Also by John Douglas
and Mark Olshaker
Mindhunter
Journey Into Darkness
Unabomber
Obsession
The Anatomy of Motive
The Cases That Haunt Us
Broken Wings
LAW & DISORDER
JOHN DOUGLAS
AND
MARK OLSHAKER
KENSINGTON BOOKS
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
To the women and men
who fight for integrity and justice,
regardless of the cost or consequences,
this book is dedicated
with admiration and respect.
Justice is truth in action.
—Benjamin Disraeli
Speech before the House of Commons
February 11, 1851
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
—Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from the Birmingham Jail, 1963
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE - WITCH-HUNTING
MY PERSONAL JOURNEY
CHAPTER 1 - CATCH ME BEFORE I KILL MORE
CHAPTER 2 - UPON FURTHER REVIEW
MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
CHAPTER 3 - “AN INNOCENT MAN IS GOING TO BE MURDERED TONIGHT”
CHAPTER 4 - THE FIRE ON WEST ELEVENTH STREET
CHAPTER 5 - BURNING QUESTIONS
BALANCING THE SCALES
CHAPTER 6 - SUZANNE’S STORY
CHAPTER 7 - THE BODY IN THE PARK
CHAPTER 8 - AN EMPTY SEAT, A FLAG AT HALF-STAFF
CHAPTER 9 - DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE
CHAPTER 10 - ONE INDIVIDUAL STORY
CHAPTER 11 - GOING THE DISTANCE
CHAPTER 12 - “I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THEM”
CHAPTER 13 - WHO SHOULD BE EXECUTED?
PROSECUTION V. PERSECUTION OR GETTING TO THE TRUTH ABOUT RAMSEY
CHAPTER 14 - A CHRISTMAS NIGHTMARE
CHAPTER 15 - WHAT WE KNOW, AND HOW WE KNOW IT
CHAPTER 16 - ENTER LOU SMIT
SATANIC PANIC
CHAPTER 17 - ROBIN HOOD HILLS
CHAPTER 18 - DAMIEN AND JASON
CHAPTER 19 - LOOKING FOR LUCIFER
CHAPTER 20 - STATE V. DAMIEN WAYNE ECHOLS AND CHARLES JASON BALDWIN
CHAPTER 21 - DAMIEN AND LORRI
CHAPTER 22 - FITTING THE PROFILE
CHAPTER 23 - WEST MEMPHIS HEAT
CHAPTER 24 - TWO STEPFATHERS
CHAPTER 25 - ARKANSAS REVISITED
CHAPTER 26 - A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL?
CHAPTER 27 - MEETING MR. ECHOLS
CHAPTER 28 - THE DAY OF THE DEAD
CHAPTER 29 - THE FACTS OF THE CASE
CHAPTER 30 - LEGAL LIMBO
CHAPTER 31 - TRIAL
CHAPTER 32 - APPEAL
CLOSING ARGUMENTS
CHAPTER 33 - IN SUMMATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Copyright Page
PROLOGUE
WITCH-HUNTING
Salem Village and Town, Massachusetts Bay Colony—June 1692
She was different, an outsider. And even though she lived in their community, she was not really one of them. The perfect profile of someone to fear.
She always wore black, and often strange outfits, hardly in keeping with the Puritan and proper way of life. So when Sir William Phips—newly appointed governor of the royal colony of Massachusetts Bay—established a Court of Oyer and Terminer (a tradition of British law from the Anglo-French, “to hear and determine”), it was probably not surprising that sixty-year-old Bridget Bishop should be the first one brought before the bar of justice.
It had been more than five months since January 20, when the Reverend Samuel Parris’s nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and his eleven-year-old niece, Abigail Williams, had been first afflicted at the parsonage in Salem Village. They were seized with spontaneous fits that included the sensation of pinches and sharp needle pricks, tongues drawn from their throats, loud sudden outcries, as well as severe pains of the neck and back. Dr. William Griggs examined them thoroughly, but he could find no cause in nature for the girls’ terrifying symptoms.
The afflictions quickly spread to Ann Putnam, their twelve-year-old friend, and then to Mary Walcott, Ann’s seventeen-year-old friend, and Mercy Lewis, the Putnams’ seventeen-year-old servant. Soon ten girls and young women up to the age of twenty were behaving the same way.
The Harvard-educated Reverend Parris and other prominent village elders drew the most logical conclusion: “The Devil hath been raised among us,” and witchcraft had invaded their well-ordered community. Cotton Mather, the most learned and influential minister in the colony—son of the Reverend Increase Mather, president of Harvard—had warned of this threat in his landmark treatise, Memorable Providences, and had himself examined bewitched children in Boston.
Various scientific methods were employed to confirm the doctor’s diagnosis and the minister’s conviction. Reverend Parris’s neighbor Mary Sibley, whose niece Mary Walcott was one of the afflicted girls, prevailed upon Tituba, Parris’s slave, and Tituba’s husband, John Indian, to bake a witch cake. This well-established method was first used in England. Instead of milk, urine from the girls was mixed with rye meal. When it came out of the oven and cooled, it was fed to a dog. If the dog displayed similar symptoms to the human victims, it was determined they were, indeed, bewitched. Once a suspected witch was identified, the touch test, based on the Cartesian “Doctrine of Effluvia,” could be used. If the suspect touched a victim during a fit and it stopped, that proved it was the suspect who had caused the affliction.
