On May 5, 1993, three young boys, Chris Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch, were brutally murdered in the town of West Memphis, Arkansas. Grieving and looking for answers, the town allegedly bypassed evidence pointing at probable suspects. Instead, they prosecuted three teenage boys who were unconventional for the town of West Memphis. The boys, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Miskelly, wore black and listened to heavy metal music. They would later come to be known as the West Memphis Three.
There was what many critics call a coerced confession from Jessie Misskelly, who had a below average IQ. Jessie Miskelly recanted his statement the next day, stating that he had been put under extreme pressure and psychological warfare by the West Memphis police, but by then it was too late and the fate of three young men rested uneasily in the hands of the judicial system. They were convicted of murder in early 94. Jessie Miskelly got life plus 40, Jason Baldwin received life without parole and Damien Echols - at only 18 years of age - was sentenced to death by lethal injection.
Luckily, there were cameras in the courtroom, and they were used for the making of the HBO documentary Paradise Lost. Burk Sauls first saw Paradise Lost in August of 96. He watched it and watched it again. At the end he was always left with the same feeling that many other people were left with: with a lot of empty spaces, unanswered questions and doubts. Many people became angry after watching Paradise Lost. Burk Sauls, Kathy Bakken, and Grove Pashley decided to do something about it. They launched the WM3.org website and the West Memphis Three support group, as well as eventually appearing in the sequel to the first HBO documentary, Paradise Lost 2.
I caught up with Burk to talk about the case, as well as Damien Echols' memoir Almost Home, written on death row. You can buy Almost Home on Amazon.
Lily Suicide: Tell me a little about how you first heard of this case and what your reaction was?
Burk Sauls: I saw the first documentary August of 96. My friend Kathy Bakken was doing the media promotion for the documentary, and she had an advance copy of the film. The first time I watched it, I assumed from the beginning that they were guilty, but once it was over I was left with a lot of empty spaces, unanswered questions and doubts. I looked on the web and found nothing about the case. I went to a few bookstores here in Los Angeles and finally found one somewhat trashy and speculative paperback about the case, read it that day, and I still couldn't figure out WHY Damien, Jason or Jessie had been arrested. Certain things in that book strongly implied a kind of bias, particularly against Damien. The way the authors suggested that his black t-shirts were somehow indicative of a "dark personality" and other wild assumptions like that. I couldn't stop thinking about the film. It was a great piece of documentary filmmaking, but I thought the filmmakers had somehow left out the part of the trials where they presented actual evidence. All I saw was an obviously coerced "confession" and a whole lot of ridiculous hearsay and superstitious nonsense.
I couldn't get the questions out of my head, so I called folks who had been involved with the case, attorneys, investigators and anyone else who would talk with me. I also wrote letters to the prisoners themselves to get an idea of what their side of the story was. Kathy and my friend Grove were very interested, too. The three of us sat around talking about the case for hours it seemed. We got together several times and talked about how we felt these guys had been railroaded, and tried to think of what we could do to find out more and what we could to help these guys. The final scenes in that first film leave you saying, "Wait a minute... WHY were they convicted? Because of Metallica and Stephen King?!"
LS: And from there how did you become more involved in the case?
B S: In October of 96, Kathy, Grove and I took a trip to Arkansas to visit Damien, Jason and Jessie in prison. We also met with Jessies attorney Dan Stidham and Glori Shettles, one of the investigators who worked on the case with Ron Lax. All of them expressed frustration over the verdicts and the whole process. Dan told us that nobody was doing anything because everyone seemed to agree that these three young men were devil worshipping child murderers based entirely on the rumors and hysteria. Nobody seemed interested in the facts or the actual evidence - or the fact that the police did the sloppiest work on a case that should have involved the assistance of the FBI or at least the State. The West Memphis Police refused help and proceeded to focus on their superstitious fantasies about "cults" and scary Satanists with swords and pentagrams. They named Damien Echols as a suspect the moment the bodies were pulled from the water, and the newspapers helped fuel the "Damien Rumors that suddenly appeared when everyone wanted to help them catch the evil Satanists. It was a perfect example of a rumor panic - the type of hysteria that commonly follows any sensational news event. Everyone wants to be involved and they involve themselves by whipping up stories that match the ones that everyone else is telling. In this case, the police were responsible for starting the scary stories flowing, and nobody understood the concept of a false confession, or apparently even the concept of false witness testimony.
