West Memphis Three: Paradise Lost, Justice Lost, Innocence Lost

[00:00:00] Kyle Risi: This is a story that has outraged people for over 30 years

[00:00:04] on May the fifth, 1993, , three 8-year-old best friends were reported missing in West Memphis, Arkansas.

[00:00:13] Eventually, their bodies were found in what police could only describe as a brutal satanic ritualistic killing.

[00:00:23] Eventually, three teenage boys were subsequently arrested and found guilty of their murders.

[00:00:28] Each one of [00:00:30] those boys was sentenced to life in prison with one of those boys being sentenced to death .

[00:00:34] but get this out of the full 12 hour interrogation. There only exists 43 minutes of footage. And that is because the rest of the time they were basically coaching a confession out of him that lined up with exactly what they believed already happened.

[00:00:52] The state of Arkansas refused flat out to acknowledge any wrongdoing in this case whatsoever, and [00:01:00] because of that refusal, it meant that the real killer was still out there.

[00:01:04] And so one of the people who this really strikes is producer Peter Jackson. He's outraged , and he decides that he's gonna do his own investigation.

[00:01:14] And , Adam, very quickly, a lot of the light Lance firmly on

[00:01:18] Adam Cox: Wow. How can you get away with murder like that?

[00:01:45] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of fascinating things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground and any social gathering.

[00:01:55] Adam Cox: We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, [00:02:00] and the jaw dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

[00:02:02] Kyle Risi: I'm Kyle Reese, your ringmaster for this week's episode.

[00:02:05] Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, the midwife for this week. The animals need a midwife.

[00:02:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Who do you report to?

[00:02:11] Adam Cox: just myself. But, we've got a lot of animals.

[00:02:15] Kyle Risi: Yeah. They're all fornicating.

[00:02:16] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:02:16] Or they get a bit amorous every now and again.

[00:02:19] Kyle Risi: Amorous, what a great word.

[00:02:20] Adam Cox: And of course, they have kids and so I'm there to deliver. I'm not a vet because I dunno anything serious.

[00:02:25] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:02:26] Adam Cox: But I can help deliver animal babies.

[00:02:28] Kyle Risi: And of course, with the surplus of [00:02:30] budget that we have, we absolutely have the resources to raise and take care of all these babies. It's not like to the dumpster. Off you go, Bindi.

[00:02:39] Adam Cox: Yeah. I'm pretty sure I was a crash a while back. I managed the crash.

[00:02:42] Kyle Risi: Okay. So your midwife and managing the crash of all the animals. Wow.

[00:02:46] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:02:46] Kyle Risi: Okay. KPIs

[00:02:48] Adam Cox: don't.

[00:02:49] Kyle Risi: Don't kill the babies.

[00:02:51] Adam Cox: That's pretty much it.

[00:02:54] Kyle Risi: Good, good. Put a pin in there for your performance review, guys.

[00:02:59] If you [00:03:00] are new to the show and you want to support us, then of course the absolute best way to support the show and enjoy exclusive perks is to join us over at Patreon because signing up is free and you'll get access to next week's episode a whole seven days before anyone else.

[00:03:14] Adam Cox: And for as little as $5 a month, you can become a fellow freak of the show, which will unlock our entire back catalog, including all of our classic episodes that you can have a, a listening to.

[00:03:24] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And if you need a real good reason to sign up, remember Certified Freaks and big top [00:03:30] team members get our exclusive compendium key chain so that we can always be there dangling

[00:03:36] Adam Cox: near your crutch. Everywhere you go.

[00:03:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Let let the silence just speak for itself for a second. Let's just think about that.

[00:03:43] Think about it.

[00:03:44] Adam Cox: I can hear the, the sound of the key chain, like

[00:03:49] Kyle Risi: dangling in

[00:03:49] Adam Cox: wind dangling. Yeah. Like wind chimes

[00:03:51] Kyle Risi: hitting against your inner thigh

[00:03:53] Adam Cox: and lastly, guys, please follow us on your favorite app and leave us a review. Your support helps others find us and [00:04:00] keeps these amazing stories coming.

[00:04:01] Kyle Risi: Please, if you haven't left us a review, just leave us a review either on our website or on Apple, on Spotify. Give us a rating, but really give us a reviews

[00:04:11] Adam Cox: and I guess that's enough of today's housekeeping.

[00:04:14] Kyle Risi: It is because Adam, today on the compendium, we are diving in to an assembly of fear that demanded a monster and a system that was willing to manufacture it.

[00:04:27] Adam Cox: Oh, this is, um, well, cryptic, but [00:04:30] also sounds it's kind of scary.

[00:04:31] Kyle Risi: It is quite scary. On a societal level, Adam, today we are diving into a story that has haunted but also outraged people for over 30 years on May the fifth, 1993, Stevie Branch, Chris Byers, and Michael Moore, three 8-year-old best friends were reported missing in West Memphis, Arkansas.

[00:04:53] Eventually, their bodies were found in what police could only describe as a [00:05:00] brutal satanic ritualistic killing.

[00:05:03] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:05:04] Kyle Risi: With very little evidence. The police investigation eventually pinpointed three teenage boys who were subsequently arrested and found guilty of their murders. Each one of those boys was sentenced to life in prison with one of those boys being sentenced to death via lethal injection as his part as the ringleader.

[00:05:24] Adam Cox: How old were these boys?

[00:05:25] Kyle Risi: 17, 18, 19.

[00:05:27] Adam Cox: Okay. So they are adults.

[00:05:29] Kyle Risi: Yes. Some

[00:05:29] Adam Cox: of [00:05:30] them are now,

[00:05:30] Kyle Risi: But the truth was, Adam, they were completely innocent. It was a fact that the world realized very, very quickly, and it is down to the series of haunting documentaries that came out while the trial was going on, and in subsequent years while they were battling to be released from prison, where these documentaries reexamine the evidence.

[00:05:53] But for 18 years, Adam, the cause for the case be reopened just led nowhere.

[00:05:59] The state of [00:06:00] Arkansas refused flat out to acknowledge any wrongdoing in this case whatsoever, which for me is the most haunting aspects of the story, because it meant that the real killers were still out there and Adam. When I say Arkansas, were refusing to acknowledge any wrongdoing.

[00:06:18] They understood defacto that these boys were innocent, and because of that refusal, it meant that this killer was still out there.

[00:06:26] Adam Cox: Why did they refuse that then? They didn't want to like seem like they [00:06:30] got it wrong.

[00:06:30] Kyle Risi: reputational damage, put it that way.

[00:06:33] So today, Adam, I'm gonna tell you about the Robinhood murders and West Memphis three, the boys who were wrongly convicted of their murders.

[00:06:43] Have you heard of the story before?

[00:06:44] Adam Cox: I don't think I have. I've heard of the West three. I think that's one of our top, topics that people have recommended that we do a story on, but I don't think I really knew what it was about.

[00:06:53] Kyle Risi: Yes, you're absolutely right.

[00:06:55] This by far is one of the most highly suggested episodes and [00:07:00] Adam, it's a tricky one because I've kind of neglected doing this story.

[00:07:03] It is deeply complicated riddled with literally tons of twists and turns.

[00:07:09] And it's the reason why it's so difficult to tell the story in a single episode because all the other podcasts out there is always like four parts, five parts, six parts. And I promised myself that I wouldn't be doing this episode unless I could work out a way of doing it in a single episode.

[00:07:23] And that's what we're gonna be doing today.

[00:07:25] Adam Cox: So, so before people write in, you missed out this then the other

[00:07:29] Kyle Risi: Exactly. [00:07:30] It's gonna be fairly focused, but I will tell you a little bit about some of the offshoots and the the side stories that are happening in this.

[00:07:36] Mm-hmm. But to sum up today, I'm gonna be telling you about the murders themselves. How this led to the conviction of the West Memphis three, which takes us into the cultural backdrop of, believe it or not, the Satanic panic that was gripping America ran about this time.

[00:07:52] Adam Cox: Mm. That was back in like the eighties, right?

[00:07:53] Kyle Risi: That's right. Yeah. And this was 1993. So the Satanic panic left a really long shadow that really [00:08:00] affected society even 10 years later.

[00:08:03] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:03] Kyle Risi: It's a factor that will help us explain what drove a jury to find these boys guilty in spite of there been very, very little evidence.

[00:08:11] We'll also look at the Fight for Justice that was led by a world famous producer who set out to reexamine the evidence, speaking to witnesses who were initially discounted by the police at the time.

[00:08:24] This is a story Adam, of a gross miscarriage of Justice that was driven purely by [00:08:30] fear.

[00:08:30] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:08:31] Yeah, I've, I'm really intrigued to find out what happened here. 'cause I literally have no. Dear, so this feels like a good introduction to the story. And then obviously if you wanna dig into the little details, then go off.

[00:08:41] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And it is a really interesting one because it does involve Satanic ritual cults and murders and things like that, which is not something that we hear very often. It does seem to be something that's very focused on a very specific period of time in American history. But it was a real big fear for millions of people across America during this [00:09:00] period of time.

[00:09:00] But I do have to say, before we dive into today's story, this episode does come with a trigger warning because we will of course be talking about the murders of three very young boys, including mentions of their injuries as well as sexual assault.

[00:09:14] Adam Cox: Oh my word.

[00:09:14] Kyle Risi: So if this is something maybe that you would rather skip, we totally understand, or if you've got young kids at home listening with you, maybe it's best to kind of pop your headphones in.

[00:09:24] Adam Cox: Yeah. Put on some bluey.

[00:09:25] Kyle Risi: Put on some bluey. Yeah.

[00:09:26] Adam. The story of the West Memphis three starts with the [00:09:30] murders of best friends, Stevie Branch, Chris Byers, and Michael Moore, who collectively became known as the Robin Hood murders. All three of them were second graders at Weaver Elementary in west Memphis, and by all accounts, they were best friends.

[00:09:43] Stevie Branch was born in November of 1984, and he, Adam, he's an awesome little kid. He's described as looking like Bart Simpson on account of his blonde spiky hair.

[00:09:52] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:52] Kyle Risi: But unlike Bart Simpson, Stevie is incredibly friendly. He's incredibly affectionate. He lives with his younger half-sister, Amanda, [00:10:00] his mum Pam, and their stepfather Terry Hobbs.

[00:10:04] Chris Byers was born in June of 1984. He lives with his mum, Melissa, and his stepfather Mark Byers.

[00:10:11] And at the time Chris is really struggling with hyperactivity disorder and his parents were actually in the process of desperately trying to find him the right medication, especially since this was now starting to affect his behavior at school.

[00:10:22] But other than this, Chris was bright. He was a playful little kid who by all accounts was from a poor, but very happy household.

