Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

by Damien Echols

  Next came our weekly visit to the psychiatrist. We’d all sit on the couches and fidget while she called us in one at a time to talk. She had a small, dark, pleasant office filled with bookshelves. This was the doctor in charge of making your diagnosis and deciding what medication you needed. My diagnosis was depression. No shit. My life was hell and showed no signs of improvement, I had a stepfather who was a ten on the asshole scale, I’d spent two or three weeks in jail for reasons I still didn’t understand, I didn’t know where my lover was being held, and I was now locked in a building full of sociopaths, schizophrenics, and other assorted freaks. You bet your ass I was depressed. I’d be more inclined to believe I had a problem if I wasn’t depressed. At any rate, I was prescribed antidepressants, which I was given shortly after I got there.

  Antidepressants were a horrid invention. The only thing I could tell they did was make me so tired I couldn’t think straight. I told one of the nurses that something was wrong because it hurt to open my eyes and I kept falling asleep every time I quit moving. I was told not to worry, this was natural and I’d get used to it. That’s not something you want to hear. Over time I did grow used to it, and in another month I wasn’t even able to tell I’d taken anything.

  After talking to the doctor, we went to the gym for a bit of morning exercise. There was a stationary bike, a punching bag, a rowing machine, and a StairMaster. Everyone spent time on each one. There was also a foosball table and a basketball hoop we could use after lunch.

  Every so often we would go to an arts-and-crafts room to work on individual projects. I made two ceramic unicorns that I took home with me when I left. I’ve no idea what eventually happened to them, but I was proud of them at the time.

  For lunch it was back to the kitchen, then another group session, which was usually greeted with outraged cries of “This is bullshit!” I agreed wholeheartedly but kept my opinion silent. After suffering through this indignity, we were allowed to take a thirty-minute nap.

  In the evening we went outside to a large fenced-in area to walk around and enjoy the air. We talked, looked out into the woods, or bounced tennis balls back and forth. Before bed we were allowed to choose a snack. There were granola bars, chocolate milk, peanut butter and crackers, or a cup of pudding. It wasn’t a bad place to be, as far as psych wards go.

  We were rewarded for good behavior by being taken on field trips. Once, we were all loaded into a long white van with a giant handicap symbol on the side and taken to the circus. It was hard to tell if there were more clowns in the show or in the stands. Another time we were taken swimming, and I never even got in the pool. I stood under an umbrella, dressed head to toe in black, and waited to go back to the hospital. The last and most wretched trip was to a movie theater, where we watched Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act.

  Life went on, with my anxiety continuing to build. After I had been there for about three weeks, I was given a twenty-four-hour pass and my mother, father, and sister came to visit. A therapist met with them privately to describe how and what I’d been doing over the past few weeks, and to tell them that the hospital had deemed me well enough to be discharged. Before leaving us alone, she informed them that they could come to her with any questions they might have. This was the first real chance I’d had to talk to my father in many years. He hadn’t kept in touch with us during his absence, and we discussed both the future and the past.

  He lived in Oregon and had been preparing to come back when my sister contacted him. He had been married several times since he left, and I had an eight-year-old half brother who lived with him. I was amazed to learn that he and my mother were planning to get married again, and as soon as I was out of the hospital we were all moving to Oregon. Ordinarily I would have been thrilled, as this was everything I could possibly have wanted—Jack was gone, my father was back, I was receiving a twenty-four-hour pass to spend the next day with my family, and we were moving up in the world. Now it was a nightmare. I would be leaving Deanna behind. I started to rock gently in my chair as I silently cried. I didn’t make a sound, but the tears came so fast and heavy that I couldn’t see the room. I was looking at the world from behind a waterfall. I was sad and desperate, but something in my guts turned to steel. I knew I would keep my word to her no matter what.

  I barely slept that night: one moment I was excited about the potential adventure ahead, and the next I felt devastated about what I was leaving behind. This was a whole new life. I could leave my past behind like an old skin, something at one time I would have given anything for.

  When morning arrived, I got dressed and packed my things, because I would be staying in a motel that night. I love hotels and motels. There’s something exciting about them, even though you’re only sleeping. I hadn’t had a chance to go to one in many years—not since the last time my mother and father had been married.

  They arrived to pick me up in my father’s Dodge Charger, and I was impressed. Chrome mags, a nice paint job, and a top-of-the-line stereo system. I loved the car immediately. They asked me what I wanted to do, so we went to McDonald’s, where I saw some people I knew. They were in the high school band and were in Little Rock for some sort of competition, and by some amazing coincidence they had wandered into this very McDonald’s. When a girl named Becky asked what I was doing there, I informed her that I was out on a twenty-four-hour pass from the nearby mental institution. After she realized I was serious, she erupted into peals of laughter.

  We got a motel room, and my father and I went down to rent a VCR and some tapes. We got every Steven Seagal film they had, and went back to watch them. He already had all of these movies at home, and they were some of his favorites. I enjoyed myself more that night than I had in a very long time, even though there were things nagging at me. We ordered pizza, watched movies, and talked about what it was like in Oregon. They tried to please me and kept the curtains drawn and the air turned low so that the room was like ice. It was almost as if it were my birthday. They knew I’d been through hell lately and were being extra nice. I fell asleep early, emotionally exhausted.

