Law & Disorder

by Douglas, John

  About forty-five minutes later, Officer Regina Meek arrived at the scene and drove her scout car into the drive-through lane to inquire. By this time, the man was long gone, so she just took the report and left without going inside.

  When news of the murders came out the next day, Marty King very responsibly thought there could be a connection and called the police twice. Crime scene investigators came over after finishing at the Robin Hood Hills site and gathered evidence from the Bojangles’ ladies’ room. They had not changed their clothing or shoes, which means there was now no way to determine if the two scenes had been cross-contaminated. Also, not knowing his ladies’ room might be an accessory site to a murder investigation, King had routinely ordered the restroom cleaned. Dried blood was still visible on the wall and floor tiles and scrapings were taken. By the time anyone was brought to trial, no one knew what had happened to them, though.

  A Negroid hair was found on the sheet in which Chris Byers’s body had been wrapped when it was transported to the pathology lab. This made the connection to the strange man in the ladies’ room all the more tantalizing.

  At such an early stage of the investigation before any dots had been connected, it would be impossible to know if Mr. Bojangles was a possible killer, a panicked drifter, who might have stumbled upon the scene at the wrong time, or a totally unrelated red herring. But without physical evidence and not even a contemporaneous visual inspection by the responding officer, an important person of interest was lost.

  The police didn’t seem that worked up about it, though. Mainly, they were fixated on Damien Echols and his pal Jason Baldwin. As Jerry Driver had noted almost immediately after the discovery of the crime, Damien seemed to fit their image of what a killer of three young boys would be. With nothing but this hunch, they began closely following Damien, parking in front of his house, harassing him, watching his every move. Damien thought they would eventually tire of this and move on. But they didn’t. Because they were pretty sure they had their motive:

  Satanic-ritual murder.

  CHAPTER 19

  LOOKING FOR LUCIFER

  I didn’t know everything about the case yet, but from the facts and the evidence I’d reviewed, already I knew one thing for certain: The police and the investigators were wrong. This crime had nothing to do with Satanism or any other kind of dark ritual. There were simply no indicators and frankly, the idea was far-fetched to begin with.

  But the police were not alone in their idea about perverse, ritualized murder. They had seen pentagrams and other perceived symbols of Devil worship painted on walls and concrete bridge abutments on the outskirts of town. In fact, around this time, stories of cult-oriented activity had been surfacing all over the country.

  TV talk shows featured so-called cult experts, as well as young people who had been “saved” from damnation and renounced their evil ways. Over and over, the public was given the figure of fifty thousand child abductions per year. While this figure was about right, it gave a completely inaccurate impression, since it mainly referred to abductions by noncustodial parents. The real figure for abductions by strangers was closer to one hundred.

  That didn’t stop local law enforcement agencies in various parts of the country from holding courses on how to deal with this perceived phenomenon, bringing in the experts to tell them how to recognize the beginnings of Satanism and confront it before it got out of hand. Some said it had always been around, but only now were police and academic institutions paying serious attention. Others said it had grown out of the rebellious 1960s, the “anything goes” era during which lawlessness and disrespect for the rules of God and man were accepted as the norm. Now we were paying the social price as the children raised by that disorderly generation had reached their teens.

  What many people didn’t realize or refused to accept was that the preoccupation with Satanism was just like any other social vogue whose currency suddenly reaches critical mass in the public imagination. Within a few years, the next vogue would be recovered memory, in which adolescents or adults (often but not exclusively women) would either spontaneously, or under the guidance of a therapist, “recall” an event or pattern of abuse that had happened to them long ago and accounted for current emotional distress. I am sure that many of these memories were genuine, but a great number—quite possibly a majority or even a vast majority—were not. They were merely influenced by the publicity and scrutiny given to the subject. We are always looking for ways to understand and change ourselves, and if the cause of our unhappiness or discomfort can be shown to have come from outside ourselves, it may be easier to deal with.

  There is also another phenomenon well known to those of us in law enforcement, medicine, and numerous other fields: The more you focus on something, the more of it you will find, if that’s what you’re looking for and want to find. It is like the first-year medical students who spontaneously develop symptoms of whatever disease they happen to be studying that week.

  In the case of organized cult or satanic involvement, we in the FBI looked long and hard for reliable data to back up all the assertions, but we came up pretty empty.

  When Ann and Allen Burgess, Robert Ressler and I were putting together the Crime Classification Manual in the early 1990s, along with a large committee of specific subject experts, we delved deeply into the idea of satanic murder and related violence. But we didn’t find any. When we published the second edition in 2006, there was no change, nor will there be any in the third edition we are currently preparing.

  The closest we could get was a subcategory of Extremist Homicide (itself a subcategory of Personal Cause Homicide) that we classified “Religious Extremist Homicide,” and a subcategory of Group Cause Homicide that we classified “Cult Murder.” Religious homicide, though, is seen when religious extremists kill with the perception that they are defending their religion against attacks from outsiders or nonbelievers. Cult murders were seen in small fringe groups organized around a charismatic leader with weird ideas and virtually never had anything to do with religious ritual or symbology. The illustration we cited in CCM was the killing of some former members who had strayed away from the cult. Another widely known example would be the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles carried out by the Charles Manson “family.”