LS: So tell me how the WM3 support group was born?
B S: Unfortunately poor people don't have much of a chance in the legal system the way it exists today. If you can't afford to defend yourself against the state prosecutors who have years of experience, unlimited funding, unlimited access to state crime labs, the support of the police department and the judge, then you don't have a chance - especially if you're being represented by a young, appointed defense attorney like Dan Stidham who had zero experience with murder trails. He is the first to admit that he wasn't prepared or equipped to take on the massive job of representing a mentally handicapped teenager in a triple child homicide trial.
When Kathy, Grove and I were in Dan Stidham's conference room in Paragould, Arkansas in October, 1996, he told us that these three young men had no hope of ever having the truth told about them, and therefore no hope of ever seeing justice - he told us that the only real hope they had was the 4 people in that room. Kathy, Grove and I were a little dismayed by that because we're just three people who work in the entertainment industry in Hollywood (what could be worse than THAT for our credibility?!) with no legal experience or law enforcement experience... we're not activists... we're not the type to take on big advocacy projects like this one, but this responsibility landed on our heads at that moment and I think all three of us knew exactly what we had to do. We had to at least TRY to do whatever we could to get this case out there into the public. The documentary was released to theaters around that time, and we actually went to see it at a theater in Arkansas when it came out. Not many people were there. So here we were, feeling like the only three people in the world who believed in Damien, Jason and Jessie.
We started gathering information with the help of Dan and several other people in Arkansas who did amazingly helpful things for us. Arkansas journalist Mara Leveritt was a great source of information, and she wrote several great articles about the case early on. She eventually compiled all of her years of research into a book called "Devil's Knot" which is a great place to find out all the details about the case. We took all this information and made it into a website where we could share it with people and make announcement and connect WM3 supporters with each other via discussion forums and lists. We rallied a bunch of folks to show up with us at Damien's post-trial Rule 37 hearing, and that seems to be when the whole "WM3 Supporters" thing was born. There were a pitiful few of us standing around in the cold outside the courthouse in Jonesboro, Arkansas handing out t- shirts and flyers to anyone who wanted them. The hearing went on for months and each time we went back, there were a few more people there with us, and a few more cameras and newspaper reporters. We met some of the greatest people you can imagine during those early days, and we still meet these impressive people all the time. They're serious and generous and willing to give their sweat and blood to help people who need it. Kathy, Grove and I met a woman here in Los Angeles named Lisa who quickly became an indispensable supporter and friend, and the 4 of us continue to do whatever we can do to keep this case from being swept away or forgotten.
L S: So you were in the sequel documentary to Paradise Lost, how did that come about and what did it feel like to be on the other side of the camera?
B S: It was around the time of Damien's Rule 37 hearing that Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (the HBO filmmakers who had made the first documentary) started shooting the sequel to Paradise Lost. I think they and their producer realized that something was happening and that it might be an interesting thing for people to see. They asked us if we would consent to be followed around and filmed for the new documentary, and at first we were reluctant because we didn't want to take any of the focus away from the important things. We didn't want to be the weirdos from California or these people fighting for some crazy lost cause. We didn't want to create any kind of "fandom" image for Damien, Jason or Jessie, and it was a possibility because in addition to the people who are genuinely interested in the realities and seriousness of this situation there are also those who are there just to get close to the attention and the excitement, people who show up wanting to promote themselves or talk about themselves to the news people.