  The next morning I had a breakfast of doughnuts before heading back to the hospital. Before they left, the doctor told my parents I would be discharged in twenty-four hours and they could pick me up. I never understood the point of having to come back for one more day, but it passed quickly enough. After saying good-bye to the other patients, I was on my way to Oregon.

  Thirteen

  The trip to Oregon took almost a full week, and I enjoyed every moment of it, even with a sadness in my heart that felt like a weight. I was leaving my home behind and I was more than a little scared that I’d never see anyone or anything I knew ever again. I cried so hard I couldn’t see the road before me until we were halfway through Oklahoma. I could tell it made my father nervous by the way he kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. After the first day I had exhausted my grief supply and could cry no more for a while. That’s when it became more fun.

  The trip took so long because we made it in my father’s car while pulling an orange U-Haul trailer. We listened to music all the way, alternating between my father’s collection and mine. The Eagles, Conway Twitty, and Garth Brooks were followed by Ozzy Osbourne, Anthrax, and Metallica, all played at ear-shattering volume. We ate every meal at roadside places and slept every night in cheap motels. This was the life I had loved as a young child, when my mother and father were together and we moved to a new state every month or so.

  My father was in rare form throughout the entire trip, and I laughed at his insanity until I lost my breath. He spent all of one morning pointing out the prairie dogs along the side of the road and around rest stops. With the grave air and facial expression of one imparting divine wisdom, he explained that I should keep my eyes open because if I saw someone run over a prairie dog I would then see all its friends run out and start eating it. The manner in which he relayed this tidbit of knowledge caused me to erupt into uncontrollable laughter. He looked at me for a moment b
efore snickering, then abruptly stopped, and his eyes darted around as if he feared someone might be listening in. This made me laugh even harder because I could tell he had no idea what I found so funny.

  Watching my father interact with restaurant employees was an interesting and humorous experience in itself. It’s hard to put my finger on specific things, but when looking at the overall picture it’s hilarious. He’d order a cup of coffee and then look intently at the waitress as he emphasized the words two and sugars. When she turned to walk away, he’d call out to her with a “Hey!” When she looked back, he’d make direct eye contact while solemnly and slowly holding up two fingers to remind her, “Two.”

  My little brother, Timothy, was a quandary, too. It sounds odd when I say he was just like my father yet completely different, but it’s true. His mannerisms were completely his own, yet everything he did seemed like something my father would do. I lost all contact with him though; when I was arrested, he went to live with his mother, yet I often think of him and wonder what kind of person he turned out to be.

  We arrived in Oregon and moved into a three-bedroom apartment in a town called Aloha. It was a very nice place and I was given the biggest room, though I had nothing to fill it with. Unloading furniture from the trailer, I realized my mother had brought almost none of our personal belongings. I asked her where everything was and she said she’d left it all in Lakeshore. This was almost impossible for me to believe. She didn’t try to sell anything to get more money for the trip, she didn’t even give it to others who might need it—she just abandoned it. The only thing of mine brought along was a single suitcase containing my clothes and music. This blew my mind.

  When I later returned to Arkansas, Jason told me he was walking past one day and noticed everything I owned in one big pile by the curb—television, stereo, baseball bat, antique Japanese rifle, skateboard, electric guitar, and more that had been in the house. I asked him if anyone looked through it and took anything, to which he shook his head and said, “We figured it must not have been any good, or they wouldn’t have thrown it away.” Things we had spent a lifetime collecting were now gone as if they never existed. I would have been more upset if not for the fact that in two days I’d be starting a new job. I figured I’d soon be able to replace everything since I’d be working full-time.

  My father was the manager of a local chain of garages and gas stations, so he gave me a job working for him. I would be bringing home well over four hundred dollars every two weeks, and the job was easy enough. I was assigned to work shifts with an old Vietnam War vet named Dave, in a garage that attracted very few customers. We mostly sat and watched the traffic pass while sipping cold drinks and listening to country music on the radio. Dave was a cynical, cantankerous old bastard, and he became the closest thing to a friend I had in Oregon. Despite our age difference, we got along quite well together. Most of Dave’s vocabulary consisted of swear words, and he fired them like bullets at everyone and everything on earth.

  Now that I had a full-time job, I was no longer in school. I never made the decision to quit; it was more like my parents made it for me. They didn’t actually say, “You’re quitting school,” but they didn’t have to. It was pretty obvious when they enrolled my sister and brother in a new school and didn’t do the same for me. I was resentful but said nothing. At least I was making money now.

  My little brother began developing some odd habits. He would watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 over and over, even though it scared him so bad he couldn’t sleep at night. He mimicked characters from the movie, walking around the house scratching his head with a coat hanger while pretending to eat flakes of dandruff. He had a small plastic sunflower that wore sunglasses and a bow tie, and when placed next to a radio it danced to the beat of the music. He carried it everywhere with him, and as far as I know, it was his only playmate. My sister began to hang out with some pretty shady characters and was always drinking or partying with them. This was the first time in her life she’d experienced any freedom, and she was taking advantage of it. When we were with Jack he’d rarely let her leave the house.