  In fact, under the Group Cause Homicide section, we felt obliged to insert an explanation:

  The National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime’s definition of true occult/satanic murder is murder committed by two or more individuals who rationally plan the crime and whose primary motivation is to fulfill a prescribed satanic ritual calling for the murder. Committee members raised the question of whether occult/satanic murder, as defined above, truly exists aside from the media hype surrounding this subject.

  The popularity of occultism/Satanism with the mass media has only served to cloud the issue and sometimes interfere with the objective investigation of a crime. The religious beliefs of a law enforcement officer may further complicate the process of objectively investigating an alleged satanic murder.

  We went on to conclude:

  In regard to the occurrence of satanic murder, the NCAVC has attempted to solicit cases from several sources who have made such claims. The analysis of crime scene photos from the few cases the NCVAC did receive failed to support the definition of occult/satanic murder or the defining characteristics of crime scene indicators and forensics derived from satanic crime conference material.

  Many of the cases we looked at, such as Richard Ramirez, “The Night Stalker,” and David Berkowitz, “Son of Sam,” exhibited possible indicators of Satanism. However, we found the primary motive in each case was driven by sex, money or interpersonal conflicts that did not satisfy any logical definition of occultism or Satanism. A pentagram left at a crime scene no more made it a satanic crime than a Bible left at the scene made it Christian. In either case, that was more an indicator of a disorganized offender with an unstable personality.

  It was determined
in every case analyzed that the actual involvement of Satanism was secondary, insignificant or nonexistent. It was also revealed during legal proceedings that it was the defense that attempted to introduce Satanism in an effort to escape criminal responsibility or minimize punishment for their client, rather than the prosecution. It reminded me of the late brilliant comedian Flip Wilson’s character Geraldine who, when confronted, would say, “The Devil made me do it.”

  The Crime Classification Manual was published and widely available in 1992. But it didn’t stop people from believing that the criminal dangers of Satanism were all around them and that everyone was vulnerable, particularly children.

  My Quantico colleague Ken Lanning, mentioned earlier in reference to the Ramsey case, was a CCM contributor and the FBI’s foremost expert on crimes against children. Around the same time the Manual was published, Ken wrote a groundbreaking treatise entitled Investigator’s Guide to Allegations of Ritual Child Abuse, in which he stated that while there had always been belief in a connection between Satanism and crime, it had no basis in fact: In none of the cases of which I am aware has any evidence of a well-organized satanic cult been found. He likened the phenomenon to the consistency of alien abduction stories over the years.

  The West Memphis police were getting enough similar stories that Gary Gitchell and his detectives were confident they were on the right track. A number of strange or unusual witnesses had come forward with information about Damien and his alleged coparticipant.

  The day after the murders, Detective Donald Bray, of the Marion Police Department, a community next to West Memphis, was in the process of administering a polygraph examination to Vicki Hutcheson, a thirty-two-year-old waitress, regarding charges that she had stolen money from her employer. (Don’t be confused by the similarity to Damien’s birth surname, Hutchison.) With her, she had her eight-year-old son, Aaron, who knew the three slain boys. Aaron told Bray he knew where the boys had been killed; and when he correctly identified the area, Bray took notice and called West Memphis PD.

  From then on, though, Aaron’s story started to fall apart. First he said he had seen men dressed up in costumes and speaking Spanish; then later he said he had seen John Mark Byers kill his stepson and the two others. He didn’t pick out either Damien Echols or Jason Baldwin from photo arrays. But once his story leaked out to the press, the satanic angle picked up steam nonetheless.

  Aaron’s failure to supply a consistent and convincing story apparently disappointed his mom, Vicki, who was interested in cashing in on some of the reward money, as well as having police forget about the charges against her. She told them that shortly after the murders, she had had a hunch about who the killers might be, and she had wanted to play detective. She said she would allow police to wire her for an intended conversation with Damien, her primary “suspect.” The only problem was that she really didn’t know Damien, so she asked Aaron’s frequent babysitter, seventeen-year-old Jessie Misskelley Jr., to introduce her. She used the pretext that she wanted to go out with him and was interested in the occult.

  Jessie was a dropout doing roofing and other odd jobs. He was a slow but obliging kid, with a quick smile but a quicker temper; he had an IQ reported to be seventy-two. He was short, which was one of the things that gave him the nickname “Little Jessie.” The other was that his father, a tough and burly auto mechanic, was “Big Jessie.” His mother had abandoned the home when he was young. Jessie had been raised by Big Jessie and a series of stepmothers, older siblings and Big Jessie’s girlfriends. He said he had always had to stand up for himself, and that had also made him tough. Despite the fact that Big Jessie could be rough, he and Little Jessie adored each other. Jessie depended on him for advice and guidance. The other key adult in his life was Shelby Misskelley, Big Jessie’s former wife and the woman who had raised him since he was four.