[00:10:30] The final friend in our little trio is Michael Moore, born in July, 1984. His parents were Dana and Todd Moore and our other three.

[00:10:39] Michael is the leader. The others definitely followed his lead wherever he would go. they were all in the cups together and had just made it as Wolf Scouts. Were you in the scouts?

[00:10:50] Adam Cox: I wasn't in the scouts, no.

[00:10:51] Kyle Risi: No. Oh, you never had rite of passage?

[00:10:54] Adam Cox: Well, I had other rites of passages,

[00:10:56] Kyle Risi: Creepy scout leaders, standing too close. No, only their [00:11:00] coffee breath.

[00:11:00] Adam Cox: Never had that. But, yeah, it sounds like these are just regular kids. Yeah. Little boys.

[00:11:04] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:05] Adam Cox: Eight or nine years old when they're killed. That is awful.

[00:11:08] Kyle Risi: It is awful. And they live in West Memphis, in Arkansas they are from a poor neighborhood. They make do with the very little that they've got.

[00:11:16] Mm-hmm. And so a lot of their adventures stem from just playing outside as kids in the late eighties and early nineties. Did, you know, that was their world.

[00:11:25] And for Michael, being a Wolf scout is something he's very proud of. He's [00:11:30] often seen kind of wearing parts of his uniform when they're out playing.

[00:11:32] And his favorite game to play was pretending to be a police officer. So it gives you a sense of the type little boy that he was as well. Mm-hmm. And what he might even eventually grow up to be.

[00:11:40] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:11:41] Kyle Risi: And as a trio, the three of them, they are inseparable the time, it was early May, summer was just around the corner, and they as a trio, had big plans.

[00:11:50] Mm-hmm. For exploring the town.

[00:11:52] But on May the fifth, 1993, Stevie's mum, Pam went to go pick Stevie up from school. She says that she remembers the stay [00:12:00] vividly because she says Stevie was being unusually affectionate, constantly stopping on the way home to tell her that he loved her.

[00:12:06] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:12:07] Kyle Risi: It's just such a touching detail.

[00:12:08] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:12:09] Kyle Risi: But also she must hold that really sacredly as well, knowing that the day that her son disappeared, at least they got to tell each other that they loved each other.

[00:12:17] Adam Cox: That yeah, that's, that's something I guess. Yeah.

[00:12:20] Kyle Risi: Around 3:00 PM there is a knock at Stevie's door and it's Michael. He's looking for Stevie 'cause he wants to go out and play. The weather had been like really terrible the last few days. The sun had [00:12:30] finally come out and Michael is desperate to show Stevie his brand new bike.

[00:12:33] Stevie, of course, he begs Pam to let him go. It is a firm No, She's rushing to get dinner ready before Terry got home and then she had to head out to work at the local chicken restaurant that she worked at.

[00:12:43] Stevie of course, he doesn't add up and now Michael is chiming into and they're begging please just let us go.

[00:12:48] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:12:49] Kyle Risi: Eventually Pam just gives in

[00:12:51] but she's firm Adam. She's like, you have to be back at four 30 for dinner and so I can get ready to go to work. And so off he goes.

[00:12:59] [00:13:00] 30 minutes later at 3:30 PM there is another knock at the door. This time it's Chris. He's looking for Stevie as well. Pam of course, tells him that he was out with Michael and that he would be back at four 30. So Chris decides to stay. He watches cartoons with Amanda for a little bit. They watch like Muppet babies.

[00:13:15] Adam Cox: Oh yeah.

[00:13:16] Kyle Risi: Do you remember that show? I

[00:13:17] Adam Cox: remember Muppet Babies.

[00:13:18] Yeah.

[00:13:18] Kyle Risi: That lasts like 30 minutes. Chris is like, I'm not waiting till four 30.

[00:13:22] Adam Cox: Yeah, I'm bored.

[00:13:23] Kyle Risi: So Chris goes out to try and find them. Unfortunately he doesn't find them because before he does Chris's father, [00:13:30] mark Bias spots him skateboarding down North 14th Street on his belly.

[00:13:33] Okay. Got a vivid. I

[00:13:35] Adam Cox: remember doing that.

[00:13:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Chris is in big trouble though because he went out playing before he'd finished all of his chores.

[00:13:41] So Mark drags him home. He gives him a little spanking and he's ordered to finish up clean the carport or something.

[00:13:46] So around this time, mark also leaves to go pick up Chris's older brother from the call house where he was testifying as a witness in a car wreck or something.

[00:13:53] But at 4:45 PM we're now back at Stevie's house. He's still not back. And so Stevie is [00:14:00] also in big trouble.

[00:14:01] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:01] Kyle Risi: At this point, there isn't really much that Pam can do about it. He has, of course, now missed dinner and she has to head out to work

[00:14:07] four 5:00 PM So Terry drives Pam to work. He heads back to the house, but again, Stevie is still not home.

[00:14:15] Soon after this, Chris, he finishes his chores and he asks his mom if he can go out playing as well. She agrees, and Chris's hope is of course, that he's gonna manage to link up with Stevie and Michael. He wants to see this goddamn damn bicycle, you know?

[00:14:29] Adam Cox: Yeah. But I [00:14:30] guess he doesn't know where they are at this point. He's just gonna go looking around.

[00:14:33] Kyle Risi: That's right. This actually is the last time any of the parents see any of the boys alive,

[00:14:38] but there are several credible sightings from this point on, just as it was starting to get dark. A guy named Chris War sees two boys on their bikes heading towards Robinhood Hills.

[00:14:47] Robinhood Hills is kind of like the sort of defacto playground where a lot of the local kids hang out. It's on the edge of like a major kind of road. It's not that far from where the boys physically lived.

[00:14:57] And Adam, it has everything. There's a [00:15:00] massive thicket of dense wood that runs along its edges. The kids would often like build tree houses and dens and things like that there, but there's also a drainage ditch, which is filled like tadpoles and frogs.

[00:15:09] So you can imagine as an 8-year-old boy how that is just heaven.

[00:15:13] Adam Cox: Yeah. But this is at seven o'clock at night and I guess they look fine. They're by themselves. Mm-hmm. That they're just cycling. So

[00:15:19] they clearly haven't AB obeyed their parents' orders.

[00:15:21] Kyle Risi: No. But at the same time, it's also quite a normal thing to do.

[00:15:26] Mm-hmm. I mean, I would sometimes come home well after dark.

[00:15:28] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:29] Kyle Risi: And I grew [00:15:30] up in the early nineties as well, so I get it.

[00:15:32] Adam Cox: Okay. But I guess, yeah. What I'm trying to understand at this point in time, it doesn't look suspicious, at least at this seven o'clock,

[00:15:37] Kyle Risi: other than the fact that Stevie was supposed to be home.

[00:15:40] Adam Cox: Yes.

[00:15:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But this Robinhood Hills place where they're heading to is basically the ideal adventure for like kids. That's where they all go.

[00:15:49] We know Chris Walls, a sighting of the boys is credible since he volunteered to take a polygraph test, which indicated that he was telling the truth. Mm-hmm.

[00:15:56] Later that evening at around 9:00 PM Terry goes to pick Pam up as [00:16:00] scheduled.

[00:16:00] Stevie Adam still not come home. And what he does next is very odd. Rather than waiting outside for Pam, as he usually does, he goes inside, he walks straight past Pam and makes a beeline for the payphone.

[00:16:12] Now Pam thinks this is strange, but she doesn't interrupt. Instead she goes out to the car where Amanda is sitting alone and Pam is like, where's Stevie? And Amanda says, we can't find him.

[00:16:21] When Terry comes back to the car. Of course he confirms that Stevie is missing and he says that the call that he was making in the restaurant was to the police.

[00:16:28] Okay. To report her missing. [00:16:30] Now that does seem off to me because he didn't speak to Pam before placing that call. He just walked in, walked straight past, or and called the police.

[00:16:37] Like I would be a little bit annoyed by that. Like, hang on, you just walk straight past me. That's not the first thing you tell me when you walk in.

[00:16:43] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess so. But then is he like. Should he have already called the police, but I guess he's waited.

[00:16:49] He's got there first thing, let me just report this because, but

[00:16:52] Kyle Risi: I would still go like, Hey, I can't find Stevie. Where is he? Should we call the police?

[00:16:56] no. He just goes, takes charge. She doesn't know. She finds out that he's still [00:17:00] missing from her daughter. To me, that's just off.

[00:17:02] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:02] Kyle Risi: Pam says, on reflection though, when Amanda says they couldn't find Stevie, she knew he was dead.

[00:17:07] Adam Cox: Really? Yeah.

[00:17:08] I guess. If she gives him, instructions be home by this point. There's a serious reason why he's not home you would think there's gotta be a really good reason for this.

[00:17:17] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Anyway, Adam, they rush home, they start searching. They link up with Michael and Chris's parents who are also out searching for the boys. At this point, within 30 minutes, there's a search party that is formed with dozens of locals and the police that are all now out there looking [00:17:30] for him.

[00:17:30] Right. But Adam, that night, they do not find the boys.

[00:17:33] The next day, of course, the search resumes. Steve Jones, a former juvenile officer, decides to search the area around Robinhood Hills again at around 1:45 PM.

[00:17:43] As he's looking in the drainage ditch, he sees a black trainer floating in the water.

[00:17:48] He, of course, calls it in, and soon after that, officer Mike Allen shows up and he heads into the water to try and retrieve the trainer.

[00:17:55] As Mike is making his way through the ditch, his leg catches on something underneath the [00:18:00] water. but as he yanks himself free, he realizes it was one of the three boys that now had floated up to the surface of the water.

[00:18:07] Adam Cox: Oh my God.

[00:18:08] Kyle Risi: Over the course of that afternoon, one by one, they find all three of their bodies

[00:18:13] Adam Cox: and they're all in this drainage ditch.

[00:18:15] Kyle Risi: That's right.

[00:18:16] Stevie and Chris, they're found near each other, but further upstream, they find Michael Moore. Now, they were separated. They weren't together. You could argue that they floated down, but they weren't. They were anchored to the bottom of that bed.

[00:18:29] Adam Cox: [00:18:30] Anchored.

[00:18:30] Kyle Risi: Yeah. they'd also all been hogtied using their own shoe laces. Hogtied means arms tied together behind your back, legs tied together, and then tether it together, so they're like. There's

[00:18:41] Adam Cox: no way for them to swim or anything.

[00:18:42] Kyle Risi: However, what's strange about this is the boys had been tied with their left wrist to their left ankle and their right wrist to their right ankle.

