On May 5, 1993, in West Memphis, Arkansas, three 8-year-old boys were brutally murdered. Three teenagers were convicted for the crime, but the question remains—did they do it? This is the case of the West Memphis 3.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the West Memphis Three case about?
And we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors... On May 5th, 1993, in West Memphis, Arkansas, three eight-year-old boys were brutally murdered. Three teenagers were convicted for the crime, but the question remains, did they do it? This is the case of the West Memphis Three. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors.
Chapter 2: Who are the hosts of The Prosecutors podcast?
I'm Brett, and I'm joined, as always, by my epic co-host, Alice.
Hey, Brett. It's good to join you for what will be an epic series, and I don't mean that in epic like rock on, but literally epic, because this might go on for decades. We may never finish this epic. Okay.
Yeah, so for those of you who are joining us for the first time for this coverage, I do want to note, typically when we do these long series, we start off with a little bit more introduction. So if you just want to dive right in, you might want to skip ahead a few minutes. But this is a case that obviously is huge. It's one of the first true crime cases. It happened.
Chapter 3: Why is the West Memphis Three case significant?
Kicked off true crime for a lot of people. A lot of people who are huge true crime fans now grew up with the Paradise Lost documentaries. And that's how they got into this.
I guess same generation as the victims here. And I remember hearing about Paradise Lost so much so and hearing about how it will continue. scar you really with the opening scene from the very first moments of the documentary will change your life and just completely change your view of the world. I wasn't ready for that.
And because of that, actually, Brett, I avoided this case like the plague for my entire life. So before we researched this case and research of this case was a I don't know, how old is this podcast? That's basically how long we've researched this case. I stayed away from this case until Basically, we committed to doing this.
And I think that's a good thing because I do not I really have not followed this case for decades. This was not something that I knew a lot about. I didn't read about it every time it came up because I knew it was a horrific, horrific murders of these boys. I just I couldn't bring myself to learn about it growing up because they were right about my age all the way until now.
So because of you all, I've done what I didn't want to do, which is to learn about this really tragic case.
And just to give you some idea, the Adnan Syed case with 14 episodes was the longest series we've ever done. The outline in this case is twice as long as the Adnan Syed case. So we're going to be here for a while.
I do want to say, you know, I've thought about this a lot because I know there are some of you who are very excited and some of you who are not excited at all and are very sad that we're going to be covering this until, I don't know, October. But one thing we're going to do is every now and then we're going to have episodes on Wednesday that are unrelated to this. We are not rushing through this.
We're going to take our time. This is going to be a very in-depth review of this case. And so every now and then we're just going to drop random episodes on some other case. So for those of you who don't want to wait or want to wait till the end or don't want to hear this, there will be some breadcrumbs along the way. And then always there's legal briefs so you can listen to that as well.
This is like when you go to a super fancy restaurant and they give you like unrelated palate cleansers. Like my favorite sushi restaurant gave you like sorbet between different meals. That's like what those Wednesday episodes will be. In other words, you're going to get a lot of the prosecutors. I hope you're here for it because I'm here for it, Brett. You know what?
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Chapter 4: What resources are available to understand the West Memphis Three case?
And if you don't know who those people are, we're going to explain in a second. Tons of books on this case, which we have read. Blood of Innocence is a fantastic book that people don't read enough. It's out of print, but you can get a used copy. I advise you do that. Probably the most unbiased view of this case is in that book.
The Devil's Knot, also an excellent book written from the perspective of the West Memphis Three, the convicted. As far as podcasts, everyone has covered this case. I'll just name a few. There are very few pro-guilt podcasts. There's Gary Meese, who also wrote a book called The Case Against the West Memphis Three. That book is great. I would advise you just to read the book.
And then as far as podcast, the most in the middle, I think, is probably True Crime Garage, though they didn't really do a deep dive on the case. And then you have Crime Weekly, who I think could properly be described as in the camp of the West Memphis Three. You're going to understand this as we go through this. This is a very divisive case and there are definitely camps.
And then Bob Ruff, Truth and Justice, has done probably the longest podcast.
podcast on this from the perspective of the convicted and their innocence you can listen to that as well we are going to try and give you an unbiased view of this case which frankly i don't think there has been an unbiased deep dive of this case everybody starts from a position we are not doing that we are going to try and lay this out for you
And I will say this, on episode one of, I don't know, 68 episodes, and I've read through everything, everything. I told Brett this a few weeks ago when we were deciding what day we were going to start recording. I was like, better be soon because I am having dreams about this case every single night. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this case.
And as we start to record, I can truthfully say that I am an absolutely no camp. I am along the ride with all of you as we dive into the trial transcripts and the evidence and talking about it with you, Brett. I know my thinking will develop as it does in most cases, but right now there is truly no camp. And here we go. Let's dive in. Yeah.
The last thing I'll say, this case more than any has all of the original stuff. You can listen to the trials. You can read the trial transcript. There's a website called Callahan. You can read it all. Very well organized. All the original stuff. Great resource.
So as we often do in these long cases, we're going to start off with a synopsis and then we're going to talk about some of the people involved. There's a lot of names. There's a lot of characters. So one of the reasons it's going to take so long to cover this. The other thing we're going to do, we're not going to treat this as if you know this case.
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Chapter 5: Who are the main figures involved in the West Memphis Three case?
