West Memphis 3: Free

Produced by Gail Zimmerman
[This story was originally broadcast on Sept. 17, 2011. It was updated on July 21, 2012.]

For 12 years, Lorri Davis had been married to a man she couldn't live with - even worse, they could rarely even touch - until now.

"Is there a way to describe what you're feeling right now?" "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Erin Moriarty asked Lorri's husband.

"Too many things," Damien Echols replied. "You know, it -- just about any emotion, any thought, anything else that you could put a name to I'm probably havin' it or probably have it in sometime over the past week. You know, there's excitement. There's -- maybe a little bit of anxiety. Curiosity."

Damien Echols is finally tasting the freedom he's longed for his entire adult life. Convicted of a notorious crime in 1994, he was on death row - waiting execution - when he first spoke with "48 Hours Mystery". The only bright spot in his life was Lorri.

"She's like a living, breathing miracle in human form," Damien told Moriarty in a 2009 prison interview. "She is my life. ...in every aspect, in every regard, in every way. She is my universe.

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 said, "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?" Moriarty asked.

"Well, I mean, the simple answer is I loved him. He's an amazing person."

Damien is one of the men known as the West Memphis 3. His co-defendants, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were also in prison, sentenced to life. But from the outset - serious questions were raised about their guilt. And over the years, a growing number of people began to demand a new look at the case, including Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, and actor Johnny Depp.

Photos: Star support for the WM3

"I'm here because I firmly, truly, 1000-percent believe that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley are totally innocent," Depp told Moriarty in 2010.

But the demands fell on deaf ears in the Arkansas courts which repeatedly upheld all three convictions. Prosecutors maintained that Damien, Jason, and Jessie were responsible for the murders of three 8-year-old boys on May 5, 1993.

That day, Chris Byers, Michael Moore, and Stevie Branch were out playing together.

"Stevie was very outgoing, a brilliant child. Anyone who knew him loved him," said his mom, Pam.

Stevie's mom, Pam, a waitress back then, didn't worry very much when her son wasn't home home before her five p.m. shift began. "I just figured that he mighta 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.

"Just a gut wrenching moment to put into words... the disaster, the devastation," Byers recalled.

Six days later, Mark Byers buried his son, Chris.

"When these murders happened, it was something that was almost like an atomic bomb going off," Damien explained in 2009. "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 told Moriarty 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," said Damien.

It was a time when a media-fueled hysteria about Satanic cult activity was sweeping the country. Damien, who wore black clothing and listened to heavy metal music, stood out in this rural community and he came under suspicion.

"All black was the only thing I ever wore. ...ridiculous hairstyles," Damien explained. "I was a stupid teenager. I really was a smartass."

"Damien, you didn't help yourself too much--" Moriarty remarked.

"Oh -- I didn't help myself at all. No I didn't."

Police had Damien in their sights - and word of that got out.

"I walked into a softball game ... I went around the concession stand and I hear people sayin', 'There he is. That's him,'" Damien recalled.

"They're pointing at you, because -- they think you might have had something to do with the murders?" Moriarty asked.

"Yeah."

Still, there was no physical evidence to connect Damien to the crime. But then, someone he knew spoke out.

The fates of the West Memphis 3 were sealed just one month after the three 8-year-old boys were found dead in the woods. In June 1993, 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.

Stevie Branch's mother, Pam, was consumed with anger.

Asked what he was feeling, Damien replied, "Anger. Fear. ...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 asked in a jailhouse interview.

"To be honest, I didn't really think of him at all," he said. "He was just someone that was sort of on the fringes of mine and Jason's life."

"The best way to describe Mr. Misskelley's -- capabilities -- is he is operating at about the level of a 5-year-old child," said Dan Stidham.

Stidham, now a state judge, was Jessie Misskelley's lawyer. He says it was clear his client knew very little about occult rituals.

"He walked in one day and he hands me this book...on the cover, it had a picture of the devil and said, 'Dan, who is Satin?' ...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, he finally implicated Damien and Jason. "I saw Damien hit this one boy real bad. Then Jason hit Steve Branch," confessed Jessie.