[00:18:51] So this is not typical. What this means is that very easy, you can just bring your arms to the front you are then essentially, not hog tied, but you are tied together. [00:19:00] Mm-hmm. But because of the way they were found with their limbs behind their back, it suggested they were tied up in this way after they were murdered, probably in an attempt to try and anchor them under the water.

[00:19:10] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:10] Kyle Risi: But Adam, this was far from the most gruesome part of what they found.

[00:19:14] The boys had also been stripped naked and their clothes were found to deliberately twisted around some sticks and wedged into the creek bed again to prevent them from floating up.

[00:19:23] What was missing was two pairs of the boys' underwear, which to this day have never been found.

[00:19:27] Adam Cox: Oh my word.

[00:19:28] That's disgusting.

[00:19:29] Kyle Risi: [00:19:30] Also, all over their tiny little bodies were these really severe deep cuts and lacerations, particularly on their face. Michael had the fewest injuries. But Chris Byers was in the worst condition, including having been castrated in what the court essentially described as him being degloved

[00:19:47] Adam Cox: God.

[00:19:48] Kyle Risi: So it is absolutely horrific, and there is a really famous documentary, which I did watch, but it doesn't warn you in the first few minutes that they are gonna be [00:20:00] showing you their bodies laid down on the riverbed.

[00:20:03] It is really raw and I think that's quite important because it has the emotional impact that it does, but at the same time, they don't warn you about it.

[00:20:11] Adam Cox: I mean, you, you put a trigger warning, but even I was not prepared for what you've just said.

[00:20:15] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I'm sorry.

[00:20:16] But Adam, very quickly, based on how they were found and the extent of their injuries, the investigation pushed towards a very specific narrative that Stevie, Chris and Michael had been killed as part of a satanic ritualistic murder.

[00:20:29] Adam Cox: I [00:20:30] mean, I guess if that's in the zeitgeist, that kind of mindset of satanic cults and stuff like that.

[00:20:36] the injuries and the way that they've been found you would think that. I think.

[00:20:41] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Yeah. Like to us today, that's an extraordinarily leap to make, But at the time it was very plausible, especially when you understand the cultural backdrop in which these murders took place.

[00:20:51] And that's because America was emerging from the shadow that was left behind from what we know today is the Satanic panic. What do you remember of the Satanic panic?

[00:20:59] Adam Cox: [00:21:00] Um,

[00:21:01] Kyle Risi: it is not a lot. I mean, I had to go and refresh my memory,

[00:21:04] Adam Cox: I mean. I wanna say we've done so many episodes, Kyle.

[00:21:07] Kyle Risi: Oh, you don't. Don't worry, Adam. I got you. I got you. Boy, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about it because a lot of people think that the Satanic panic began with the McMartin preschool sexual abuse case in 1983.

[00:21:19] Adam Cox: There was a guy that was wrongly convicted, right?

[00:21:21] Kyle Risi: Correct.

[00:21:21] Adam Cox: Yes,

[00:21:22] Kyle Risi: and I'll explain that in just a second.

[00:21:23] But McMartin wasn't actually the beginning. It was actually a flashpoint after roughly 20 years of cultural [00:21:30] fear, rumors, and moral kind of campaigning bubbling up under the surface.

[00:21:34] It kind of started in the late 1960s and the seventies, when America becomes completely gripped by all sorts of kind of occult flavored entertainment.

[00:21:42] You have films like The Exorcist exploding into the Mainstream. This inspires an appetite for all sorts of occult related media and news.

[00:21:50] People all over are gripped by real life horror stories like Charles Manson and the Family. You also have serial killers like the Zodiac Killer with those [00:22:00] overt satanical overtones.

[00:22:01] These are the stories that really gripped America when they became news, right?

[00:22:05] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:06] Kyle Risi: If it had been any other time, I wonder whether or not they had been as big a sensation as they were at the time.

[00:22:12] This ends up being something evangelical movements really lean into, they're basically like, yep. Not only is this real, it's also very organized and also. It's coming for your kids.

[00:22:24] What is also happening during this period is massive reforms in how states start to report [00:22:30] and handle child sexual abuse cases or any abuse cases for that matter.

[00:22:33] The key change is that teachers, doctors, and social workers, they are now all mandated to report even a suspicion of a child being harmed.

[00:22:41] Suddenly, as you can expect, there is a flood of allegations that authorities feel that they have to investigate because it's now mandated by law.

[00:22:49] The problem is that people leading these investigations, they're not trained or equipped in how to deal with these, especially when it comes to interviewing these kids and separating the fact from the fiction.

[00:22:58] ' cause the reality is, as [00:23:00] horrific as a sexual abuse claim is and is absolutely the correct way to proceed forward, it's taken every single allegation seriously.

[00:23:08] You need to be trained in understanding what is a child's imagination versus what actually happened and apply critical thinking to those.

[00:23:15] Mm-hmm.

[00:23:15] That does not happen. You end up with adults fears of the occult that's been bubbling up for the last 10 years, shaping the way that they question these kids.

[00:23:23] So there's a lot of leading questions, but also the adults, they wanna be gentle, so they make these interviews fun. there are [00:23:30] puppets. The kids get biscuits. There's lots of positive reinforcement, which the kids like. They don't want that to end, so they tell the adult exactly what they want to hear.

[00:23:39] Adam Cox: Sounds like play school.

[00:23:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. it's mental. There are a lot of adult fears of the occult that have been projected onto these kids who end up just responding in kind. So you can see how this is kind of slowly marching towards something stupid.

[00:23:53] Adam Cox: Yeah. This is jogging my memory now about the episode.

[00:23:56] Kyle Risi: Yes. And what you end up with are stories of satanists [00:24:00] molesting children all over the country.

[00:24:01] Also, around this time, the reliance on daycare centers all of a sudden skyrockets. And this is because more and more moms are being pushed into the workforce because of rising inflation and the, the rising costs of living across the country during the seventies.

[00:24:13] And many of these moms, they don't want to leave their kids in the trust of strangers. And so you can understand how this would also elevate your anxiety.

[00:24:20] Mm-hmm. This anxiety explodes. In 1980, a book called Michelle Remembers is released. Do you remember this bit of the episode?

[00:24:28] Adam Cox: Um, I'm sure you're [00:24:30] gonna remind me. Should have done a better episode,

[00:24:32] Kyle Risi: Carl. You should have, yeah. Basically it's about a woman who undergoes recovered memory therapy. And she discovers that throughout her life she'd been sexually abused, often ritualistically by her father and all of his friends.

[00:24:43] Of course, none of that ends up being true. But now you have already anxious parents believing that if someone was molesting their kids, their kids themselves might not even know about it.

[00:24:55] Adam Cox: Yes. Yeah.

[00:24:56] Kyle Risi: And it creates a psychological trap, which detonates across [00:25:00] America, with what happens at McMartin Preschool in 1983.

[00:25:04] And so you can see the Satanic panic is very much always accredited to what happened at this preschool. But the reality is that wasn't the start. It was everything that bubbled up for 20 years before this moment.

[00:25:16] Adam Cox: Okay. And then you've just got this kind of hysteria of people acting on false information, which is just making, it's kind of exasperating this kind of fear.

[00:25:25] Is there any truth to it? Of course.

[00:25:27] Kyle Risi: I cannot speak for whether or not there were any [00:25:30] satanic ritual killings of kids. But it wasn't at the level,

[00:25:33] Adam Cox: it wasn't a panic.

[00:25:34] Kyle Risi: but it became a panic.

[00:25:35] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:25:35] Kyle Risi: Now, to summarize what happened with the Mac Martin preschool sexual abuse case, it all starts with a very stressed mother called Judy Johnson.

[00:25:43] Her marriage is on the rocks. She's suffering from mental health issues. She has a very young child that has to care for all while also caring for her older son who has a terminal brain tumor. I sympathize with her. Yeah. It's not an easy time that she's going through.

[00:25:56] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:56] Kyle Risi: One day, her youngest son, Matthew, complains that he has a, an itchy [00:26:00] anus. Judy checks it and then she proceeds to check it every day. She's constantly prodding at it. She's making sure it's clean, but she's using a makeup wipe to make sure it's clean. So unbeknownst to her, the bitch is making it worse.

[00:26:13] Adam Cox: I see. Yeah.

[00:26:14] Kyle Risi: So, of course it doesn't get better. And so Judy takes Matthew to his doctor, who explains to Judy that he is going to take Matthew's temperature rectally.

[00:26:23] He then turns to Matthew and says, Matthew, I'm gonna take your temperature. Okay. To which Matthew replies, that's what Ray [00:26:30] does. Ray is his preschool teacher.

[00:26:32] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:26:33] Kyle Risi: But what Matthew means is that Ray take his temperature with a regular thermometer in his mouth, not up his bottom.

[00:26:39] Adam Cox: Yes. Yeah.

[00:26:41] Kyle Risi: But Judy, of course, she hears this differently and she thinks the reason Matthew Zeus is inflamed is because Ray has been molesting him.

[00:26:48] And so Adam, long story short, go listen to the episode. What happens is the police get involved, parents all over the country. Start panicking. Kids are dragged in droves to be interviewed, and [00:27:00] again, all using puppets. And there's cookies and there's loads of positive reinforcements.

[00:27:03] And the kids are like, yay. Again and again. And what involves Adam are dozens of accounts of these kids that have been sexually abused by a satanic cabal made up of their teachers using a network of secret tunnels underneath their school.

[00:27:17] Adam Cox: And obviously this was not true.

[00:27:19] Kyle Risi: No, no. Adam, there are vivid accounts of satanic rituals, animals and baby sacrifices, descriptions of mutilations, which as if by magic would be fully healed when it came to pickup [00:27:30] time at the end of the day.

[00:27:31] And kids are like, oh my God, I can't believe someone pissed your ears. And they're like, yeah, like with a stapler gun. And they're like, oh my God. But the kids' ears are fine.

[00:27:39] Adam Cox: Yeah, because the little wolverines running around.

[00:27:42] Kyle Risi: There are also accounts of being transported to these secret ranches by being flushed down toilets.

[00:27:48] Adam Cox: What?

[00:27:50] Kyle Risi: It's crazy Some of them say they're being taken to the Secret Ranch in a balloon where they saw witches flying on brooms and babies being sacrificed.

[00:27:57] Adam, it is an absolute fever [00:28:00] Dream it, it is nuts.

[00:28:00] Adam Cox: It sounds like they've gone to a, like a theme park.

[00:28:03] Kyle Risi: Yes, of course.

[00:28:04] These teachers at McMartin preschool their entire lives and Ations are completely destroyed. They are put through one of the longest criminal trials in American history. I think it's like something like 10 years.

