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True Crime Blueprint - Robin Hood Hills: The West Memphis Three Story · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hi, it's Joe and what you're about to hear is
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a sample of an episode from a new podcast created now.
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  Speaker 1: to the new one. You can find links for it
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  Speaker 1: in the episode notes here, or you can just search
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  Speaker 1: for True Crime Blueprint. I'll be releasing weekly episodes there,
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  Speaker 1: full deep dives, no ten minute restriction. So again, if
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  Speaker 1: you like this new podcast, it's very important that you
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: search for and go to True Crime Blueprint and follow
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: subscribe to the new podcast. Three little boys went into
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the woods one afternoon in West Memphis, Arkansas, and it
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: never came back out. Three teenagers went to prison for it.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Eighteen years later, those teenagers walked free as convicted murderers
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: who pled guilty. They say they didn't do it, and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the DNA in this case may point to someone else entirely.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: This is true Crime Blueprint, all right. Let's start at
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: the very beginning of this, because if you don't understand
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: where this happened and what the place felt like in
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, the rest of the story is going
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: to make almost no sense. West Memphis Arkansas sits right
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: on the western bank of the Mississippi River, staring right
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: across the water at Memphis, Tennessee, and in nineteen ninety
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: three it was a working class Delta town with a
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: poverty rate that was significantly higher than the national average.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: A lot of families were renting, a lot of people
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: were living in trailer parks. The jobs that existed were
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: mostly labor jobs, and the social structure of the community
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: was what i'd call pretty rigid. There was this version
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: of normal that got enforced quietly and consistently, and if
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: you fell outside of it, people noticed and they talked.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Want you to keep that in your mind as we
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: go forward with this. Now, the other thing you need
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to understand is the culture moment, and this is really important.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: In the early nineteen eighties, something started happening across the
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: United States that historians and psychologists now called the Satanic Panic.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Starting roughly around nineteen eighty three and running through most
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: of the nineteen nineties, there was this enormous widespread fear
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: about secret Satanic cults operating in America. Those daytime talk
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: shows like Donahue and even Oprah back then would have
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: these Satanists do on there, and it was a big thing.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: People talked about it all the time. Being a child
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: of the eighties, it was something that I thought was
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: going to be a big deal when I grew up.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: This I'm going to have to deal with Satanists when
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I became a grown up. They're everywhere. The idea was
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: that networks of devil worshipers were hiding in plain sight,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: abusing children, conducting rituals, and that it was everywhere. Like
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I said, daytime talk shows were full of people claiming
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: they'd survive these cults. Books were published, Actual congressional hearings
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: happened over this. It wasn't a fringe thing. It was
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: mainstream American anxiety. And a huge part of this was
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: fueled by the rise of fundamentalist Christianity and American political life.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: There was a very literal belief in the active presence
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: of evil in the world, and that evil had a
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: specific esthetic heavy metal music, black clothing, dungeons and dragons,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: horror movies. If it looked or felt edgy by conservative,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: small town standards, it was getting flagged as a potential
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: gateway to the occult. Now take that cultural moment, drop
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: it into a small economically struggling Delta Town, and then
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: we have three little boys get murdered in a horrific
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: way that no one in the community saw coming. And
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: what do you think happens? People need an explanation, they
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: need it fast, and they need it to make sense.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: And the explanation that presented itself was the one the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: entire culture had spent the last decade building for them.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: That's the environment. Three eight year old little boys. Let
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: me tell you who they were. Steve Branch went by Stevie.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: He was a small kid, blondehaired, lived with his mom,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Pamela Hicks and his stepfather, Terry Hobbs. He was a
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: second grader at Weaver Elementary. His friends say he was
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: funny and a little mischievous, the way that most eight
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: year old boys tend to be. Christopher Byers was the
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: adopted son of John Mark Byers and Melissa Deferr. He
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: was one of those kids who still fully believed in
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny at eight years old.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Just a regular kid in every sense of the word.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Michael Moore was sort of the leader of the three
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: of them, and at least by reputation he was. He
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: loved his Boy Scout uniform so much that he wore
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: on days that there wasn't even a Scout meeting. He
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: didn't have boy Scout things going on, but he loved
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the uniform and loved being a part of the Scout
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: so much that he kept the uniform on. He was
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: just proud of it. His parents, Todd and Dana Moore,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: described him as a gentle kid who cared a lot
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: about doing things the right way. All three were honor students.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: All three had recently made the rank of Wolf in
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: their Cub Scout pack. They were, by every account, good
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: kids from families who loved them. One afternoon on May fifth,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: they were seen riding their bikes together in their West