  After we’d been there about a month, I decided the time had come to call Deanna’s house. When her mother answered I had my sister ask for Deanna. The second she was on the line I took the phone and said, “It’s me.” Her voice sounded odd, almost like a little girl, when she asked, “Where are you?” I told her I was in Oregon and asked if there was someone hovering around her, to which she said indeed there was. My heart sang just at hearing her voice, being in contact again. It was more than just her—I was talking to home, to my familiar world. I was on the phone with someone who didn’t sound like they had a Yankee accent. I felt alive again. I felt like myself, and that was a rare thing of late.

  It’s hard to describe what had changed. Ever since I walked through the doors of that mental institution I’d felt like an old man shuffling his feet along the halls of a nursing home. Talking to her sent a wave of energy through me that shook the rust off and I felt ready to get moving again. That all ended in less than sixty seconds. “Do you still want me to come for you?” If she said yes, I would leave right then, even if I had to walk.

  She didn’t say yes, though. What she said was, “I don’t know.” She was hesitant, uncertain. The magick was broken. The last thing she ever said to me was “I have to go now.” She hung up the phone and we have not spoken again to this day.

  Up until that point my life had at least had a purpose, a direction; some part of me still had faith that it would all work out. That was now gone and I was infinitely tired. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall for a very long time, not knowing what else to do.

  My parents were going to visit relatives in California and would be gone for a few days. Nanny was flying out to meet them there because she didn’t think she was strong enough to make the road trip when the rest of us came, and would return to Oregon with them. I chose to stay at home. Once they were gone, I walked to the corner store and bought two of the cheapest bottles of wine they had—Wild Irish Rose. I spent the entire night sitting out on the balcony looking down at the street and drowning my sorrows with the foulest-tasting alcohol ever dreamed of by man. I guess I was at the point most people call “rock bottom.” I was so lonely that I no longer felt like expending the energy necessary to keep living. When the sun began to rise I went to bed and didn’t get up for several days.

  Little did I know, Jerry Driver had been a busy bee in my absence. Deanna’s reluctance came from the fact that Driver had told her parents that I was a satanic monster and the head of a very large cult that was up to all sorts of skulduggery in the area. Driver had no doubt Deanna’s life was in danger as there was no telling what foul plot I had devised to trap her in. He told them he was positive I had been committing sacrifices all over town, that I’d burned down churches (even though no church in the area had burned), and that I had a hand in infinite other untold crimes. He wove a tale in which I was the very incarnation of evil, come to create hell in Arkansas.

  Why did he do this? I don’t know. I didn’t learn all these facts until later, when local teenagers told me he questioned them about me every time they went out into the streets of Lakeshore, burning gas and taxpayers’ dollars as he terrorized teenage boys. He was beyond doubt a very sick individual, and I never have understood why it was me who became his obsession. He once went so far as to make Jason take off his shirt so he could “inspect him for satanic markings.” I was also later told that during the investigation after my arrest in the summer of 1993, he persuaded Deanna’s parents to send her to a “deprogramming center” to be certain she was no longer under the influence of my nefarious spell, and that they should contact him at once if they ever saw or heard from me again. That’s precisely what happened.

  After I got off the phone with Deanna, her parents questioned her about the call and she eventually told them it was me. They called Driver and sent up a red alert. Driver’s reaction was to call the
police in Oregon and tell them that I was on probation in Arkansas for all sorts of satanic crimes and that I should be arrested at once. The police seemed to think it some sort of joke, but when he kept demanding that I be arrested for calling Deanna, they sent someone out to talk to me. I found out about this from Driver himself, who told me in an effort to prove that at any given moment he always knew what I was doing.

  An officer in plain clothes came to our apartment to find out what was going on. He sat at the kitchen table drinking, a cup of coffee as he asked me and my family questions. I told him that I had indeed called Deanna, but that I was no satanic kingpin and had no idea what Driver was raving about. The officer reported that I was breaking no law, didn’t seem to be abnormal, and that the apartment was not the hotbed of satanic activity that Driver seemed to want them to believe. I can only imagine the tantrum Jerry Driver threw when they refused to arrest me.

  Meanwhile I became more lethargic and lackluster by the day. I no longer cared about anything. My mother expressed concern that I would harm myself, though I never seriously considered it. Everything exploded one night over a simple misunderstanding.

  I had some Kahlúa and planned to drink it in milk. I’ve never been a regular drinker of alcohol of any sort, but this stuff had a nice chocolaty taste and helped me sleep. I poured it into the milk and stirred it briskly. My sister went and told my mother that I was in the kitchen “doing something sneaky.” Of course I was being sneaky—I was trying to spend what little money we had on the pint without being caught!

  My mother didn’t bother to come and ask me anything; she went behind my back and as I was walking back to my room I heard her talking very quietly on the phone, so I stopped to listen. She was telling whoever was on the other end that I had been depressed and quiet lately, and she feared that I might commit suicide. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This was the lowest thing anyone had ever done to me in my life. This was a betrayal of epic proportions.