[00:28:14] And in the end, nobody is convicted on the grounds of there being zero evidence.

[00:28:22] Adam Cox: I mean, in this situation. Yeah. But I can't believe that took 10 years.

[00:28:26] Kyle Risi: Yeah. the logic and the critical thinking only kicked in [00:28:30] in the 11th hour basically.

[00:28:32] Adam Cox: And hang on a minute. Has anyone thought about if the kids lied?

[00:28:38] Kyle Risi: Yes. Yeah. But remember in the 1970s, they were now mandated to take all even suspicions of sexual abuse very seriously. And kids are believed,

[00:28:45] Adam Cox: and that's fair enough.

[00:28:46] Kyle Risi: Yes, there's a place for it. But also they're missing that very important bit of, let's just double check a thing.

[00:28:51] Adam Cox: Let's not incentivize them with cookies.

[00:28:53] Kyle Risi: And recognize that kids are imaginative by design.

[00:28:57] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:28:58] Kyle Risi: But Adam, none of that mattered. The [00:29:00] coverage of the Mac Martin preschool case had already instilled this common belief. That America was overrun with Satanists preying on kids.

[00:29:07] And so by 1993 in the fallout of the Knight Martin preschool case and everything that came before it, people across America are primed to accept this ready-made explanation that these three boys at Robinhood Hills were murdered as part of some Satanic ritual.

[00:29:24] Adam Cox: I mean, what you had before was obviously a misunderstanding. And then this kind of, I dunno, it just went a [00:29:30] bit hysterical

[00:29:30] but here, fair enough, that wasn't true. But let's just say like if the Satanic panic was a thing, then you've got these three boys that have been found naked, tied up with some serious, horrific injuries.

[00:29:43] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:43] Adam Cox: That would make me believe that the Satanic panic was a thing.

[00:29:46] Kyle Risi: But this was 10 years later. Why did they not realize that actually? Well, we got so much wrong with Mac Martin preschool case. In fact, no one was convicted. But, uh, there's, there is something to be said for [00:30:00] getting information out there.

[00:30:01] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:01] Kyle Risi: Even if it's wrong and not worrying about the retraction, because it doesn't matter. The retraction is always on page 5, 6, 7.

[00:30:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. People forget about that.

[00:30:10] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Do you know what I mean?

[00:30:12] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:13] Kyle Risi: But also in West Memphis, the reason why they were more willing to accept this explanation was that this was a small, poor town, firmly in the heart of the Bible Belt

[00:30:23] so with this notion that this was the work of a Satanic cult back in West Memphis, Jerry Driver, a juvenile probation [00:30:30] officer, already had his own suspect who he believed did this.

[00:30:34] He believed it was a local teenager named Damien Eckles. And Jerry's reasons were basically the warning signs that the Satanic panic had told people to look out for.

[00:30:42] Damien wore all black.

[00:30:44] Adam Cox: Oh, right, okay.

[00:30:44] Kyle Risi: He painted his nails. He listened to Metallica, maybe played a couple games of Dungeons and Dragons, basically.

[00:30:50] That was it.

[00:30:51] Adam Cox: It's a very big sweeping stereotype there.

[00:30:54] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Oh, one time Jerry sees him walking with a big stick that he picks up in the woods, and Jerry claimed that was his [00:31:00] safe tanic stuff.

[00:31:01] Adam Cox: That's him hunting.

[00:31:02] Kyle Risi: it's not just this though, like as a juvenile operation officer, Jerry had plenty of run-ins with Damien over the years as well.

[00:31:07] In May 9th, 92, Damien is 17. He's dating a 15-year-old. Their parents aren't happy about it and start talking about running away together.

[00:31:15] One night they get busted breaking into like an abandoned trader like West Memphis. A lot of people are living in a lot of traders when they're found, they're found in the closet in a very compromising position. Damien is of course, charged with burglary and is charged with sexual [00:31:30] misconduct.

[00:31:30] Which honestly bogs my mind because remember, she's a under age two.

[00:31:32] Adam Cox: Okay. So he is a bit of a tearaway Damien the sense juvie, this is where his mental health really takes a turn.

[00:31:38] Kyle Risi: After threatening suicide. He ends up being moved to a mental facility. He sort of recovers, he returns back to life in Arkansas.

[00:31:45] But Jerry has his iron infirmity and he's held bent on getting Damien for anything that he can.

[00:31:50] Mm-hmm. So when Damien violates his parole by contacting his ex-girlfriend, Jerry is the one who pushes to get him sent back to juvie. And Damien, like I said, he does not do himself any [00:32:00] favors. He's not a bad kid. He's more misunderstood, but he really taunts Jerry, like he deliberately goes outta his way to make his life miserable.

[00:32:08] It results in Damien being at the top of Jerry's list whenever a crime happens or they need a suspect.

[00:32:15] Even if it doesn't make any sense. For instance, there is a girl she's murdered a hundred miles away with no connection to West Memphis at all. Jerry brings Damien in for questioning another time a bunch of equipment goes missing from a train that doesn't even stop in West [00:32:30] Memphis.

[00:32:30] Again, it's gotta be Damien. It's gotta be Damien. He's just relentless. One time Jerry hears a rumor that Damien drinks blood and he asks Damien if it's true.

[00:32:39] Adam Cox: Would you really believe that? I don't know, but I guess this police guy, he's so, he believes Satanic.

[00:32:45] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:45] Adam Cox: Panic essentially. And so he's just looking for any kind of basically anything that would link to that.

[00:32:50] Kyle Risi: Sure. But what he also needs at this moment in time is for Damien to say, no, I don't drink blood. But what Damien does is he tells him that he belongs to a cult.

[00:32:58] Adam Cox: Okay. He's not helping [00:33:00] himself, but fair enough. He is just being a teenager.

[00:33:02] Kyle Risi: Exactly. He's basically leaning in very heavily into what Jerry already suspects about him.

[00:33:07] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:08] Kyle Risi: And it's for no other reason than Damien just being an angsty teenager who really wants to piss this guy off because he keeps coming after him.

[00:33:13] Right. Yeah. Unjustifiably.

[00:33:15] the day after, the boys are found like clockwork, Jerry brings Damien in for questioning. Damien, however. He is probably caught off guard. Usually like, he would keep Jerry guessing, but I think he recognizes just how serious these murders are. And he flat out [00:33:30] denies these murders completely.

[00:33:31] Like it's not something that he wants to play with, but Jerry doesn't buy that.

[00:33:34] If anything, Damien's denial feels suspicious to him because Damien's usual go-to is letting Jerry believe whatever he believes. So to him, that's very suspicious.

[00:33:43] Adam Cox: I think. He's like, well, this is serious. It's not stealing something from a train.

[00:33:46] Kyle Risi: So Jerry shares his suspicions with the police, who I don't think really take things seriously at first, but the news of the story has now exploded into a national story it puts a lot of pressure on them to find someone who's done this. But of [00:34:00] course, the narrative of this cult kind of involvement is now firmly getting itself embedded.

[00:34:05] Adam Cox: I guess that makes it difficult for the police to see it in any other way, right?

[00:34:08] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Yes. It's coming from all over the place, and before you know it, you've been living in it, breathing it, and that just becomes a defacto.

[00:34:14] So with no other suspects, they take a look at Damien and his friends. And like I say, Damien doesn't help himself. Like he knows the rumors are out there. And while he denied it to the police, he doesn't exactly shut it down when the kind of towns folk start speculating about him.

[00:34:29] And I've tried to [00:34:30] understand why. I think this just boost his street cred as the local goth kid, probably for the first time in his life. He's sort of notorious when he's always been sort of the kid living on the fringe.

[00:34:42] Adam Cox: Yeah. I guess he's probably not like a popular kid. But this is his way of getting attention.

[00:34:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah,

[00:34:47] And so when people ask him at school, like he doesn't confirm or deny it, he just lets them believe what they want to believe.

[00:34:53] It's a dangerous game that he is playing, but in his mind, he didn't do this. And so he believes the evidence and the investigation will just speak for itself, which is [00:35:00] something that we grow up believing. Right. The police, the status quo, they,

[00:35:03] Adam Cox: Yeah. Justice prevails.

[00:35:04] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:35:05] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:35:06] Kyle Risi: Which is why when the police are asking him for blood and hair samples, he just gives it to him without question. Like he's got nothing to hide.

[00:35:11] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:12] Kyle Risi: And I think he may have been cleared since he really didn't do this. That wasn't until a woman named Vicki Hutchinson steps into the picture. Adam,

[00:35:22] Adam Cox: who was Vicki.

[00:35:23] Kyle Risi: So at the time of the murders, Vicki had only just been living in West Memphis for a few months.

[00:35:27] Her son Aaron, had become friends with Stevie, [00:35:30] Chris and Michael through obviously school, and Vicki Hutchinson, Adam, she's bad news.

[00:35:34] She's got like a bunch of outstanding Warrens for check fraud. She's also a known liar. At one time, she bails on a job by telling her boss that she had a terminal brain tumor just to get outta work.

[00:35:45] Adam Cox: Wow. What an excuse.

[00:35:47] Kyle Risi: What if she needs to go back to work? She's like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm healed.

[00:35:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. Turns out it wasn't terminal.

[00:35:50] Kyle Risi: On the day that Stevie, Chris and Michael's bodies are found, Vicki is actually at the police station taking a polygraph test. There's so many fucking polygraph tests in this story.

[00:35:58] Adam Cox: What is she taking that for?

[00:35:59] Kyle Risi: [00:36:00] So she's been accused of stealing money from Atill work.

[00:36:03] Adam Cox: Right. And she

[00:36:04] Kyle Risi: 100%. She probably did it knowing her track record. She's also there with her son, Aaron, who is going wild in the waiting room because no one is watching him.

[00:36:11] So one of the polygraph technicians, Don Bray, he tries to distract him, and during that interaction, Aaron says he knows where the missing boys are.

[00:36:19] Adam Cox: So had they found the boys at this point?

[00:36:21] Kyle Risi: They had, but it hadn't been made public yet.

[00:36:23] He says they're at the Playhouse, which is like a little dense slash treehouse in the Robinhood Hills Woods.

[00:36:29] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:29] Kyle Risi: So [00:36:30] Don calls it in. And not long after that is confirmed that the boys were found near where Aaron had said.

[00:36:34] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:35] Kyle Risi: So they speak to Aaron again and he tells them that recently in the woods he saw two men dress up in robes speaking a different language. He actually says Spanish, but I've changed that because that's his way of saying gibberish, basically.

[00:36:46] Adam Cox: he says they were speaking Spanish, but he meant like just another language.

[00:36:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Like when we go, oh, that's just gibberish. Some people say, oh, that's just Spanish.