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Memphis neighborhood. That was the last time any of them
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: were seen alive. The search started that evening. They found
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the bodies the following afternoon, May sixth, in a drainage
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: ditch in a wooded area in the neighborhood kids called
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: robin Hood Hills. A juvenile parole officer named Steve Jones
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: spotted a child's shoe floating in the water. What they
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: found after that was devastating. All three boys had been
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: stripped of their clothing, They were hogtied, their wrists bound
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: to their ankles with their own shoelaces. All three showed
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: signs of severe head trauma. The medical examiner determined that
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: drowning was the actual cause of death, but the injuries
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: before that were extensive and brutal, and Christopher Byers had
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: additional injuries, including what the original autopsy described as genital mutilation,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: which the medical examiner interpreted as having been done with
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a knife. That detail, that one detail, lit a fuse.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Within days of the murder, the chief inspector of the
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: West Memphis Police Department, Gary Gitchell, publicly announced that cult
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: activity was a primary theory in the case, not a
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: lead they were pursuing quietly, a public statement. Once you
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: say that out loud, in this particular town, in this
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: particular moment in American culture, you have fundamentally changed the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: nature of your investigation. Because a search for whoever killed
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: these three boys starts with evidence and builds a case
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: from there. A search for Satanic cults starts with the
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: conclusion already written and works backward to fill in the blanks.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Those are fundamentally different investigations, and the one West Memphis
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: launched was the second kind. There was also a specific
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: person on the county's radar who seemed to fit the
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: profile they were already building. His name was Damian Eccles.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Damien Eckles was eighteen years old in nineteen ninety three.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: He had not had an easy childhood. He was born
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Michael Wayne Hutchinson in December of nineteen seventy four, and
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: his parents divorced when he was eight. He moved around constantly,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: attending eight different schools before he was ten years old.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: He eventually took the last name of his stepfather and
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: became Damian Wayne Eccles. By the time murders happened, he
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: was a high school dropout living in West Memphis, and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Damien Ecchles did not look like everyone else in West Memphis, Arkansas.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: He wore long, black trench coats year round. He listened
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to heavy metal. He had expressed an interest in wicca
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: and ceremonial magic. He wrote brooding poetry and drew what
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: people described as disturbing imagery in his notebooks. Now, to
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: most people listening to this in twenty twenty six, it
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: probably sounds like a typical artsy teenager who was into
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: things his community didn't understand. But in West Memphis nineteen
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: ninety three, after the Satanic panic had been running for
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: a decade, that description made him an immediate suspect in
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the minds of local law enforcement. There was also a
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: history that made him harder to dismiss. Eccles had been
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: hospitalized in nineteen ninety two at Charter Hospital in Little
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Rock for major depression and suicidal ideation. He had a
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: diagnosed non specific psychotic disorder. He'd been on the radar
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: of the county Juvenile Probation officer Jerry Driver, who was
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: personally convinced that a satanic cult was operating in the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: area and that Eccles was its leader. Eccles had reportedly
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: made statements to people about violent and occult subjects, though
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: later accounts suggest that he was at least in part,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: deliberately building a reputation for himself, which is a thing
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: troubled teenagers have done throughout human history. The psychiatric history
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: was real, the instability was real. Whether any of it
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: had anything to do with the murders of those three
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: eight year old boys is a different question. The police
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: also had two other suspects alongside Damien they built a
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: theory around three people, and the other two were sixteen
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: year old Jason Baldwin and seventeen year old Jesse miss
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Kelly Junior. Jason Baldwin was Damien's best friend. Baldwin had
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: a much lower profile around town. My most accounts, he
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: was actually a pretty decent student, not overtly involved in
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: any occult practices, and described by people who knew him
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: as a pretty normal teenager who happened to be close
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: friends with someone unusual. His alibi for the evening of
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: May fifth was that he'd been cutting his uncle's lawn.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Investigators largely set that aside. Jesse miss Kelly Junior was
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: more peripheral connection. He knew Damien and Jason, but wasn't
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: particularly close with either of them. He worked odd jobs,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: did carpentry, and babysat occasionally for a local woman named
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Vicky Hutchinson. He had a measured IQ of seventy two,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: which puts him on the borderline of intellectual disability. He
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: was seventeen. He was eager to please authority figures, and
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: navigating a police interrogation requires a kind of self protective
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: awareness that he just didn't have. He was the one
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: they got to first. On June third, nineteen ninety three,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Jesse Miss Kelly Junior was brought in for questioning. He
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: was there for about twelve hours. His parents weren't present,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: an attorney wasn't present. End of those twelve All right,
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