Near the end of February, some of the girls called out the names of three women who were tormenting them. The first was Tituba, who had entertained the girls with her native stories, spells and incantations. The second was Sarah Good, an old homeless beggar who went door-to-door and was known to mutter at those who would not give her alms. The third was Sarah Osborne, a widow who had married an indentured servant, much to the disapproval of town worthies, and who seldom went to church. It was not surprising that these marginal members of the community would consort with the Devil. Warrants were sworn out and the women were arrested on suspicion of witchcraft. Now investigators had solid information and suspects to work with.
On March 1, magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin commenced hearings in the Salem Village meetinghouse, converted for the purpose into a makeshift courtroom. The girls all confirmed that Sarah Good’s spectral shape had attacked them.
Under rigorous questioning, Goodies (for “Goodwives”) Good and Osborne denied being witches. Tituba, in an apparent effort to save herself, confessed to having been enticed by the Devil, but she claimed she was no longer working for him. Following a similar tactic, Good claimed it was actually Osborne who was tormenting the children. But the astute investigators realized that if she knew this, it must mean that she was a witch, too.
The following week, the three suspects were sent to jail in Boston, twenty miles away, and the hearings continued. Each person the girls accused was brought in for examination and most were sent to jail. Soon it was no longer just the marginal characters. Before the month was out, regular churchgoers had been called out, such as Rebecca Nurse.
And still the girls were acting up, meaning the Devil had taken firm hold in and around Salem. The situation had reached crisis proportions. It was as if a deadly disease was rapidly spreading and anyone could be a carrier. No one was beyond suspicion.
Martha Corey v
oiced public skepticism about the girls’ credibility. Soon the girls saw her shape sitting on a beam above them in church, suckling a yellow bird from her hand.
One of the girls, Mary Warren, named her mistress, Elizabeth Proctor. Elizabeth’s husband, John, was a prominent and upstanding farmer. Like Martha Corey, he did not believe in witchcraft. During Elizabeth’s hearing, the girls called out his name; under repeated questioning, Mary asserted he was a wizard.
Outside the meetinghouse, Mary reportedly admitted that John Proctor was not a wizard and suggested that the girls’ actions were a “sport.” Hearing this, some of the other girls accused her of being a witch. She was arrested and, under repeated formal questioning, declared that the Proctors were, in fact, wizard and witch.
By now, the investigation had grown so large that it had to be moved to the larger meetinghouse in Salem Town, eight miles away.
Meanwhile, Sarah Osborne had died in prison and Sarah Good gave birth to a baby, who died in the jail, confirming suspicions of her evil soul.
On May 31, John Alden answered charges before the magistrates. He was sixty years of age, a well-respected sea captain and Indian fighter and son of the celebrated lovers John and Priscilla Alden. He was among those who didn’t believe in witchcraft and had the temerity to suggest that a good beating would cure the girls of their fits. Soon after they named him as the Master Wizard.
The Court of Oyer and Terminer, formed to hear the cases of all those accused, consisted of seven judges, all learned and respectable men. Governor Phips appointed his deputy William Stoughton to preside as chief judge. In consultation, the judges decided on some key rules. Any witch who confessed would not be punished. This would both show mercy and encourage defendants to name the names of others who had practiced the black arts. And Stoughton consulted with the most prominent and expert clergymen throughout Massachusetts Bay before concluding that spectral evidence should be admitted.
Thus was the court prepared for the appearance of its first defendant, Bridget Bishop.
At sixty years of age, Bishop had buried two husbands, the second of whom she had been accused of bewitching before the current panic had broken out. But she had been acquitted on that charge. Now she was married to Edward Bishop, a successful sawmill proprietor.
Five girls had called out her name as one who had dreadfully afflicted them. Samuel Shattuck, who ran a dye house, testified that Goody Bishop brought to him “sundry pieces of lace” that were too small to be used for anything other than a poppet, similar to what we think of as a voodoo doll. And John and William Bly, doing work in her cellar, said they had seen such poppets in the house of this woman who had bewitched their pig to death. Several men testified that Goody Bishop’s spectral shape had appeared in their rooms and attacked them in their sleep.
Throughout the court’s questioning, Bishop continued to deny she was a witch, that she had afflicted the girls, or made them sign the Devil’s book. Her failure to confess pegged her as essentially beyond saving.
By the end of the day, all laws of jurisprudence and procedure having been followed, the jury returned with its verdict, finding Bridget Bishop guilty of all charges of witchcraft.
Eight days later, on June 10, she was taken up to Gallows Hill and hanged.