[00:36:53] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:36:53] Kyle Risi: Do you know what I mean?

[00:36:54] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:36:54] Kyle Risi: But he also says they were having sex with each other. So it might just be some dogger,

[00:36:58] Adam Cox: but the, the two people in ropes.

[00:36:59] Kyle Risi: [00:37:00] Yeah. Yeah. I dunno, I, I don't think the story's true, but the logical explanation is, oh, you found a pair of Doggs in the woods.

[00:37:07] And so this fits the already established narrative that this was all cult related.

[00:37:12] So the police, they speak to Vicki and they offer her a deal. If she wears a wire and speaks to Damien to see if he was perhaps involved in some way, they will make all of her outstanding warrants just go away.

[00:37:23] The police have the power to do that. Isn't that great?

[00:37:25] They also tell her that if any of the information that she gets leads to an arrest, she'll get the [00:37:30] $30,000 reward that the police have offered.

[00:37:32] Adam Cox: That feels wrong. Why tell her that?

[00:37:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So yeah, this is a massive incentive for Vicki to deliver, especially given her situation, right. The money would be life changing for her.

[00:37:42] But Vicki doesn't know Damien personally, she does however know someone who does and that is a local kid called Jesse Kel. He's basically a kid that sometimes babysits her son Aaron.

[00:37:53] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:53] Kyle Risi: He knows Damien from obviously being around the neighborhood. The problem is Jesse doesn't know Damien in that way, [00:38:00] so it's a bit awkward her arranging for him to kind of go and create an introduction so she can lure into her her trailer. It's awkward.

[00:38:07] So now you've got this kid, Jesse, who's going up to Damien going, I have this friend, her name's Vicki. She wondered if you wanna get to know her. That's just weird.

[00:38:17] It's just weird.

[00:38:18] Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay.

[00:38:19] Kyle Risi: Jesse is eager to please.

[00:38:20] So he does make the introduction and soon after that, Damon agrees to go to Vicki's trailer one evening.

[00:38:26] Adam Cox: So Vicki's a sort of what, in her thirties, forties?

[00:38:28] Kyle Risi: Probably. Yeah. Yeah. She's got a young [00:38:30] kid probably,

[00:38:30] Adam Cox: so he's thinking, oh, I'm gonna give score with some

[00:38:34] Kyle Risi: else. I thought, so that's straight away, like what? 18 year old's like, oh, some chick wants me to go to a trailer. Yeah, he thinks they want a bang.

[00:38:40] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:38:41] Kyle Risi: So to steer the conversation towards occult stuff and then the murders, she strategically places occult related books and props all over the trailer.

[00:38:47] And while they talk about the occult, Damien doesn't actually say anything incriminating. If anything, they talk about how most of his personality was just like a front and that he was actually a really damaged kid.

[00:38:58] Adam Cox: Really?

[00:38:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's what they [00:39:00] talk about.

[00:39:00] Adam Cox: So is this recorded as well?

[00:39:02] Kyle Risi: Yes. However, when the police listen to the tapes, it's completely distorted and they can't work out anything that's been said.

[00:39:09] Adam Cox: Right.

[00:39:09] Kyle Risi: Which initially is a bummer for Vicki because of course she's motivated by the money. But then she finds a way to turn this into an opportunity. 'cause she tells police, no problem. I can hear the tape very clearly. Let me translate it for you. And then she walks them through what he's saying in every little bit.

[00:39:24] So it'd be like, and he's like, yeah, he said like this here,

[00:39:29] Adam Cox: [00:39:30] this is where he said he would eat sheep stomach. Yeah. Um, so what I don't understand is you've said that what they actually talked about was the fact that he's a bit of a damaged kid Who confirmed that? 'cause if there's no tape that says that

[00:39:43] Kyle Risi: it'll be Vicki.

[00:39:44] Adam Cox: Okay.

[00:39:44] Kyle Risi: Much later on,

[00:39:45] Adam Cox: ah,

[00:39:46] Kyle Risi: when she doesn't get the reward money and the court cases are all done and they've been convicted and Damien is on death row and still he doesn't get out.

[00:39:53] Adam Cox: What an escalation.

[00:39:55] Kyle Risi: Uhhuh.

[00:39:55] She basically spins this whole encounter into something incriminating, which the police are all too happy to [00:40:00] basically accept.

[00:40:01] Like the bitch wanted the money and after all she had come this far already uhhuh like she'd got into the trailer, she'd gone through the recording, she'd worn the wire. Now it was like the way she saw it, it was just one more nudge this way to then maybe get that money.

[00:40:13] Adam Cox: But even if, say if the tape was legible and they could hear and there's actually nothing damning on that. Mm-hmm. Would she have gotten the money anyway?

[00:40:20] Kyle Risi: I don't know the circumstances why she didn't actually get the money. In the end. I think the police were potentially just using this as a carrot to dangle over in front of people's faces.

[00:40:27] Adam Cox: Isn't it crazy 'cause you just think we've done so many [00:40:30] stories where police are corrupt or they've taken shortcuts or there's this bias or whatever and you just, so many times we just see justice not being done properly.

[00:40:40] Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:41] Kyle Risi: It's changed our whole worldly outlook from when we were kids where we just trusted that the police are at our sight and they're not.

[00:40:49] Adam Cox: If you think about it, we are looking at probably some of the most extreme cases to do these kind of topics, right? If we went in and saw every single crime of every week mm-hmm. No matter what was [00:41:00] chances are, it probably is

[00:41:01] but it still feels like there's too many across the world where, I

[00:41:04] Kyle Risi: mean, we are right in the thick of it. Right. We, it's what we do for a living. We cover these stories Yeah. About criminal mis injustice and all sorts of things. So yeah, But anyway, Adam, with Vicki's information, two weeks go by and the police have an arrested Damien. So she decides to up the stakes and she tells the police that Damien and Jesse, her babysitter, remember, took her to an sbat, which is basically a coven meeting of other [00:41:30] Satanists.

[00:41:30] She says that when they got there, people were dressed in robes, speaking Spanish, including kids, and at some point the whole thing devolved into a massive gy. And that is when she claims she got very uncomfortable and asked Damien to take her home.

[00:41:43] Adam Cox: Okay,

[00:41:44] Kyle Risi: it sounds insane, and the police don't really know what to make of it.

[00:41:47] But then a kid named William Jones comes forward and he claims that one night Damien Drunkenly admitted to raping and killing all three of the boys.

[00:41:55] That does turn out to be a lie because once the police make the arrest [00:42:00] and the trial is about to start this, William Kidd realizes that he has to then testify under oath.

[00:42:06] And so he retracts his statement. Now, his statement is the thing that kind of leads police to go, okay, we've got Vicki's statement, now we've got this William guy's, testimony let arrest him.

[00:42:16] So you would think of one of those things fall apart, that kind of dismantles everything.

[00:42:20] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:42:21] Kyle Risi: Except Adam, by the time all of that happens, by the time this William Guy retracts his statement, it doesn't matter because the police now [00:42:30] had a full confession

[00:42:31] Adam Cox: from Damien.

[00:42:32] Kyle Risi: Let's get into it.

[00:42:33] So off the back of Vicki's claims that Damien and Jesse took her to an ssat. The police show, Aaron, a photo lineup of seven random people.

[00:42:41] And Damien and his best friend, Jason Baldwin, are in that lineup as well as Jesse.

[00:42:47] Adam Cox: Okay?

[00:42:48] Kyle Risi: They ask Aaron if any of the faces look familiar, referring to faces he might recognize from the night that he saw the men in the woods, but Aaron thinks they're looking for just any familiar face in general.

[00:42:59] And [00:43:00] so he picks out the only person he recognizes and that is his babysitter, Jesse,

[00:43:04] Adam Cox: right? So once again, it's just don't trust kids completely.

[00:43:08] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:43:08] Adam Cox: Just question it first.

[00:43:10] Kyle Risi: And so now the police are very, very interested in speaking to Jesse.

[00:43:13] Now, Jesse's background really matters in the story.

[00:43:17] Jesse is raised by his dad as a single parent. His mom apparently bails, and then when he's like four, his brother is very severely mentally disabled. And Jesse is not too bright either. In fact, Jesse's IQ is around 72, and [00:43:30] that means that he's basically operating at a five to 8-year-old level.

[00:43:34] Adam Cox: Okay?

[00:43:34] Kyle Risi: Growing up doctors persistently recommend special education classes for him, but that never actually ends up happening. And now he's in these late teens and now is basically definitely off the table.

[00:43:43] So when the police bring Jesse in.

[00:43:45] He doesn't have the mental capacity to understand what is happening or how high the stakes are at this point.

[00:43:52] And the police don't really do much to account for the fact that he has a mental disability when he is finally in the interview chair.

[00:43:58]

[00:43:58] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:59] Kyle Risi: So the police, [00:44:00] they show up at Jesse's house. The officer tells Jesse's dad that they wanted to talk to Jesse about Damien because they think that he could help, not that a suspect in any way.

[00:44:09] Jesse's dad is a little bit weary, but he's very quickly won over by the mention of a $30,000 reward,

[00:44:15] Adam Cox: 30 k again.

[00:44:16] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Jesse himself, he knows that this money will be life changing for his family. And so he tells his dad, listen, I want to help. Mm-hmm.

[00:44:22] And so he agrees thinking that the police are just gonna ask him a few routine questions about a kid that Jesse knows from school.

[00:44:29] [00:44:30] At the station they asked Jesse about the Sbat, which he immediately denies, because it was of course a light begin with, they ask him if he'll take a polygraph test, and Jesse doesn't really know what that means, but he agrees.

[00:44:43] They go back to his dad. They ask for permission, since obviously Jesse's a minor. His dad is again hesitant. But the police, again, they reassure him, and again, they bring up the reward and they say that if Jesse was in trouble, we would've asked you to waive his Miranda rights, which we did not do. So you've got nothing to worry about

[00:44:59] Adam Cox: but [00:45:00] they're just trying to get something incriminating first and then they can do that.

[00:45:03] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So with his dad, reassured Jesse is asked 10 yes or no questions.

[00:45:07] He answers them all truthfully, except for one, when he's asked if he's ever used drugs, he says, no. After the test, the officers tell him, I'm sorry, Jesse, it's clear that you are lying. But they don't tell him that it was about the drug question. They tell him with all the questions,

[00:45:21] Adam Cox: right?

[00:45:22] Kyle Risi: Of course, he panics in the end.

[00:45:24] He admits, okay, I lied about the drugs, but everything else was true. They don't accept this. And so they keep pushing him and they push him for [00:45:30] hours and hours, and it's not even productive, Adam. They just go round in circles and circles, which, you know, can be very, very exhausting. When I question you in circles for hours, where have you been? Who are you with? What's she smell like?