And then, Jessie implicated himself by saying he chased down a boy who ran away.

"He thought he was helping by adding to the story, but he...turned himself from a witness to an accomplice," said Stidham.

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."

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," said Stidham.

Police never identified or found that potential suspect. But, 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 recalled.

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 told Moriarty.

"Help me understand why you would think that's a joke back then."

"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."

There was no physical evidence to connect Damien and Jason to the crime, but the state had Dale Griffis, a self-professed satanic cult expert.

"This guy had a mail order mail order Ph.D," said 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 - satanic 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 decided to take the stand.

"I behaved in ways that were very, very stupid," Damien admitted to Moriarty. "There were times when I was really inappropriate."

Unlike Damien, Jason Baldwin never took the stand. Prosecutors had tried to get him to testify against Damien in exchange for a 5-year sentence, but Jason refused.

"In essence, that would actually make me guilty of murder," he told Moriarty. "I'd be guilty of murdering Damien, 'cause that's what it woulda done. It would have put him on death row, an innocent person. And I'd have committed murder, right there in my heart. ... I can't even contemplate doin' something like that."

But even without testimony from Jason, both Damien and Jason were convicted of first-degree murder. Jason got life; Damien, believed to be the mastermind, got death.

"That was the absolute worst, absolute crushing despair," Damien told 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. Then, two years later, "Paradise Lost," a documentary about his case, was released.

"That is probably what has saved my life," Damien told Erin Moriarty during a jailhouse interview. "I really do believe without that footage of the trials, the state would've probably already killed me by now."

People were outraged by what they saw. Reporter Mara Leveritt detailed the flaws of the case in her book and Damien heard from people around the world, including the New York landscape architect, Lorri Davis.

In 2009, Lorri told "48 Hours" how it changed her life.

"I took two years off completely from working from my job to work completely on the case," she told Moriarty. "Every minute that I wasn't sleeping, I was working on the case."

In time, Lorri spearheaded the campaign that would eventually get the case back to court.

"We finally got the funding we needed...to hire experts, like forensic scientists -- investigators, profilers," she explained. "Everyone who could look at this case and take it apart. And that's exactly what we did."

This is how she explained the unorthodox romance that developed along the way: "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 said of the man she married without ever having touched or kissed.

Just days after being released from 10 years in solitary confinement, Damien sat down with Lorri for their first television interview as a couple. They told "48 Hours" what it was like to finally be together.

According to Lorri, "It was just strangely -"

"Normal," Damien said, finishing her sentence. "In a way it didn't feel like it was anything new."

"Yeah. It didn't...because... I know it's hard to understand, but we know each other really, really well," Lorri continued. "We're very close on many levels. So -"

"I think people, when they think of relationships, when they think of physical or sexual relationships," Damien told Moriarty. "They don't take into account all the other levels of activity and things goin' on on the mental level...on the emotional level. All these different things. We had all of that already. You know, the only thing that was a lacking was the physical sensation. So that's why I guess it didn't really seem that new in a lot of ways."

Is Lorri glad she married Damien? "Oh, yeah," she replied with laughter.

Over the years, as Lorri fought for Damien's freedom, she worked closely with the advocates who could bring attention to the case, like Johnny Depp.

"Is there something about the way that Damien Echols was treated as a teenager that you can relate to?" Moriarty asked Depp.

"Oh, I immediately related to Damien, what he went through growing up," he replied. "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 ... it's mind-blowing, how it actually happened."

Lorri also reached out to renowned attorney Stephen Braga - who agreed to take Damien's case pro bono.

"My reaction was this is an outrage," Braga said. "I tend to get incredibly personally invested into my cases. ...These kinds of cases in particular, cases where life or death is at issue... it's like going to war with somebody. And I need to know that the person I'm in the foxhole with is a person I wanna be with and a person I believe is innocent."