We had to work pretty hard to distance ourselves from people who only wanted to show off how cool they were for having a drawing that Damien had sent them, or how cool they were for "fighting the power" without knowing any of the facts of the case. Fortunately these opportunistic people were an almost insignificant minority compared to the slowly growing cluster of us sincere people. Kathy, Grove and I decided that we had to be in the film. Nobody else was speaking up for these three young men. There was no real "voice of reason" in the first film from the general public, and we felt like we had to bite the bullet and be that voice of reason for Damien, Jason and Jessie. It was a big responsibility for us, but we took it very seriously and did our best to represent them and our point of view with as much dignity and clarity as we could muster.
We were dead nervous for just about every shot we're in, and once the shooting was finished, we had no idea how it was going to be edited or how (or even IF) we were going to appear in the film. The first time we saw the film, it was nerve-shattering. We were relieved that we didn't appear to be nutcases or misguided morons from Hollywood, and that the filmmakers had allowed us to say our part and represent ourselves with our own words. We still cringe during certain parts, but that's just the way it goes when a film crew follows you around with cameras and microphones for almost an entire year.
Many of the people in that second film are still around, still working and doing everything they can to turn this thing around and to help bring the truth out into the light. In recent years, thanks partly to the involvement of people who are in the public eye, we've got huge numbers of WM3 supporters all over the world who are doing unbelievable amounts of work on benefits and fundraising events, people in other countries who go out of their way to care about three men in Arkansas. It's become something we always hoped for.
LS: I think people might be interested to know what you were like as a teenager?
BS: It's interesting that you ask that because so many people who contact us relate so strongly mostly with Damien and Jason. They were creative kids living in an area where being different wasn't tolerated or accepted as easily as it is in places like New York or Los Angeles. When you're a teenager, things are tougher. It's not as easy to be your own person when you're in that culture. To me, it seems that this is the entire reason that Jason and particularly Damien were singled out. The authorities didn't understand them, so they made the assumption that they were evil.
I was very lucky to have grown up in a very supportive environment at home. That made any bad experiences at school easier to tolerate. My father was an artist and strongly encouraged me to be creative. He taught me that being different - actually just being you without worrying about fitting in - was always better than striving to be another one of the millions. I grew up following that advice, and I guess I'm fortunate that the local law enforcement in Tallahassee, Florida didn't have a superstitious obsession with me or any of my friends when I was a teenager. I'm fortunate that they never got their hands on my sketchbooks or my journals or anything else that I made that might have painted me as "evil" in their eyes. My small gang of friends all loved (and still love) comic books, horror movies, music that was considered "weird" by most of our peers. We were all aspiring artists, musicians and never even tried to fit in with the popular circles. I'm happy to say that I'm still basically the same person today and so are my friends.
LS: What is your relationship with Damien, Jason and Jessie these days? Can you tell us a little about Damiens book?
BS: I speak with Jason, Damien and Jessie pretty regularly, and I'm happy to say that they're still the same good people they've always been. Damien stays busy writing and doing artwork when he can get the materials. He's had poetry published and has written a few books. One of them is called Almost Home and it's a great look into his life before he was arrested. Jason is one of the most ambitious people I know. He's got an impressively positive attitude about just about everything, and is always busy. Jessie is the same gentle, generous man that he's always been, too, and all three of them have made the most of their horrible situation. They haven't allowed the Arkansas Department of Corrections to turn them into convicts or criminals. Despite every misfortune that has fallen on them, they've managed to hang onto their dignity and their optimism. I've been friends with them for over a decade and they continue to impress me.
I think it makes some people feel safe to imagine that the police and the justice system are always fair and righteous. They enjoy the idea that their religious leaders know exactly how to interpret whatever ancient myth their community follows, and they follow it without question because they've never been shown how to look at the world with their own eyes.
LS: I remember reading in Damien's book that he felt like a monster until the documentary came out and then there was all this support. Is it scary to you that had it not been for these documentaries that these three would have been lost in the legal system and most likely Damien would have been executed by now?
