I lay on my sofa, feeling restless, when a familiar name caught my eye as I ran through the titles: West of Memphis.
It was a new documentary, the most recent of four about a case that had long haunted me, and haunted much of the country. In 1994, three teenagers in West Memphis, Arkansas, were tried for the murders of three young boys a year prior. Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Jason Baldwin were all convicted, with Echols receiving the death sentence. Misskelley was sentenced to life plus twenty years and Baldwin was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The crime was shocking, gruesome. On May 3, 1993, three eight-year-old boys disappeared. The three friends, Michael Moore, Steve Branch, and Christopher Byers, had last been seen riding their bikes in the neighborhood. But as darkness fell and their parents began to look for them, they were nowhere to be found. Three days later, after an extensive police search, their small bodies were discovered naked, mutilated, and bound in a nearby creek.
At the time, in the early 1990s, the country was gripped by the fear of occultism and satanism. There was no daytime talk show host who had not covered the topic, and across the nation law enforcement agencies were being trained in the rise of crimes that might be tied to occultist rituals, such as human and animal sacrifice. In the eyes of the local police, this terrible tragedy immediately had the hallmarks of ritual or cult murder.
The impetus for the focus on a satanic angle came from the confused statements of a local child during a May 6, 1993, interview. The boy had accompanied his mother, Vicki Hutcheson, to the police station, where she was going to be interviewed in connection with the case. The attention of the police turned from mother to son when he began offering information about the case, saying the victims had been killed by Spanish-speaking satanists, though he could not pick out Echols, Misskelley, or Baldwin from photographs.
Armed with the conviction that this crime was tied to satanism—much like in Adnan’s case where the police were convinced the crime was tied to his religion and culture—the police early on focused in on Echols, who was known to be involved in the occult, kept pentagram-inscripted artifacts, and was also familiar to law enforcement for previous petty crimes. The fact that Echols came from an impoverished family and was diagnosed with severe mental illness, including hallucinations and delusions, which led to months spent earlier in a psychiatric hospital, did not factor into the investigation or mitigate the results of a polygraph that indicated deception.
Misskelley, age sixteen at the time, was questioned exhaustively for nearly twelve hours, though less than two of those hours were actually videotaped by the police. In that time, he confessed to the murders and the involvement of Echols and Baldwin. He would later recant that confession, saying he was exhausted, threatened, and manipulated by the police, and also did not understand the entire interrogation, but the Arkansas Supreme Court would uphold the confession as voluntary, despite the fact that Misskelley had a demonstrated IQ of 72, only three points above the range of mild mental retardation.
From Oprah to Geraldo, the media was breathless and giddy, focused on how occultism led to this tragedy, terrifying the parents of kids who liked heavy metal music and wore smudged black eyeliner to match their brooding dispositions.
A precursor to the media circus that the O. J. Simpson murder trial would become later that year, the West Memphis Three trials were no less of a news frenzy.
But subsequent appeals gave enough time for the release of documentaries in 1996 and 2000, and the publication of the book Devil’s Knot in 2002. The publicity, which cast doubt on the convictions, spurred a national movement to exonerate the three young men.
Over the following decade the case would be publicly dismantled. Hutcheson recanted her testimony, citing police coercion that forced her to lie or face losing custody of her son; juror misconduct came to light; and most compelling, DNA testing on a hair found in the shoelace used to tie up little Stevie Branch’s feet came back negative for all three defendants. Instead, it matched Stevie’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs, whose whereabouts were unaccounted for in the hours the boys went missing.
The defense team strategically made the DNA findings public and laid the groundwork to move for a new trial. After the same trial judge refused to reopen the case, it moved to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Finally, in November 2010 the Arkansas Supreme Court granted all three defendants new trials based on the DNA testing results and juror misconduct. But the State opted not to retry the case, and instead offered Alford pleas to Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley.