By the time Braga came aboard in 2009, the defense team had already attacked the heart of the state's case... that the victims were killed in a Satanic ritual.

"Some of the world's leading forensic pathologists have come forward, six or seven of them, all agreeing...that in fact these were wounds caused by something called post-mortem animal predation. Basically means after death, animals attacked the bodies and created these wounds," explained Braga.

Not only were jurors misled about the forensics, he says, they also failed to abide by crucial rules. "The jury foreman took it upon himself to tell the jurors in deliberations about Mr. Misskelley's confessions."

Remember, Jessie Misskelley's confession was ruled inadmissible at Damien and Jason's trial. But notes taken by a juror indicate that confession was brought up during deliberations.

"Ironically, they heard about the confession, but didn't hear about the problems with it," Moriarty remarked.

"Oh, absolutely," Braga said. "The defense lawyers never had the chance to attack the reliability because they didn't even know the jury was gonna consider the confession. ... Twice as devastating."

Since the trials, experts have discredited Jessie's confession, concluding he didn't seem to know much about the crime. Lorri says that's because Damien, Jason and Jessie did not commit the crime and no physical evidence links them to it.

"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," Lorri said. "I don't think for a minute they would have been able to cover up their tracks."

But someone else just might have left something behind.

Private investigator Rachael Geiser was working on Damien Echols' case in 2007 - when evidence found at the crime scene was re-tested for DNA.

One key find was a hair entangled in the ligature that bound 8-year-old victim Michael Moore.

According to Geiser, "whoever tied it, there was a hair caught in it. And that would just be extremely incriminating evidence in my opinion."

The DNA did not match any of the victims. More important, it excluded Damien, Jason, and Jessie. But incredibly, the hair in the knot was consistent with Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of Stevie Branch.

Hobbs says one of the victims could have carried the hair to the crime scene. "They played in our homes ... if it got there by transfer, that's how it happened --

... if it was even my hair."

Fourteen years after the murders, the police finally questioned Hobbs.

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 Hobbs after dark, but not between 6 and 6:30, as Terry said.

"You know that David Jacoby says that you left and you went off by yourself," Moriarty told Hobbs.

"Well, I went off with David. David left with me," he said.

"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 replied, "No. I've caught him in quite a few lies over the years."

In 1993, Terry Hobbs' ex-wife, Pam, lashed out at the teenagers she believed killed her son. Now, she has doubts.

"Does that trouble you, the fact that DNA that is consistent with Terry's found right in the ligature?" Moriarty asked Pam, who replied with a nod.

What troubles Pam is that years after the murders, she found Stevie's small pocketknife with Terry's belongings. Terry 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 told Moriarty.

"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."

Although Pam now says that in her heart she can't believe Terry could have committed such a horrible crime, she did wonder why her ex-husband waited so long to tell her that Stevie was missing...

"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?'" Moriarty asked Terry.

"Pam was working," he replied.

There is one matter on which Terry Hobbs has been very consistent: He has always said he didn't see his stepson, Stevie, at all the day he disappeared.

"So, you're saying for a fact you did not see Stevie all day?" Moriarty asked.

"That's the truth," Terry replied.

Two of Terry's old neighbors dispute that. Debby Moyer lived with her daughter, Jamie - 13 at the time, just three houses away from Stevie Branch when he was murdered.

Asked if police ever knocked on their door to ask them any questions, Debby says, "If they did, I did not see 'em."

So they said nothing until 2008, when they called a tip line set up Damien's defense team to report something they remembered seeing back on May 5, 1993. Around 6:30, they say, they saw the boys playing in their backyard as Jamie was leaving for a church meeting. 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, she 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 told Jaime.

"If he says he did not see them, he's not tellin' the truth" she said. "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 told Moriarty.

"Are they mistaken?"

"They're lying."

"Terry, you gotta help me out. 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."

After Hobbs spoke with the West Memphis police in 2007, they told the press that he was not - and never had been - a suspect. Still, the DNA evidence would be critical if Damien ever got a new trial says his attorney Stephen Braga.