BS: That is a hard thing to think about sometimes. I know that not everyone in the prison system is lucky enough to have a series of award-winning documentaries made about their case. My feeling is that this one case should open our eyes to the possibility that there are other cases like it out there. My friends and I have taken this one case on as a personal crusade, and if that impresses anyone out there, then it's our hope that it might inspire others to take a close look at other cases that trouble them. This can't be the only one - and it's no coincidence that this particular case is the one that had the documentaries made about it. If you kick over a rock, there will very likely be bugs under there. Do research and learn as much as you can about the situations that are meaningful to you in some way, and do what you can to help. The documentaries about this case show the obvious: when you look closely at things, they become clearer. When you examine a situation with both of your eyes open, you will see a lot more in them than what you're shown by the sound-bites parsed out by the media and by the law enforcement folks who want you to believe that they are incapable of making mistakes. That's one of the big lessons that I've learned during my involvement with this case. I no longer trust the "news" or any media source without finding out the back-story on my own. Even allegedly trustworthy sources like NPR have let us down. I think that was a transforming experience for me. Even the mighty NPR is capable of lazy, biased reporting that's spun and decorated to be more sensational.
LS: when will the DNA testing finally get done?
BS: That's something I don't know the answer to. The folks working on the case tell us things, but they don't tell us everything. We do know that the attorneys and investigators are very optimistic.
(Updates on the DNA testing can be seen here).
LS: Do you ever lose hope?
BS: Never. There have been many rough times over the years with big disappointments and setbacks. We've encountered people who have done some amazingly despicable things in an effort to discredit the work that WM3 supporters have done but I'm encouraged and optimistic about the West Memphis Three. I feel more optimistic now than I ever have. My biggest hope once Damien, Jason and Jessie are out of prison and living their lives out here with all of us, is that this whole situation will continue to be relevant, and that people will stay awake and keep talking about these kinds of issues. I hope that we'll get a little smarter and not let this happen again. I know that might be asking too much at this particular point in human history. I worry that people feel too powerless. They've seen so much unfairness and tragedy in the world and they feel like there's no way to do anything about it. I have a feeling that if everyone got behind a cause even part-time, a big chunk of those causes would disappear - maybe forever.
There was what many critics call a coerced confession from Jessie Misskelly, who had a below average IQ. Jessie Miskelly recanted his statement the next day, stating that he had been put under extreme pressure and psychological warfare by the West Memphis police, but by then it was too late and the fate of three young men rested uneasily in the hands of the judicial system. They were convicted of murder in early 94. Jessie Miskelly got life plus 40, Jason Baldwin received life without parole and Damien Echols - at only 18 years of age - was sentenced to death by lethal injection.
Luckily, there were cameras in the courtroom, and they were used for the making of the HBO documentary Paradise Lost. Burk Sauls first saw Paradise Lost in August of 96. He watched it and watched it again. At the end he was always left with the same feeling that many other people were left with: with a lot of empty spaces, unanswered questions and doubts. Many people became angry after watching Paradise Lost. Burk Sauls, Kathy Bakken, and Grove Pashley decided to do something about it. They launched the WM3.org website and the West Memphis Three support group, as well as eventually appearing in the sequel to the first HBO documentary, Paradise Lost 2.
I caught up with Burk to talk about the case, as well as Damien Echols' memoir Almost Home, written on death row. You can buy Almost Home on Amazon.
Lily Suicide: Tell me a little about how you first heard of this case and what your reaction was?
Burk Sauls: I saw the first documentary August of 96. My friend Kathy Bakken was doing the media promotion for the documentary, and she had an advance copy of the film. The first time I watched it, I assumed from the beginning that they were guilty, but once it was over I was left with a lot of empty spaces, unanswered questions and doubts. I looked on the web and found nothing about the case. I went to a few bookstores here in Los Angeles and finally found one somewhat trashy and speculative paperback about the case, read it that day, and I still couldn't figure out WHY Damien, Jason or Jessie had been arrested. Certain things in that book strongly implied a kind of bias, particularly against Damien. The way the authors suggested that his black t-shirts were somehow indicative of a "dark personality" and other wild assumptions like that. I couldn't stop thinking about the film. It was a great piece of documentary filmmaking, but I thought the filmmakers had somehow left out the part of the trials where they presented actual evidence. All I saw was an obviously coerced "confession" and a whole lot of ridiculous hearsay and superstitious nonsense.