[00:45:45] Adam Cox: Yeah. So they're, they're doing this all off the basis of what Aaron has said that he recognized, or, he misunderstood the question.

[00:45:52] Kyle Risi: Yep.

[00:45:53] Adam Cox: Yeah. Okay.

[00:45:54] Kyle Risi: Remember. Jesse can't navigate this. He's got the mental capacity of an 8-year-old. And with that, he still has this [00:46:00] belief that the police are someone that you can trust.

[00:46:02] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:02] Kyle Risi: If they are telling me that I'm lying, maybe I am, is what he's thinking. He just wants to please him as kids do.

[00:46:08] They tell him that if he tells the truth, they will let him go home. And so the pressure at this point is coming from every single angle.

[00:46:16] The detectives, they then decide to pull out some photos of the boys' bodies and they make him look at it, Adam, and he's terrified by this. It is awful.

[00:46:24] Then Detective Gary Gill, he plays him a short audio clip of Aaron. Now, Jesse doesn't know this is [00:46:30] Aaron's voice, but the voice says " nobody knows what happened but me."

[00:46:34] And so the police insinuate that the voice on the tape has told them that Jesse has done this.

[00:46:39] Adam Cox: like I know the police can obviously. Manipulate the truth to a level to obviously get a confession, but this just feels so unfair and based on nothing.

[00:46:47] Kyle Risi: And taken way too far and not accounted for who Jesse is. Yes, Jesse is an 18-year-old kid or whatever he is, but mentally he's an 8-year-old kid.

[00:46:56] Would you treat Aaron like this?

[00:46:58] Adam Cox: Yeah. You wouldn't, would you?

[00:46:59] Kyle Risi: [00:47:00] It's totally unfair. Of course, as you can imagine, Jesse's now very anxious.

[00:47:04] But then Gary draws a circle on a piece of paper. He puts three dots on the inside and then a bunch more dots on the outside.

[00:47:10] And he tells Jesse the dots on the inside are Damien, Jason and him? The dots on the outside are the police and everyone else. And then he asks him, which side do you want to be on inside with Damien and Jason or outside with the police.

[00:47:25] Adam Cox: Obviously he's gonna say with the police.

[00:47:26]

[00:47:26] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So from here, Adam, the police interrogate this [00:47:30] boy for 12 hours, but get this out of the full 12 hour interrogation. There only exists 43 minutes of footage. And that is because the rest of the time they were basically coaching a confession out of him that lined up with exactly what they believed already happened.

[00:47:49] Adam Cox: So they're saying, we need you to say these things and got him to repeat it over and over again to then capture it.

[00:47:56] Kyle Risi: They're very sneaky about it.

[00:47:58] They'll ask like, what time did you meet up [00:48:00] with, Damien and Jason at Robinhood Hills? And he's like, I didn't. And he's like, tell us the truth. And he is like, nine, 9:30 AM And the police are like, well, the boys were at school at that time.

[00:48:09] that can't be right Jesse.

[00:48:11] And so Jesse knowing that he'll get to go home if he tells 'em what they want to hear, he then says, um, 2:30 PM

[00:48:17] Adam Cox: mm-hmm.

[00:48:18] Kyle Risi: And they're like, well, no, the boys are still at school there. They were accounted for at that point. And they're like, are you sure?

[00:48:24] Was it perhaps getting dark at the time? Jesse and Jesse is like, yeah, yeah, it was, it was getting dark. [00:48:30] And so the police are like, would you say it was maybe around about seven or eight? And Jesse is like, yes. It was between seven or eight. And they're like, well, was it seven or eight? And he's like, seven.

[00:48:39] And they're like, are you sure it wasn't eight? And he's like, yeah, it was eight.

[00:48:42] Adam Cox: Oh my God.

[00:48:43] Kyle Risi: And then they're like, good, good. I dunno why you just didn't say, that's begin with Jesse.

[00:48:48] And all the while Jesse's just apologizing because they're making him feel like he's messing them around.

[00:48:54] Adam Cox: Does he have like a lawyer with him or at all?

[00:48:56] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Not, he's not been arrested. He doesn't know, he doesn't have the mental [00:49:00] capacity to navigate the situation, but then he does not know.

[00:49:02] Adam Cox: But then his dad is like, why is my son in there for 12 hours? Surely he is like, hang on a minute, something is up.

[00:49:08] Kyle Risi: Probably also doesn't know the process. Right. He, for all he knows this is normal.

[00:49:11] Adam Cox: Ah hmm.

[00:49:12] Kyle Risi: Adam, this goes on for hours and basically they coach out a full eyewitness testimony of how Damien and Jason killed these boys.

[00:49:19] Right now it's just the two of them, Damien and Jason, they coach him into describing Damien punching one of the boys and how they stripped him naked, tied them up, raped them, and [00:49:30] did all these awful things to them.

[00:49:31] They get him to describe how they mutilated them with a knife before beating them unconscious. But before he killed them, he says that of course he fled the scene so he wasn't part of the murder.

[00:49:42] Adam Cox: Right. Part

[00:49:42] Kyle Risi: of it.

[00:49:43] Adam Cox: Okay. Which is part of this confession deal.

[00:49:45] Kyle Risi: Yes. Now he's basically given the cops exactly what they've needed.

[00:49:49] He would've been allowed to go home if only he hadn't during the coaching, accidentally incriminated himself, because at one point he says that Michael Moore had broken [00:50:00] loose, and he describes how he chased him down, held him down until the other boys arrived.

[00:50:04] And so because of that, he's arrested and he's taken to a fucking cell.

[00:50:08] Adam Cox: But he's just made up. I can't believe how.

[00:50:11] If you are the police right now, obviously you wanna find justice, but why would you do this? You're pinning it on him just because of Damien, essentially.

[00:50:18] Kyle Risi: Isn't it shocking?

[00:50:19] Adam Cox: I was just thinking, could you be so stupid or misguided to think, oh, this definitely happened. Mm,

[00:50:24] Kyle Risi: Of course, Adam, once he realizes that he's not going home, he recounts his entire confession. [00:50:30] But by then, of course, it is too late.

[00:50:32] Here's the thing though, when Jesse finally does get a lawyer, he tells him, of course, that obviously none of this was true.

[00:50:39] But the second that they are back in front of the police, Jesse flips. And he's like, yeah, I did it. Why? And his lawyer's like, hold on. What? What is go, what are you doing.

[00:50:50] Jesse's basically like I thought I had to tell the police what they wanted to hear and his lawyer's like, okay, you need to stop talking and you need to understand that the police are not your friend.

[00:50:59] They are not [00:51:00] here to help you. I am here to help you,

[00:51:02] Adam. It gets wilder than you can even imagine because at one point his lawyer is talking him through the case and Jesse stops him and then goes, what's Satin?

[00:51:10] And then his lawyer's like, what? He's like, yeah, satin. What is that? And his lawyer's like, do you mean Satan? And Jesse's like, yeah, what is that?

[00:51:19] And so he's implicated in a Satanic ritual murder of three 8-year-old boys and he doesn't even know what Satan is.

[00:51:27] Adam Cox: Well, this kind of explains everything.

[00:51:28]

[00:51:28] Kyle Risi: It does. It's wild. [00:51:30] And so off the back of this coerced confession, the police, they go ahead and they arrest Damien and Jason and they start preparing a trial against them.

[00:51:38] Here's the thing, because of Jesse's confession, he can't be tried alongside Damien and Jason.

[00:51:44] And that's because of something called the Brunon Rule, which prevents a confession from one defendant that implicates a co-defendant from being used as evidence in a joint trial. So they have to be separated in terms of the trial. So Damien and Jason will be trialed together and Jesse will receive his own separate trial, which [00:52:00] will go first.

[00:52:00] And that is key.

[00:52:02] Adam Cox: Okay. So they've got a confession, but surely they need some like tangible evidence as well, right?

[00:52:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Let's look at some of that tangible evidence and see how the jury treat that evidence, shall we?

[00:52:13] He is assigned a court appointed attorney who initially thinks this is a cut and dry case and that probably he is just there to get Jesse the best deal he possibly can because Jesse likely did this.

[00:52:24] The second he looks at the case, he is like, what the fuck?

[00:52:28] And at trial, of course, [00:52:30] he brings up where is the missing footage from the 12 hour interview? Why was Jesse never read his Miranda rights? Why, if he was the Satanist, did he not understand who Satan even was?

[00:52:41] Even in court, his attorney had to explain it again and again, like to Jesse and Jesse's just like, oh, okay. Yeah. Oh yeah. You said about Satan. Yeah, I know who he is. Yeah, he like repeatedly.

[00:52:51] like Jesse's story also keeps changing, not because he is lying, it's because he is struggling to remember a false memory that the police have planted in on [00:53:00] him.

[00:53:00] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's true.

[00:53:01] Kyle Risi: They even get Detective Gary Getchell, like back on the stand. They ask him like, did it ever occur to you that Jesse might have been giving you a false story? And Gary is like, no. All I can say is there were just times during his confession where he was just getting really confused

[00:53:16] Adam Cox: the whole 12 hours.

[00:53:17] Kyle Risi: Like Yes. Because you were coaching him like to your will.

[00:53:21] Adam Cox: I just, how could you know to send someone innocent down? Yeah. If something as severe as this

[00:53:26] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:53:26] Adam Cox: I just think what kind of piece of shit are you?

[00:53:29] Kyle Risi: [00:53:30] Yeah. They also call all of his alibi witnesses. This is Jesse.

[00:53:33] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:34] Kyle Risi: It's not just one person. It's literally an entire class. Because the night that all of this was supposed to have happened, he was at a wrestling practice in a different fucking county. Like, how did this even get to court? I just don't get it. Four of the kids, they all take the stand under oath. They all say that they wrestled with Jesse that night even describing how he got injured.

[00:53:56] They all agree on that. They all also agree that they all left at 11:00 [00:54:00] PM that night. Long after the murders had happened, supposedly

[00:54:02] Adam Cox: So why was that not enough for them to go, okay, we need to just take a break and look at this case.

[00:54:07] Kyle Risi: So the prosecution, they picked on one of the witnesses, like dates that he said like, he got it the week before and he's like, wow. If you've got that wrong, maybe that kind of quas all of the other people's testimony.

[00:54:19] It's one person, it's, it's stupid. They managed to argue this. I don't get it.

[00:54:23] Adam Cox: Are they saying like they're all in cahoots?