In August 2011 the three were released, having accepted the plea—a convoluted legal construction that requires them to accept guilt for the crime, but also maintain their innocence. Three young men lost eighteen years of their lives, but as far as the State is concerned, the case is closed. The investigation into the brutal murder of three little boys will not be reopened, and the culprit will remain free.
In 2012, the documentary West of Memphis was released, chronicling the eighteen-year-long battle of these three young men.
* * *
Over the years, as appeals came and went, every so often I’d float the idea to Adnan of taking the case to a journalist. I pointed out that numerous wrongful convictions were revisited and reopened when public scrutiny came to bear on the State. But time and time again, often after arguing, we made the calculation to wait until the post-conviction, when Asia could be presented along with a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.
That night, when the documentary ended, I made an executive, unilateral decision. I was going to find a journalist to investigate the case. And I wasn’t going to ask anyone’s permission. Adnan’s resignation was increasing and I didn’t want him to make a decision to spare his family public scrutiny at the expense of an independent investigation of the murder.
I rolled off of the sofa and took my place at the laptop on the dining room table. It was very late at night, but this couldn’t wait any longer. I had to move on my impulse immediately and find the right person for the job.
* * *
Imagine a gritty, worn-down crime reporter. A seasoned, cynical, smart-ass skeptic with a face full of worry lines and a trash bin full of liquor bottles. A journalist who cut his or her teeth on the streets of Baltimore, someone who knew all the snitches, the dirty cops, the tough judges. Who had sources and street cred. Who knew how to dig up skeletons buried deep and long ago. Most importantly, a local.
Such a reporter maybe only exists in John Grisham novels, but that’s who I had in mind. It was not remotely close to the one I found.
That night I began looking for a reporter who had actually covered the murder or Adnan’s trial in 1999. The very first person I came across was Sarah Koenig.
Her name wasn’t familiar, but she had written a piece for the Baltimore Sun in June of 2001 on the disbarment of Gutierrez in the face of overwhelming client complaints.
I thought about it for a second. It wasn’t the kind of coverage I was looking for, but if this woman recalled writing about a lawyer who had botched many cases, maybe she’d be interested in one of those cases.
So I crossed my fingers, said a little prayer, and began my Internet hunt, hoping Sarah was still at the Baltimore Sun. She was not.
She was now a producer at This American Life, a radio show that I was vaguely familiar with. I couldn’t remember if I had actually listened to any of their shows, but I knew they played on public radio.
At that point I really hesitated. A radio producer? And not even for local shows? But I went ahead and shot her an e-mail anyway, and within a day I heard back from her.
I was careful to write to Sarah from my New America Foundation e-mail account. After all, I wanted her to know I wasn’t some kook with a conspiracy theory.
After exchanging many e-mails and a couple of phone calls, we met about ten days later in Baltimore. I wanted to show her not just the documents I held but also the area surrounding the case, so we decided to meet at my
little one-room space across the street from Woodlawn High. There was another reason to meet there—to possibly facilitate a meeting between Sarah and Adnan’s family.
That was the tricky part, though. I hadn’t asked Adnan, his attorney, or his family for permission to take the case to the media.
My plan was to forge ahead and ask for forgiveness afterward. I’d get their blessing once I knew Sarah was going to take the story. For now, I had to focus on making my case to Sarah, and I looped in Saad in order to do so.
* * *
Saad and I waited in my little office, where I mostly kept client files of cases I was closing out as I wrapped up my legal practice, visiting a few times a month to check mail and messages.
On my desk was a battered, water-damaged cardboard box. I had kept this box with me for the past fourteen years. In it were two sadly beat-up folders. One contained letters, dozens of letters Adnan had written over the years. The other contained a selection of documents from Adnan’s extensive case files that I thought showed something was deeply wrong with his conviction. I had pulled them years before from the rest of his files, which had been passed around to various appellate lawyers and now rested in the basement of his parents’ home.