I couldn't get the questions out of my head, so I called folks who had been involved with the case, attorneys, investigators and anyone else who would talk with me. I also wrote letters to the prisoners themselves to get an idea of what their side of the story was. Kathy and my friend Grove were very interested, too. The three of us sat around talking about the case for hours it seemed. We got together several times and talked about how we felt these guys had been railroaded, and tried to think of what we could do to find out more and what we could to help these guys. The final scenes in that first film leave you saying, "Wait a minute... WHY were they convicted? Because of Metallica and Stephen King?!"
LS: And from there how did you become more involved in the case?
B S: In October of 96, Kathy, Grove and I took a trip to Arkansas to visit Damien, Jason and Jessie in prison. We also met with Jessies attorney Dan Stidham and Glori Shettles, one of the investigators who worked on the case with Ron Lax. All of them expressed frustration over the verdicts and the whole process. Dan told us that nobody was doing anything because everyone seemed to agree that these three young men were devil worshipping child murderers based entirely on the rumors and hysteria. Nobody seemed interested in the facts or the actual evidence - or the fact that the police did the sloppiest work on a case that should have involved the assistance of the FBI or at least the State. The West Memphis Police refused help and proceeded to focus on their superstitious fantasies about "cults" and scary Satanists with swords and pentagrams. They named Damien Echols as a suspect the moment the bodies were pulled from the water, and the newspapers helped fuel the "Damien Rumors that suddenly appeared when everyone wanted to help them catch the evil Satanists. It was a perfect example of a rumor panic - the type of hysteria that commonly follows any sensational news event. Everyone wants to be involved and they involve themselves by whipping up stories that match the ones that everyone else is telling. In this case, the police were responsible for starting the scary stories flowing, and nobody understood the concept of a false confession, or apparently even the concept of false witness testimony.
LS: So tell me how the WM3 support group was born?
B S: Unfortunately poor people don't have much of a chance in the legal system the way it exists today. If you can't afford to defend yourself against the state prosecutors who have years of experience, unlimited funding, unlimited access to state crime labs, the support of the police department and the judge, then you don't have a chance - especially if you're being represented by a young, appointed defense attorney like Dan Stidham who had zero experience with murder trails. He is the first to admit that he wasn't prepared or equipped to take on the massive job of representing a mentally handicapped teenager in a triple child homicide trial.
When Kathy, Grove and I were in Dan Stidham's conference room in Paragould, Arkansas in October, 1996, he told us that these three young men had no hope of ever having the truth told about them, and therefore no hope of ever seeing justice - he told us that the only real hope they had was the 4 people in that room. Kathy, Grove and I were a little dismayed by that because we're just three people who work in the entertainment industry in Hollywood (what could be worse than THAT for our credibility?!) with no legal experience or law enforcement experience... we're not activists... we're not the type to take on big advocacy projects like this one, but this responsibility landed on our heads at that moment and I think all three of us knew exactly what we had to do. We had to at least TRY to do whatever we could to get this case out there into the public. The documentary was released to theaters around that time, and we actually went to see it at a theater in Arkansas when it came out. Not many people were there. So here we were, feeling like the only three people in the world who believed in Damien, Jason and Jessie.