  Jessie told Vicki he hardly knew Damien himself, but he would try to get him to come to her home.

  Jessie lived near her in a trailer park in Marion. Based on her statement to the police, Jessie would do odd jobs for her and they became friendly. Vicki claimed he told her how strange Damien seemed, so she thought she had a real chance to entrap Damien through Jessie.

  He later explained, “She asked me, was he into witchcraft? I told her, ‘I didn’t really know. I just knowed [sic] he was a weird person.’ ”

  When Vicki asked him about Jason, Jessie told her he had known him since the sixth grade, that he was a nice person and that they’d always gotten along.

  The next time he saw Jason and Damien in the neighborhood, he explained that Vicki wanted to meet them and took them over to her trailer home. Damien later said he didn’t know Jessie well; but since he had asked him to meet Vicki, he saw no reason not to oblige.

  Damien later told us, “I knew who he was. I’d seen him. It was one of those situations where I was like, ‘I don’t even really know this kid. I have no idea who this woman is. What the hell’s going on?’ ”

  Once he had made the introductions, Jessie left, and he reported that within fifteen minutes Damien’s mother, Pamela, came and picked up the two boys. He said he knew nothing about any further relationship.

  Vicki was wired for this encounter, but whether the recording of their conversation was audible or not is in dispute. Police claimed they couldn’t hear anything, while Vicki said she heard the entire playback at WMPD headquarters. Apparently, though, nothing of use came out of it.

  On June 2, she told police that after this first meeting, she had developed an intense but nonsexual relationship with Damien for the sole purpose of getting information from him. She claimed that about two weeks after the murders, she had gone with him and Jessie to a Wiccan “esbat” in Turrell, Arkansas. She explained that the esbat was a pagan ceremony in observance of the full moon. Recall that Jessie said he knew nothing about any contact between Vicki and Damien after the initial meeting, which he certainly would have noticed had he been with them at the esbat. So already we have a conflict of stories.

  Damien quickly came to regret agreeing to meet Vicki, but by then it was too late. “When you see crazy coming down the street, cross to the other side,” he commented. “And see, my problem my whole life is I’d see crazy coming down the street and I’d say, ‘Hey, what’s over there?’ And it was the same with this situation. The Vicki Hutcheson situation comes up, and I see crazy coming, and I say, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ ”

  Though Vicki couldn’t identify anyone else at this esbat or specify exactly where it had taken place, she stated assuredly to investigators that Damien had driven the three of them in his red Ford Fiesta. This should have sent up some red flags, since a cursory investigation would have revealed that Damien did not own or have access to a red Ford Fiesta, or any other car. It was also well known in the neighborhood that he couldn’t drive and didn’t even have a license. Instead, Vicki was never charged with theft from her boss, and her tale fit in quite comfortably with the satanic theory of the case.

  As did a statement by a teenager named William Jones. He told his mother that while drunk, Damien had confessed to the murders, describing how he had raped all three boys and then killed them with a knife. His mother called the police. Detectives videotaped his statement. The pieces were falling into place.

  On June 3, the day after Vicki made her report about the esbat, West Memphis police made the move upon which, in retrospect, the entire case would turn. Jessie was brought to police headquarters and given a polygraph exam by Detective Bill Durham. He was asked whether he knew who had killed the three boys. He answered no. He was asked if he would tell the truth. He answered yes. Then he was told—erroneously—that he had failed.

  This got Jessie confused. Dan Stidham, who would become one of Jessie’s defense attorneys, later said the police told him that “they knew he was lying because his brain was telling them so.” Jessie didn’t understand how he would know something was true, but a machine that could read his brain would tell the examiner somet
hing different.

  As it later became clear, the only question on which he was perceived to dissemble was whether or not he had ever smoked dope. This was only the beginning of what I—and I am far from alone on this—consider to be egregious police behavior.

  Jessie had been approached and agreed to go to the police station with Detective Sergeant Mike Allen with the understanding that he might know something that could lead to his receiving some of the reward money. In his simple reasoning, Jessie didn’t know what he might know that could be valuable; but if the police thought there was something, then maybe he did and he could use the money to help Big Jessie buy a new truck. The police did not ask Big Jessie’s permission, as they should have done in the case of a minor, nor had they secured from Big Jessie a waiver of Miranda rights for his son.

  The police kept Jessie at the blocklike, two-story gray brick department building for about twelve hours, increasingly turning up the pressure to get him to confess to the murders and implicate Damien and Jason. According to Jessie, Gary Gitchell and Bryn Ridge kept hammering on him, saying he must have something to do with the murders because people had told them he did. It was clear—or should have been—that Jessie had no real understanding of what was going on. As the hours dragged on, he only had two goals: to get some of the reward money if he could, and to get the hell out of there and back to the security of his home with Big Jessie.