The front doorbell played a jingle and then came a tentative “Hello, Rabia?”
I walked out of the room and into the main office reception area to greet Sarah, with Saad close behind me.
I had no idea that Sarah Koenig was a big deal, in a nationally known, award-winning-big-deal kind of way. And nothing about her unassuming appearance, or demeanor, would suggest it either. She was tall and lanky, looking every part the seasoned, pavement-pounding reporter in an informal green cotton blouse, loose woven pants, and a network of black bags slung across her shoulders. Without makeup, her wavy hair on the verge of rebellion, she looked like she was serious about her work without taking herself too seriously. She entered with a broad smile, cautiously friendly, but also slightly awkward as she fumbled with the microphone she held.
I invited her back into my room and we got settled in. She wanted us to start at the beginning. So we did.
I gave her a short summary of the case, of who Adnan was, of our belief in his innocence, and our disbelief in the State’s primary evidence, their dodgy eye witness. Saad chimed in about his friendship with Adnan, their girlfriends and dating habits, and what it was like to be the first-generation kid of immigrant parents. All the while Sarah asked questions and continued taping.
Then I began pulling out the documents, apologizing for their condition. Even some of the individual pages themselves were damaged from having been in the trunk of my car for years.
I showed her a copy of Alonzo Sellers’ polygraph tests, the police report taken from the man who said his daughter was told by Ernest Carter, Jay’s friend, that he had seen a body in the trunk of a car, a vast spreadsheet created to keep track of the details of Jay’s changing police statements, and most importantly, the letters and affidavit from Asia.
After doing my best to convince her that there was a real story here, a wrongful conviction, I broke the news—that I hadn’t yet told (or asked) Adnan about any of this.
But I told her I would, and in the meantime, to help her decide whether to proceed or not, that she should write to Adnan and ask him to add her to his visitor list.
My plan, however, was to get to him before she did. And to do that, I needed his mom on my side.
* * *
I was nervous; I knew this could go badly. Aunty Shamim might be really upset that I betrayed their trust and contacted a journalist without asking permission, and she could refuse to cooperate because she didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to deal with reopening old wounds so publicly.
Either way, I knew I had to be honest about it.
“Adnan never wanted me to go to the media because he thought it would really hurt you. He thinks the community has gone quiet about the issue and if it’s brought back up in the media it will be hard on you and Yusuf. That’s why he’s been hoping that the post-conviction appeal would give him relief and we could avoid the media altogether. But Aunty, the appeal is not going to work.”
Aunty looked confused.
“What do you mean, Adnan doesn’t want me to be hurt?”
I explained it all again and she started crying.
“I don’t care about anything, about the community or what people will say, the only thing that matters is getting him home. Yes, please, let’s do this. I want to talk to the reporter too.”
It took less than five minutes to get her permission. Now it was time to write to Adnan and tell him all about Sarah Koenig.
November 25, 2013
Dear Ms. Koenig,
I hope this finds you well. Thank you for finding the time to respond to my letter. I definitely understand that you must be very busy with your work, and I just want to express how grateful my family and I am for your efforts in trying to shed some new light on my case. Rabia always used to say that a fresh pair of eyes may uncover something that we have overlooked or discover something that may be crucial. And regardless of the outcome, just the fact that you have taken time to read through the voluminous paperwork involved really means the world to us. I don’t think we can thank you enough.
I received your letter on the 19th and I submitted your name (the same day) to be placed on my visiting list. I received the approval today […]
On another note, I really appreciate what you wrote in your letter about deciding to work on the story. I understand that until something that truly exonerates me is uncovered, no one other than me (and the person who really killed Hae) will ever know that I am innocent. And I’m grateful that you wrote that you trust me, and I place that in a very high regard. […]
I’ve been trying to recall any aspects of the case that could use some explanation. I’ve thought of a few things, and if it is alright with you, I wanted to take some time to explain who Jay Wilds was to me, and why I lent him my car that day.