[00:54:25] Kyle Risi: You just need to pull up that seat down. Mm-hmm. The only witness they really had that could [00:54:30] even remotely help the prosecution was William Jones, the guy who claims Damien had drunk, admitted to raping and killing the boys.

[00:54:37] Not Jesse. This is Damien that he's implicating. That's the best that they had. And it didn't even directly incriminate Jesse as we know a few hours before obviously he was due in court. William pulls out and it's because he admitted that he'd made it all up.

[00:54:50] So all of this you would think looks good for Jesse, possibly even looking good for Damien and Jason for when their trial start. Because remember like Jesse has [00:55:00] solid alibis, right?

[00:55:01] The, there's very clear evidence that he was coerced. He didn't even know what Satan was. Right. The only credible witness that the prosecution thought they had, had pulled out in the final hour.

[00:55:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. For me to only make this stick now you need DNA evidence or something like that.

[00:55:13] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

[00:55:14] But then Adam, they bring in Vicki fucking Hutchinson. She obviously sticks to her story. She tells them about the false sbat, the coven meeting. Very persuasive to the jury, oh, by the way, when she retracts her statement later on, after both [00:55:30] court cases are done, she says that night she was so drunk that she woke up in her front yard the next day with no recollection of what had happened.

[00:55:36] And so therefore she believes that she may have dreamt the whole thing.

[00:55:39] Isn't that wild?

[00:55:40] Adam Cox: Or just admit you lied.

[00:55:42] So I guess are the jury considering, oh, this is a young mother. Why would she be lying about this? All these just over the

[00:55:47] Kyle Risi: past,

[00:55:48] Adam Cox: for God's

[00:55:48] Kyle Risi: sake.

[00:55:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. But then all these other kids, or they could be lying sort of thing. It makes sense. They're lying. But this is a mother.

[00:55:53] She wouldn't do that.

[00:55:54] Kyle Risi: Adam is just so wild to me. Like us going through this evidence, to us, it's clearly all [00:56:00] bullshit. But in those moments on the stand, this is very persuasive testimony that is rooted. Remember, in cultural fear.

[00:56:07] Adam Cox: Yeah. But then did anyone even go like, okay, she went to this meeting. Should we try and go to another one of these meetings? Track down who else was involved.

[00:56:14] Did they ever even think of that?

[00:56:15] Kyle Risi: Doesn't sound like it does it.

[00:56:17] So in spite of zero evidence linking him to the scene, everything hinges on Vicki's testimony and his coerced conviction. And so in the end, Jesse.

[00:56:26] Unbelievably, he is found guilty of capital [00:56:30] murder for Michael Moore because he had held him down and as a result he is sentenced to 40 plus years in prison.

[00:56:36] I don't think anyone saw that coming. Do you know what I mean?

[00:56:39] Adam Cox: No,

[00:56:39] Kyle Risi: and it's because Vicki's testimony really plucks at the strings, are something that's really deep rooted in people's hearts and their minds and their, and the zeitgeist, the cultural zeitgeist.

[00:56:50] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:50] Kyle Risi: It's wild.

[00:56:52] So Jesse's sent out basically to 40 years in damn jail.

[00:56:56] Adam Cox: I mean, if he committed this, absolutely.

[00:56:58] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:59] Adam Cox: That's the [00:57:00] right sort of sentence. But he didn't,

[00:57:02] Kyle Risi: I mean, it's pretty damn clear he was coerced into that confession.

[00:57:05] I think even the prosecution were a little bit surprised at how easily the jury found Jesse guilty. They weren't really sure whether or not they'd be so lucky with Damien and Jason's trial.

[00:57:17] However, the fact that he was found guilty certainly wasn't going to hurt the second trial.

[00:57:22] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:57:23] Kyle Risi: And we know this because on two separate occasions, just weeks before the trial, they actually approached Jason Baldwin and they [00:57:30] basically offer him a deal of 20 years in prison.

[00:57:32] If he testified against Damien, he of course says no. And then they offer him 10 years.

[00:57:37] Adam Cox: Really?

[00:57:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:57:38] Adam Cox: That's strange. I guess if you're that kid, obviously you're gonna deny it because you didn't do it, but the fact that Jesse has been found guilty

[00:57:47] That you feel like, do I take this? Is this my best chance at a lenient sentence?

[00:57:52] Kyle Risi: Again, Jason's one of those kids that believe that the justice will prevail. Mm-hmm. He's like, why would I accept any time in prison, a court will see that [00:58:00] I did not do this. I am innocent and so is, so is Damien.

[00:58:03] So the trial moves forward. The prosecution start by calling in an expert on all things via cult.

[00:58:10] They have him walk through how Damien kind of fits the classic profile of a Satanist and Adam. It is bullshit because it all hinges on people who dress a certain way, like listen to metal music, paint the nails black. All the stuff that we, we've already discussed in terms of what Jerry believed

[00:58:25] Adam Cox: it's a good thing Emo wasn't around back then, because I know right? The whole half the school would've [00:58:30] been taken down.

[00:58:30] Kyle Risi: Basically everything that Damien is, this expert says his classic satanism. The defense counseled this though, by questioning this expert's qualifications.

[00:58:39] They ask him, where did you study? Where did you graduate? What are real life cases that you've been involved in, where your expertise has helped incriminate Satanic crimes?

[00:58:48] Turns out the motherfucker didn't even go to college.

[00:58:51] He has never worked on a case before, and this is the first time he's ever stood as an expert witness in a criminal trial. And his [00:59:00] expertise is the result of him sending off for a male in course, basically by open university, but by post. And at the end of it you don't even get accredited.

[00:59:09] Adam Cox: Wow. So they've just got someone who's Yeah.

[00:59:11] Done a bit of research.

[00:59:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:59:12] Adam Cox: If that

[00:59:13] Kyle Risi: he read a book basically, that any motherfucker could have written in his mom's basement. That's his expertise.

[00:59:19] Adam Cox: Yeah. And so he's gonna say, yeah, this is a tried and tested. This is an absolute evidence of a cult.

[00:59:25] Kyle Risi: That's right. And yet he is up there testifying as an expert in a murder trial that senses [00:59:30] around a very serious crime involving the occult. It's so scary that this was even allowed to happen, but because even with the defense pointing this out, this information is now embedded in the jury's heads.

[00:59:43] So it is too late to put that genie back in the bottle. Right? Mm-hmm. He's already gone I'm an expert, blah, blah, blah. This is what this means. And he fits his profile.

[00:59:50] There's also something very strange about this trial, because they can't directly use Jesse's confession verbatim against them since Jesse recant it, and it would violate the [01:00:00] defendant's sixth

[01:00:00] Amendment rights under the, Bronson rule that I explained earlier on.

[01:00:04] Instead they have detectives testify that Damien knew certain things that were said in the confession that he would only have known if he had done this. So it's a lot of like maneuvering. Mm-hmm. In this, it's called basically a confession via non hearsay means.

[01:00:20] And these detectives are basically telling the court that Damian knew things like Chris Byer having been mutilated more than the other boys. Right. Information that was never made [01:00:30] public, but the defense are like, that is not true. Here's a news article, here's another news article. Here's a TV broadcast where all those details are explicitly outlined.

[01:00:40] And also Jerry Driver, the juvenile officer, that was intent on getting, Damien had told him a shit ton of stuff when he was like questioning him about the murders. And

[01:00:49] so Adam, it is just a shit show. And I didn't mention this in my notes, but they also bring in a bunch of alibis as well for the boys, specifically for Damien that night. He's on the record [01:01:00] of being on the phone with a bunch of different girls.

[01:01:01] He was a little whore.

[01:01:03] Adam Cox: So it's not even like the case that he could have been there on a mobile phone because mobile phones weren't a thing. Exactly. Or not commonplace by that point.

[01:01:10] Kyle Risi: You need to be at home and you need to call that person's mom and say, can I please speak to Damien, please? Yeah. It's that kind of thing.

[01:01:15] Adam Cox: And so therefore, surely his parents or someone else has got an alibi for him to say he was at home.

[01:01:20] Kyle Risi: Adam, I wasn't at this trial. I just don't understand how the prosecution were able to maneuver this in a way that was persuasive to this jury.

[01:01:28] Adam Cox: They're so blinded, [01:01:30] like you say, with this kind of fear of satanic panic.

[01:01:33] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:01:33] Adam Cox: That they just can't see anything. Parts that I think, I think they just, they've already locked into that. It doesn't matter what anyone says.

[01:01:38] Kyle Risi: That's the only explanation.

[01:01:39] So the prosecution, they call Michael Carson to the stand. He'd been in juvenile detention with Jason Baldwin while he was awaiting his trial, and he says that Jason had confessed to castrate and Chris Byers then sucking his blood from his penis and his scrotum, and then putting the boy's testicles in his mouth in what he described as a sexual [01:02:00] act.

[01:02:00] Adam Cox: Even just to make that up is gross.

[01:02:03] Kyle Risi: It is a shocking testimony. And naturally the jury, they are horrified by this. But under cross examination the defense, they stopped pulling at the dates when he said this supposedly happened in Michael's official statements. He said this happened on the 26th of August, four days after he first met Jason.

[01:02:20] Yet he told his mother this story on the 15th of August and his girlfriend on the 17th of August. And they were saying, how can that be since you didn't even meet Jason until [01:02:30] the 22nd of August.

[01:02:31] Adam Cox: So as this guy just got a bit of a vendetta against Damien,

[01:02:35] Kyle Risi: the implication is that he formulated this from media coverage that he was reading ahead of him, knowing that Jason was potentially coming to that particular detention center.

[01:02:45] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:45] Kyle Risi: So he was like, Hmm, this notorious killers coming here, let's look into it. And then rumors and stuff.

[01:02:50] But they also do point out that there is a very strange coincidence that his burglary charge is downgraded to a suspended sentence just days [01:03:00] after he submitted that statement.

[01:03:02] And the implication there is that he had struck a deal with the prosecution.

[01:03:05] Adam Cox: His prosecution is so bloody twisted.

[01:03:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:03:09] Next, the prosecution present what they heavily imply to be the murder weapon that was used.

[01:03:14] They show a Rambo style serrated hunting knife that was found six months after the murders by a neighbor who was wading through a lake.

[01:03:22] That is literally just outside of Jason's family's trailer.

[01:03:26] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:26] Kyle Risi: It's tested. They find no blood. There's no [01:03:30] DNA. The only thing they find is a very fine red fiber matching a robe belonging to Jason's mother.

[01:03:36] They bring in a medical examiner. This is a guy called Frank Pereti. He's gonna be important.

[01:03:42] He testifies that a knife like this could have been consistent with the boys' wounds. So it's very circumstantial.

