. They're gonna stand on that these guys did it. We've got the right ones and that's the way it is," she says. "I want the truth and nothing but. And once the truth and nothing but is known, I believe I can rest a little easier."And, that, she says, is what everyone deserves.
No execution date has been set for Damien Echols.
Have information on the case? Call the West Memphis 3 Confidential Tip Line=http:>: (501)256-1775