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Go to quince.com slash prosecutors for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash prosecutors to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash prosecutors. So as we do in kind of the more complex cases, we go through the players in the case before we go to the timeline.
So I think that's worth diving into here because the many characters that fill up this tragic story, each of them really could have a book written on them. But we will introduce you to them here. You will learn much more about them as we go through this case. And so we will start with the name that has become synonymous really with the West Memphis Three, and that is Damien Echols.
He, at this time, was a teenager with an affinity for black clothes, heavy metal music, and alternative religions. And it's worth noting that West Memphis was a... typical kind of Bible Belt town. And so a lot of people viewed these things as outside of the mainstream or outside of the ordinary.
Damien was on the radar of the police immediately after the bodies of the three young boys were discovered. Damien has struggled with violent tendencies and mental illness, having been in and out of Arkansas health facility in the years leading up to the crime. Damien did his co-defendants no favors, particularly Jason Baldwin. Jason Baldwin is one of Damien Echols' best friends.
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Chapter 6: What were the backgrounds of the West Memphis Three victims?
It is like some bizarre time capsule, not only to a different time, but to a different world. Yeah, weird 90s.
I'm not kidding when I say I avoided Paradise Lost because my heart couldn't handle it until research for this case. And while I was watching it, Brett got, I don't know, no fewer than 300 texts while I watched it as in like, what is happening? Is this for real? Are they acting? Just wait.
Have you gotten to the part where the guy asks one of the mothers if she's thought about killing herself yet? Have you gotten to the part where they're shooting the pumpkins? Have you gotten to the part where they lock the forest on fire?
I mean, they really don't make documentaries like that anymore. I'll say that because everyone it was so today, I think people knew they were being filmed at the time. It was leading up to the trial. Obviously, even at the time before the trial had happened, this was a case that gripped the nation, gripped the world. But they were all very like self-aware they were being filmed.
and seemingly acting for the camera, but not acting for the camera. And I'm not sure I've seen many documentaries like this in terms of the characters within them being so open. I think that's exactly how they were even when the cameras were off.
And what's interesting about it, one thing, if you've seen the staircase, the staircase is similar, but it fails at what it sets out to do. Because initially the staircase wants to have that sort of access with both sides. And initially it gets a little bit of it. If you've seen the staircase in the earliest episodes, there's interaction with the prosecution.
But the prosecution very quickly figured out that the staircase guys weren't on their side. Now, whether you believe this story or not, the HBO documentarians who went down to West Memphis to film this documentary claimed that they went in. I mean, I wouldn't even say they were neutral.
They went in assuming everyone was guilty and they were filming this documentary about this horrible thing that happened, this terrible murder, these murders of these three young boys, this death of innocence type thing, and then eventually came to believe that the West Memphis three were innocent. Whatever the case, they had unprecedented access to both sides.
So you see the prosecutors speaking to the family about the strength of their case, particularly during one pivotal moment. You see the judge is giving interviews, the defense attorneys discussing with their clients various things. You see all that. It's a fascinating case and a fascinating documentary. It's worth watching. As they go on, they get worse, frankly. I mean, the first one is amazing.
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Chapter 7: How were the West Memphis Three case investigators involved?
But this hits very close to home. I have a seven year old. I know a lot of you have children these ages. This is very, very it is still painful for victims.
i think the world when this happened because it was truly watching innocence disappear before our eyes when they were murdered and for me and i've talked about this before my sort of love of true crime came from a love of mysteries and i'd read books about mysteries and watch documentaries and sort of ran out of those and someone suggested paradise lost
So Paradise Lost and In Cold Blood by Truman Capote were sort of my introduction to true crime. And so I watched these documentaries back 10 years ago. And obviously this was shocking, but watching it now and diving into this case now, and we talk about this all the time, but it's just true. Like it really hits different now that I have a little boy and a little girl. It really hits different.
And everything about those opening scenes are just They're tough. And we don't normally give trigger warnings because we figure you're coming to true crime. But this case has a lot of difficult stuff. And we're going to talk about a lot of it. And just the horrific things that were done. These sweet eight year old kids can never be forgotten.
So that was Stevie. Next is Christopher Byers. Chris was the son of Melissa Byers and his stepfather, John Mark Byers. Chris was kind of a hyperactive, rambunctious kid who often broke the rules and drew the wrath of his stepfather, John Mark. His mother often found clothes hidden under his bed caked in mud.
And when his mother would confront him about going to Robin Hood Hills against her wishes, he would deny it, which is why he was hiding his clothes because they would get muddy when he went into the woods.
But she, like I think a lot of mothers, while the woods seemed like an absolute paradise for an eight-year-old boy because of water when it rained and this pipe bridge and being this mysterious forest. Not so exciting for parents. You can't see quite in there. It's thick with brush. There are rumors about people coming off the interstate going in there. It butts up to some low income housing.
They're just things that you can't watch out for. And so understandably, his mom really didn't want him playing there, but he just couldn't stay away. It was too fun. And then the third of the victims is Michael Moore. Now, Michael was the leader of this group of boys. All the boys were in the Cub Scouts together.
But Michael absolutely loved the Scouts so much so that he would wear his uniform whenever he could. He was, in fact, wearing his Scouts uniform the day he died. And those are our three young boys who we will talk more about. But as you can see, they were what you would expect eight-year-old boys to be. They were thick as thieves with each other. They biked. They had fun.
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