"This hair from the Moore ligature is not sufficient to convict Terry Hobbs of committing these crimes," he explained. "And we've never said that we have proof that he committed these crimes. What is sufficient to show is a reasonable doubt that these defendants did not do it because it's definitely not their hair."

But getting a new trial seemed almost impossible. Appeal after appeal was turned down until finally, in August 2011, came a development that no one could have anticipated.

When "48 Hours" first spoke with Damien Echols, he was still hanging his hope on the DNA found at the crime scene.

"You can do a lotta things now with forensic testing and DNA that you couldn't do back in 1993," he told Moriarty. "So, a lotta things have come forward now."

Judge David Burnett, the original trial judge, denied Damien - and the other two defendants -- a new trial based on the DNA. But the Arkansas Supreme Court agreed to review that ruling. That's when Lorri Davis decided to pull out all the stops.

"I contacted all of our long-time supporters and friends, you know, kind of heavy hitters. And said, 'Let's do somethin' in Arkansas to just wake people up. ...send a message out to everyone about what we're goin' into.' And all of them said, 'Yeah, let's do it.'"

In August 2010, those "friends" of the West Memphis 3 show up in force. Natalie Maines, Eddie Vedder, Patti Smith and Johnny Depp are all determined to keep the case in the spotlight.

"You want to do all you can to help right the wrongs," Depp said, "and the clock is ticking."

Two months later, a stunning reversal of fortune.

"It was like winning, you know, the Super Bowl," said attorney Stephen Braga.

The Arkansas Supreme Court blows all three cases wide open - ordering a different judge to examine all evidence, old and new, and decide if there should be new trials. The hitch: everyone will have to wait another year.

"Sometimes I think they hoped things were just gonna, like, die away and people were gonna start going away and stop paying attention," said Lorri.

But then, attorney Stephen Braga comes up with an idea to get Damien out: a rarely used legal procedure in which a defendant proclaims innocence and yet pleads guilty: the Alford Plea.

"The Alford Plea is sort of a technical wink and a nod," he explained. "We're innocent, but we're signing this paper to get the case over."

Read more about the Alford Plea

"Damien, Jason, Jessie, have spent the last 18 years saying, 'We're innocent.' And then an Alford Plea?'" Moriarty asked.

"Yeah, absolutely," he replied. "Mr. Echols was living in a box about 8 foot by 11 foot. No windows, no open bars, a little slat through the door. ...He needed to get out of there."

To Braga's surprise, the state agrees... but only if all three men would go along with it.

Said Braga, "The prosecutors were demanding finality. That's what they wanted. They wanted to bring an end to this legal tangle."

"It sounds crazy, but fine," Lorri said, "He's going to have the plead guilty, but he can maintain his innocence."

"I literally felt like I was gonna have a heart attack," Damien said of the plea deal. "There's a possibility that I may walk out of this place within a week. ...That this can all become like a bad dream."

Like Damien, Jessie Misskelley agrees to the deal. Everything's a go until Jason Baldwin weighs in.

"I told 'em I would not accept the plea 'cause it's wrong," he told Moriarty in August. "...anybody logical and reasonable and unbiased can look at it and realize they had the wrong guys you know and release us...and I was unwilling to accept anything less."

"What was your reaction when you heard that?" Moriarty asked Echols.

"I can't even describe it. Just despair," he replied.

Because Damien couldn't contact Jason directly, his long-time supporter, Eddie Vedder, and attorney Stephen Braga did it for him - writing Jason letters.

Photos: Star support for the WM3

"How close did this deal come to just dying, not making it at all?" Moriarty asked Braga.

"I'd say very close," he replied. "We had a deadline from the prosecutors... we were within 48 hours of the deal going away."

Jason changes his mind. He'll take the deal and give up his hope for a new trial.

"There's really no guarantee, as it was proven durin' my original trial, that the right thing would have happened," he explained. "And Damien could have very really lost his life."

On August 19, 2011, the three men - who hadn't spoken with each other for 18 years - were brought to court.