We started gathering information with the help of Dan and several other people in Arkansas who did amazingly helpful things for us. Arkansas journalist Mara Leveritt was a great source of information, and she wrote several great articles about the case early on. She eventually compiled all of her years of research into a book called "Devil's Knot" which is a great place to find out all the details about the case. We took all this information and made it into a website where we could share it with people and make announcement and connect WM3 supporters with each other via discussion forums and lists. We rallied a bunch of folks to show up with us at Damien's post-trial Rule 37 hearing, and that seems to be when the whole "WM3 Supporters" thing was born. There were a pitiful few of us standing around in the cold outside the courthouse in Jonesboro, Arkansas handing out t- shirts and flyers to anyone who wanted them. The hearing went on for months and each time we went back, there were a few more people there with us, and a few more cameras and newspaper reporters. We met some of the greatest people you can imagine during those early days, and we still meet these impressive people all the time. They're serious and generous and willing to give their sweat and blood to help people who need it. Kathy, Grove and I met a woman here in Los Angeles named Lisa who quickly became an indispensable supporter and friend, and the 4 of us continue to do whatever we can do to keep this case from being swept away or forgotten.
L S: So you were in the sequel documentary to Paradise Lost, how did that come about and what did it feel like to be on the other side of the camera?
B S: It was around the time of Damien's Rule 37 hearing that Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (the HBO filmmakers who had made the first documentary) started shooting the sequel to Paradise Lost. I think they and their producer realized that something was happening and that it might be an interesting thing for people to see. They asked us if we would consent to be followed around and filmed for the new documentary, and at first we were reluctant because we didn't want to take any of the focus away from the important things. We didn't want to be the weirdos from California or these people fighting for some crazy lost cause. We didn't want to create any kind of "fandom" image for Damien, Jason or Jessie, and it was a possibility because in addition to the people who are genuinely interested in the realities and seriousness of this situation there are also those who are there just to get close to the attention and the excitement, people who show up wanting to promote themselves or talk about themselves to the news people.
We had to work pretty hard to distance ourselves from people who only wanted to show off how cool they were for having a drawing that Damien had sent them, or how cool they were for "fighting the power" without knowing any of the facts of the case. Fortunately these opportunistic people were an almost insignificant minority compared to the slowly growing cluster of us sincere people. Kathy, Grove and I decided that we had to be in the film. Nobody else was speaking up for these three young men. There was no real "voice of reason" in the first film from the general public, and we felt like we had to bite the bullet and be that voice of reason for Damien, Jason and Jessie. It was a big responsibility for us, but we took it very seriously and did our best to represent them and our point of view with as much dignity and clarity as we could muster.
We were dead nervous for just about every shot we're in, and once the shooting was finished, we had no idea how it was going to be edited or how (or even IF) we were going to appear in the film. The first time we saw the film, it was nerve-shattering. We were relieved that we didn't appear to be nutcases or misguided morons from Hollywood, and that the filmmakers had allowed us to say our part and represent ourselves with our own words. We still cringe during certain parts, but that's just the way it goes when a film crew follows you around with cameras and microphones for almost an entire year.
Many of the people in that second film are still around, still working and doing everything they can to turn this thing around and to help bring the truth out into the light. In recent years, thanks partly to the involvement of people who are in the public eye, we've got huge numbers of WM3 supporters all over the world who are doing unbelievable amounts of work on benefits and fundraising events, people in other countries who go out of their way to care about three men in Arkansas. It's become something we always hoped for.
LS: I think people might be interested to know what you were like as a teenager?
BS: It's interesting that you ask that because so many people who contact us relate so strongly mostly with Damien and Jason. They were creative kids living in an area where being different wasn't tolerated or accepted as easily as it is in places like New York or Los Angeles. When you're a teenager, things are tougher. It's not as easy to be your own person when you're in that culture. To me, it seems that this is the entire reason that Jason and particularly Damien were singled out. The authorities didn't understand them, so they made the assumption that they were evil.
I was very lucky to have grown up in a very supportive environment at home. That made any bad experiences at school easier to tolerate. My father was an artist and strongly encouraged me to be creative. He taught me that being different - actually just being you without worrying about fitting in - was always better than striving to be another one of the millions. I grew up following that advice, and I guess I'm fortunate that the local law enforcement in Tallahassee, Florida didn't have a superstitious obsession with me or any of my friends when I was a teenager. I'm fortunate that they never got their hands on my sketchbooks or my journals or anything else that I made that might have painted me as "evil" in their eyes. My small gang of friends all loved (and still love) comic books, horror movies, music that was considered "weird" by most of our peers. We were all aspiring artists, musicians and never even tried to fit in with the popular circles. I'm happy to say that I'm still basically the same person today and so are my friends.