Five days later, twelve prominent ministers in Massachusetts Bay advised the court by letter that they had had second thoughts about the use of spectral evidence. Cotton Mather was concerned about misinterpretation of the science. Testimony about suspected witches’ shapes appearing before various victims was unreliable, he had concluded, because the Devil could simply take the shape of any individual without that person even being aware of it.
That didn’t stop the proceedings, though. William Beale told an Essex County grand jury that Philip English’s specter came to him and that the next day his son James, who seemed to be recovering from smallpox, died. Fortunately for English, he was able to escape from jail and waited out the panic in New York.
Others weren’t so lucky. Five women, including Rebecca Nurse, went on trial on June 29. Goody Nurse, in her seventies, a mother and grandmother from a prominent farming family, was found not guilty by the jury due to lack of evidence. But when the verdict was read, the afflicted girls in the courtroom went into instant fits. To chief judge Stoughton, this was prima facie evidence of her guilt and he insisted that the jury reverse its verdict.
On July 19, all five women were hanged on Gallows Hill.
By the end of September, nineteen defendants—thirteen women and six men—had been convicted of witchcraft and executed by hanging. George Burroughs’s case was not helped by his failure to have one of his children baptized, clear evidence of his common cause with Satan. He was hanged on August 19, along with John Proctor and three others. As convicted witches and wizards, they were excommunicated from the Church and refused proper burial.
A twentieth individual, Martha Corey’s husband, Giles, was an eighty-year-old farmer who refused to enter a plea, apparently protesting the legitimacy of the entire procedure. The judges ordered that he be taken to a field and have heavy stones piled on his chest until he pled. Every time he was asked, he replied, “More weight!” He died of suffocation without entering a plea.
Meanwhile, the proceedings had created a growing sense of alarm among a progressively more vocal group of critics. Dutch and French Calvinist ministers in New England worried about the validity of the evidence. New York’s chief justice expressed concerns over the quality of justice. Thomas Brattle, a noted Boston mathematician and astronomer and a member of London’s Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge, published a letter critical of the trials that concluded: I am afraid that ages will not wear off that reproach and those stains which these things will leave behind upon our land.
Clearly, Governor Phips was getting nervous. He prevailed upon Cotton Mather to publish Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches, Lately Executed in New-England , which the author hoped would “help very much flatten that fury which we now so much turn upon one another.”
In spite of the executions, the resident evil that had taken hold of Salem Village and its neighboring communities continued. And things were beginning to unravel even further. The girls started accusing anyone they could think of, including Mary Phips, wife of the governor. One even accused Cotton Mather.
When Increase Mather visited the Salem Jail in October, he found that several of those who had confessed wanted to recant their testimony. He had been in England for most of the trials. When he returned, he was alarmed by what he learned. He published his own concerns in his tract Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men, Witchcrafts, Infallible Proofs of Guilt in Such as are Accused with that Crime.
In that treatise Mather wrote his famous formulation: It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned. That sentiment, of course, evolved into the moral underpinning of our modern system of justice.
It is important to note that almost all of the impetus to stop what was going on came from outside the Salem community.
Before the month was out, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered a meeting of ministers to evaluate the current situation. Three days later, Governor Phips dismissed the Court of Oyer and Terminer and all remaining prisoners were released on bond.
Near the end of November, a new Court of Judicature was created to handle the remaining cases, but there were no more convictions or executions. People stopped paying attention to the afflicted girls, they stopped having dramatic fits, and the Salem Witch Trials came to an end. In May of 1693, Governor Phips pardoned all remaining defendants. No one else was executed for witchcraft in the American colonies or the nation that grew out of them.
The cause or causes of the girls’ afflictions remains a topic of debate. Some say it was a misunderstood physical disease, possibly a fungal infection from cereal grains now known as ergot poiso
ning, though this would not explain why the symptoms were confined to girls and young women from ages nine to twenty. It might have begun as two girls just seeking attention, and then later trying to avoid punishment for overstepping their carefully circumscribed social bounds. Or it could have been a case of mass conversion disorder, in which preexisting neurotic conditions were transferred into physical symptoms by several people at once, not as unusual a phenomenon as one might think.
Whatever it started out as, it blossomed into a case of mass hysteria that continued as long as requisite attention was paid.
Reverend Samuel Parris, in whose home the entire affair had begun, was fired from his church and left Salem Village in disgrace.
Deputy Governor William Stoughton, who presided over the trials, firmly believed in witchcraft and bullied the jury into convicting Rebecca Nurse, has both a town in Massachusetts and a building in Harvard Yard named after him.
The great-grandson of investigative magistrate John Hathorne changed the spelling of his last name to dissociate himself from his notorious ancestor. Through his writing, Nathaniel Hawthorne brought fame and honor to the name.
In January 1697, the General Court voted for a fund to make restitution and pay reparations to those accused of witchcraft and the survivors of those who had been executed.
And on August 25, 1706, the now-twenty-six-year-old Ann Putnam who, as a twelve-year-old, had been one of the first accusing girls, petitioned the Salem Village Church for admission, publicly confessing her role in the events of 1692 and begging forgiveness of God and those she had wronged. The congregation voted unanimously to accept her appeal.
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