"I lived in -- terror that this wasn't gonna happen," Damien admitted. "That somethin' was gonna fall through...and I literally could not rest until they came and got us and took us to the courthouse."

There are victims' parents among the supporters there: Stevie Branch's mother, Pam Hobbs and Chris Byers' father, Mark.

"They're innocent," Chris Byers yells to the crowd gathered outside the courthouse. "They did not kill my son!" The crowd applauded in agreement.

But other victims' relatives, including Stevie Branch's father, are angry. "They were found guilty. I think they are guilty."

The men stand before Judge David Laser in a procedure that takes all of a half hour.

"Your honor, I am an innocent of these charges but I am entering an Alford guilty plea..." Damien told the judge.

They are sentenced to time served. And in the paradox that is the Alford plea, the prosecutor gets his convictions.

"I have no reason to believe anyone else involved in [the] homicide of these three children, but the three defendants who pled guilty today," prosecutor Scott Ellington told the judge.

The imprisoned men are allowed to walk free.

"If they -- actually believed you were guilty there's no way in hell they would let you go," Damien told Moriarty in the interview following his release.

"Three kids murdered," Lorri said, "And they're gonna let three murderers -- and one of them on the death row, walk out of prison? It wouldn't happen."

At a press conference held following the release of the West Memphis 3, Jason Baldwin told reporters, "I did not want to take the deal from the get go. However, they're trying to kill Damien -"

"I recognize he did do it almost entirely for me," Damien replied, after which Jason stood to give him a hug.

"He did thank me. He gave me a big old hug, actually," Jason laughs. "And it felt good."

Damien told Moriarty the first thing he wanted to do was "go outside at night."

"When was the last time you have been outside at night?"

"Eighteen-and-a-half years before that," he replied. "The night we were released from prison, everybody just sort of had like a small celebration. And we went out on the rooftop and watched the sunset. Watched the stars come out."

As for Jason, "I smiled so much that my face actually hurt from it. You know, but it's a good thing."

Jason says his days behind bars weren't as bad as Damien's. He had a job and tutored other inmates. And now he's soaking up the everyday life that most people take for granted.

"I'm tryin' to learn the rules of the road so I can learn to drive...Went to the movies the other night with my girlfriend," he said. "I'm livin' a great life, you know. I'm free for the first time ever."

"This is a whole new world," said Damien.

He credits Lorri for keeping him sane all these years. Just days after his release, they came to New York.

"Does it feel overwhelming, how much stuff there is you have to learn?" Moriarty asked

"It is. But it's also fun,' Damien said. "You know, I want to know how to navigate in this world. Whether it's technology or whether it's finding my way up and down the streets of New York City."

Jessie Misskelley is back home with his family - and enrolled in a community college. But all three men are paying a heavy price for their new lives - to the world they are convicted felons.

"We can continue work on this case," Damien told Moriarty, "But we can do it from out here instead of with me sitting in a prison cell."

"You know, the fight's not over with," Jason said. "I talked to my attorney... And everything's a go on continuing this investigation."

So who did kill those three innocent 8-year-old boys? Was it someone they knew? And who was that bloody, muddy man at the Bojangles restaurant who was never found? There was also DNA and a partial fingerprint recovered at the crime scene that are still unidentified.

"Hopefully, some day we will find that smoking gun, that key piece of inculpatory DNA or a deathbed confession or a witness [will] come forward and say, "You know, this is really what happened," said Braga .

Until then, it's an imperfect ending... and something short of justice for everyone.

"You have a tough road ahead of you," Moriarty remarked. "It's not gonna be easy."

"Name one thing in our lives that has been easy," Damien replied.

"Or normal," Lorri said with a laugh. "Everything we've done in our lives together hasn't been easy, but it's worked."

As a condition of the plea, the West Memphis 3 had to agree not to sue the state of Arkansas.

Jessie Misskelley is training to be an auto mechanic.

Damien Echols' autobiography, "Life after Death," is being published in September.