LS: What is your relationship with Damien, Jason and Jessie these days? Can you tell us a little about Damiens book?
BS: I speak with Jason, Damien and Jessie pretty regularly, and I'm happy to say that they're still the same good people they've always been. Damien stays busy writing and doing artwork when he can get the materials. He's had poetry published and has written a few books. One of them is called Almost Home and it's a great look into his life before he was arrested. Jason is one of the most ambitious people I know. He's got an impressively positive attitude about just about everything, and is always busy. Jessie is the same gentle, generous man that he's always been, too, and all three of them have made the most of their horrible situation. They haven't allowed the Arkansas Department of Corrections to turn them into convicts or criminals. Despite every misfortune that has fallen on them, they've managed to hang onto their dignity and their optimism. I've been friends with them for over a decade and they continue to impress me.
I think it makes some people feel safe to imagine that the police and the justice system are always fair and righteous. They enjoy the idea that their religious leaders know exactly how to interpret whatever ancient myth their community follows, and they follow it without question because they've never been shown how to look at the world with their own eyes.
LS: I remember reading in Damien's book that he felt like a monster until the documentary came out and then there was all this support. Is it scary to you that had it not been for these documentaries that these three would have been lost in the legal system and most likely Damien would have been executed by now?
BS: That is a hard thing to think about sometimes. I know that not everyone in the prison system is lucky enough to have a series of award-winning documentaries made about their case. My feeling is that this one case should open our eyes to the possibility that there are other cases like it out there. My friends and I have taken this one case on as a personal crusade, and if that impresses anyone out there, then it's our hope that it might inspire others to take a close look at other cases that trouble them. This can't be the only one - and it's no coincidence that this particular case is the one that had the documentaries made about it. If you kick over a rock, there will very likely be bugs under there. Do research and learn as much as you can about the situations that are meaningful to you in some way, and do what you can to help. The documentaries about this case show the obvious: when you look closely at things, they become clearer. When you examine a situation with both of your eyes open, you will see a lot more in them than what you're shown by the sound-bites parsed out by the media and by the law enforcement folks who want you to believe that they are incapable of making mistakes. That's one of the big lessons that I've learned during my involvement with this case. I no longer trust the "news" or any media source without finding out the back-story on my own. Even allegedly trustworthy sources like NPR have let us down. I think that was a transforming experience for me. Even the mighty NPR is capable of lazy, biased reporting that's spun and decorated to be more sensational.
LS: when will the DNA testing finally get done?
BS: That's something I don't know the answer to. The folks working on the case tell us things, but they don't tell us everything. We do know that the attorneys and investigators are very optimistic.
(Updates on the DNA testing can be seen here).
LS: Do you ever lose hope?
BS: Never. There have been many rough times over the years with big disappointments and setbacks. We've encountered people who have done some amazingly despicable things in an effort to discredit the work that WM3 supporters have done but I'm encouraged and optimistic about the West Memphis Three. I feel more optimistic now than I ever have. My biggest hope once Damien, Jason and Jessie are out of prison and living their lives out here with all of us, is that this whole situation will continue to be relevant, and that people will stay awake and keep talking about these kinds of issues. I hope that we'll get a little smarter and not let this happen again. I know that might be asking too much at this particular point in human history. I worry that people feel too powerless. They've seen so much unfairness and tragedy in the world and they feel like there's no way to do anything about it. I have a feeling that if everyone got behind a cause even part-time, a big chunk of those causes would disappear - maybe forever.
VIEW 25 of 36 COMMENTS
ninadelamorte:
This just adds to my lack of faith that the human race will ever redeem itself.
fatality:
bump this for relevance. yes!