In order to understand my relationship with Jay Wilds, I have to first explain my relationship with Stephanie McPherson (who was Jay’s girlfriend at the time). Stephanie and I met in 6th or 7th grade. We were really sweet on each other, and became good friends. By the end of 8th grade, we had officially became boyfriend and girlfriend. We would hug and kiss in school, write each other love notes etc. I would go to her house and play basketball, and we would make out and stuff in her basement. As you would imagine 2 8th-graders would. This was in 1995.
That summer, we didn’t really see much of each other. She went to some basketball camps, and me and some of my buddies had got some fake I.D.’s. So we started going to clubs, where I was meeting other girls. So we kinda lost touch, until the first day of 9th grade. We talked about our summer vacations, and it was cool. We just decided to be friends, and we were the best of friends up until the day I was arrested. We were kinda more than friends, like she would sit in my lap, and we world sorta make out (I’m talking about in class). We would talk on the phone a lot, and I would still go to her house sometimes. Anyway, in the 9th grade she started dating Jay. Now, I had known Jay in middle school. He was one grade ahead of me. I used to ride bikes and smoke marijuana with some of my friends, and Jay was like a mutual friend. So he wasn’t my friend per se, but he was friends with some of my friends. So that was the extent of our relationship up until he and Stephanie started dating (in the 9th grade—1996).
So, throughout high school, Stephanie and I grew closer. Once we got our driver’s licenses, we would go out together on like, double dates. Sometimes during the evening, usually Jay and I would go smoke some weed. I got to know him a little better, along with Stephanie talking about him to me over the phone.
[…] So now, fast forward to January 13, 1999. That is the day when Hae disappeared. That is also Stephanie’s birthday. About 10am in the morning, I left school that day to go to Jay’s house, to see if he had bought her a birthday present. He said no, so I told hi
m he could drop me off at school and use my car to go to the mall and buy her one. I had already gave her a birthday present in class that morning. I left my cell phone in the car, cause back then you could get suspended from school if you had a beeper or a cell phone on you. So I finished the school day, went to the library after school, and then went to track practice. Afterwards Jay came and picked me up. By this time it was dark, so it had to be around 5:00pm.
Looking back, I always knew that Jay was jealous of my relationship with Stephanie. He would ask me things (when we were smoking weed) like, “Man, would you tell me if you were screwing Steph?” and “She talks to you on the phone more than me.” Particularly around that time period. Stephanie had told me she was gonna break up with Jay when she went off to college. Jay told me, and asked me if I knew about it. I told him that I did, and he wasn’t too happy about that. At our prom (in ’98) I was the prom king and Stephanie was the prom queen. We had a dance together in the middle of everyone, and had our pictures taken for the yearbook. I had bought two copies of the yearbook and gave one to Stephanie, and she told me Jay caught an attitude when she showed it to him.
Prior to my dating Hae, quite a few people in school thought Stephanie and I were involved. Some knew she was dating Jay and still would say that. We had a social studies class each day, and for the first five minutes of class (before the bell rung), she would sit in my lap and we’d be joking and laughing with our friends. We would hug and kiss each other, and in a more-than-friends type of way. This was in my senior year, up until I was arrested. If she didn’t have any money, I would buy her lunch and we’d sit together. Things like that.
My reason for mentioning all this to you, Mrs. Koenig, is that I think it’s pretty relevant. I shared all of this with Ms. Gutierrez, in much more detail. She told me she tried to arrange a meeting with Stephanie and a P.I. but Stephanie’s family (and she) refused to talk. So none of it was mentioned at trial. A few years after I was sentenced, a friend of mine named Krista Meyers (now Krista Remmers) struck up a conversation with Stephanie via e-mail, it was like an online chat, I think. She asked Stephanie why she turned on me and Stephanie’s reply was: He was my best friend, but I never heard from him after he was arrested, so all this stuff must be true.
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