[01:03:50] It doesn't prove this was a murder weapon. it was actually Jason's knife. By the way, the reason why it was in the lake is because his mom was like, you're 15 years old. What [01:04:00] the hell are you doing with a bloody knife? And she throws it into the lake a year earlier. Mm-hmm. Because she was like, you've got no business playing with knives.

[01:04:07] The prosecution basically argued that Jason must have fish it out before the murders, then tossed it back once murders were done.

[01:04:14] And by the end of the trial, the key evidence was relying on Justin's confession via non hearsay means, which as we saw, they quashed that.

[01:04:23] Mm-hmm. Like that information was everywhere.

[01:04:24] They had Michael Carson's testimony, which they quashed that as well. The knife. [01:04:30] linking to Jason's mum. Amazingly Adam, they find them both guilty of capital murder.

[01:04:36] Adam Cox: It's kind of. I just think about the parents, Damien and Jason's parents and Jesse's as well.

[01:04:40] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:41] Adam Cox: What they must have think, 'cause they're probably thinking, did my son do this? Are they lying? They will be questioning their son.

[01:04:47] Kyle Risi: It's crazy, isn't it?

[01:04:48] So of course the court case is way more in depth than what we covered today because we could be here for days. There are loads of podcasts and documents out there that go through what happened day by day.

[01:04:59] But those are [01:05:00] the key things and that's what the conviction pretty much hinged on.

[01:05:02] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:05:03] Kyle Risi: Which is wild. It's so weak.

[01:05:05] Jason gets life in prison without the possibility of parole and Damien gets the fucking death penalty via lethal injection.

[01:05:12] Adam Cox: And he's what? 18?

[01:05:13] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:05:14] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:05:14] Kyle Risi: And so Adam, from 1994 to 2007, the three of them enter this game of appeal, ping pong. Each time they try to appeal it is flat out denied.

[01:05:25] And the reason for this is that every single appeal is reviewed by the [01:05:30] same judge that found them guilty to begin with.

[01:05:32] Adam Cox: Yeah. No way is he gonna go. Oh actually, lemme just remark my homework.

[01:05:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And they gather loads of new evidence along the years as well. And he reviews this and he still says no, no dice. Which is terrible, especially for Damien. 'cause remember he is on a ticking clock.

[01:05:49] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:05:50] And how common is that? Do you know? Like. Should it not go in front of someone completely impartial,

[01:05:56] Kyle Risi: you would think so, Adam. It just doesn't and they [01:06:00] just end up in the stalemate and it's because of this corrupt judge who just keeps blocking them at every turn.

[01:06:04] Adam Cox: He's probably like best friends with the police officer or something. They're probably all in it in this kind of weird group. In terms of trying to maintain this,

[01:06:12] Kyle Risi: well we dunno for definite, but we definitely have some theories and we're gonna come onto the reason why.

[01:06:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:17] Kyle Risi: This might have been the case because it comes clear with the thing that sets these boys free, and I'll explain that in a second.

[01:06:24] But for Damien, he's dealt a massive blow when he goes to file appeal again and he's told that [01:06:30] a bunch of vital evidence in his case was all destroyed in a fire,

[01:06:34] Adam Cox: you just lose hope, right?

[01:06:36] But is that true that the evidence was destroyed? 'cause so far things aren't going the way of the boys. Mm-hmm. I just feel like something foul, foul play is happening here.

[01:06:45] Kyle Risi: Adam Cox, you just put a pin in there.

[01:06:47] Adam Cox: Okay.

[01:06:48] Kyle Risi: This kind of appeal, ping pong goes on for 14 years and they just keep hitting roadblock after roadblock.

[01:06:53] Adam Cox: 14 years is such a long time to try and, I guess keep on going. Trying to keep positive. Thinking that you could get out, [01:07:00] but. These are now what? They're in almost 30. They are 30. Damn.

[01:07:04] Kyle Risi: A lot goes on during those 14 years. And again, we can't go through it all.

[01:07:08] So we're gonna jump ahead to 2007. When there is an interesting twist in the case, examiners looking at the shoelaces that are used to tie the boys up, they find embedded within one of the knots, a single hair.

[01:07:23] Now this could only be there if whoever owned the hair was the person tying them up. So this is significant, right?

[01:07:29] Adam Cox: [01:07:30] So the hair's got caught in a knot, . And they didn't find this before?

[01:07:32] Kyle Risi: So this could either confirm at least one of the boys did this or placed someone else at the scene. The DNA is tested. It is of course mitochondrial, DNA. I've probably butchered that. Basically It means this isn't a unique fingerprint to one person. Instead it's an indicator to a whole maternal line.

[01:07:50] It would point the finger at you and your siblings, for example, but it would also point the finger at your mum, but your mum's siblings, your grandma, and then your grandma's siblings.

[01:07:59] [01:08:00] So up the maternal line. So it could be anyone in that line.

[01:08:02] Adam Cox: Sure. But it could in theory, rule you out because if you don't share anything within that maternal line.

[01:08:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah. They test the hair. It does not match any of the West Memphis three or any of the victims.

[01:08:13] Adam Cox: So it does rule them out.

[01:08:14] Kyle Risi: Yes, but they do find a match.

[01:08:16] Adam Cox: Who?

[01:08:17] Kyle Risi: Stevie's stepfather, Terry Hobbs.

[01:08:19] Adam Cox: Hang on sec, just remind me. Is he the one that went to call the police?

[01:08:23] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[01:08:23] Adam Cox: Ah, that's interesting.

[01:08:25] Kyle Risi: Now, it could be argued that it is plausible that the hair would be there since obviously [01:08:30] they live in the same household, right?

[01:08:31] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:08:31] Kyle Risi: Also, it could be Terry's Mum's, DNA. Yeah. So Grandma's going Murder and people.

[01:08:36] Adam Cox: True.

[01:08:36] Kyle Risi: Don't worry around or any of the siblings. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:08:38] But there is also still a lot to be said for the fact that it was caught inside that league au, right? Mm-hmm. Also Terry Hobbs does not have an alibi for his whereabouts on the night of the murders.

[01:08:47] Adam Cox: But I guess no one's even considering it's him though, right at this point or before they had

[01:08:52] Kyle Risi: It's 1 0 1

[01:08:53] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:08:53] Kyle Risi: Of oh, you found a body check the family.

[01:08:55] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:08:56] Kyle Risi: So on the basis of this new evidence, Damien, Jason, and [01:09:00] Jesse's attorneys, they push for a retrial And since the DNA points to someone on the maternal line, even though it is strong in terms of where it was found, the DNA itself doesn't specifically incriminate any one single person.

[01:09:11] So if they are going to argue for a retrial. They need to, as well as the DNA undermine the foundation that this case was a Satanic ritual killing.

[01:09:21] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:21] Kyle Risi: They find that angle, when they discover, remember Frank Pereti? He's the guy who testified that the knife was likely the one used to kill or injure the [01:09:30] boys. Well, they discover that he is not even qualified,

[01:09:32] Adam Cox: right?

[01:09:33] Kyle Risi: In fact, he failed his exams twice and refused to take them for a third time. And so he was just like, well, fuck it. I've already got my job working at the examiner's office. I'm in no rush to take my exams.

[01:09:44] And so what they decided to do is they decide to bring in a brand new examiner. It is someone very credible, world renowned pathologist, Vincent de Mayo.

[01:09:52] Now, he reviews the evidence and he says, yeah, the autopsies were very thorough, but they were conclusively wrong.

[01:09:59] He says, the [01:10:00] boys' injuries, including Kris's castration, in no way matched that knife in fact, it did not match a knife at all because they are not knife wounds.

[01:10:11] Adam Cox: Hang on.

[01:10:12] Kyle Risi: They were bite marks from snapping turtles.

[01:10:16] Adam Cox: What?

[01:10:17] Kyle Risi: Yes. So that drainage ditch where the boys were found was locally known as Turtle City on the basis that they were crawling with turtles. Right.

[01:10:25] To prove this, Vincent volunteers to let a snapping turtle bite him, and the [01:10:30] injuries perfectly line up with the injuries they find on the boys all over their bodies.

[01:10:34] Adam Cox: You said there's load of tadpoles in there, didn't you? Yeah.

[01:10:36] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff going on in that water, like it's loads of fauna and grubs and bugs and, turtles as well.

[01:10:43] Adam Cox: How did they not? Oh, 'cause of the guy who was incompetent. Yeah. That's why.

[01:10:47] But geez.

[01:10:48] Kyle Risi: So they wanna test this now a bit, and they test to see how a turtle might maybe attack or consume a pig.

[01:10:54] And just as they saw with the boys, the turtles make a beeline for all of the soft tissues on the body, including the ears, [01:11:00] the cheeks, the nose, and of course the genitals.

[01:11:02] Adam Cox: Mm.

[01:11:03] Kyle Risi: And so, Adam, this is massive. This completely undermines the entire basis of the entire case that this was not a Satanic ritual killing.

[01:11:12] And so combine that with the DNA and combine that with the fact that it was turtles doing this. They might have grounds for retrial. right?

[01:11:21] Adam Cox: I wanna say yes wrong.

[01:11:24] Kyle Risi: Exactly. In 2008, again, they file all of this information. They show the DNA, [01:11:30] they show kind of the pathologist report and he rejects it. Yet again,

[01:11:35] Adam Cox: the same judge.

[01:11:35] Kyle Risi: Same judge,

[01:11:36] Adam Cox: get 'em out, sack them.

[01:11:37] Kyle Risi: And so they have no choice now. But to go to Supreme Court, it takes two years, but eventually. They order a new judge.

[01:11:44] This is a guy called David Lazer to take a look at the evidence and he agrees there are in fact grounds for a retrial, but he says it comes at a massive risk for Jesse, Jason, and Damien.

[01:11:56] He says that if they are found guilty again, that is it. No [01:12:00] more appeals. They will be sent to prison for life and Damien will be executed.

[01:12:04] Adam Cox: This is their last chance. They have to be so sure and make sure everything is in order,

[01:12:09] Kyle Risi: but how confident will you be when the way that you get an innocent verdict is through a jury who are dead set on believing that there are SATs out there killing everyone.

[01:12:20] Adam Cox: The only thing I can think of at this point in time, if it's 2007

[01:12:23] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[01:12:24] Adam Cox: Maybe some of that mindset Yes. Has dissipated.

[01:12:27] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. But it's not the avenue that they're gonna [01:12:30] go down.

[01:12:30] Adam Cox: Oh.

[01:12:31] Kyle Risi: So the boys', lawyers, they call a meeting with the state and the prosecution. They have a plan. They know that the state doesn't want to bear the costs of a retrial.

[01:12:39] They also know that the state is terrified that they could be found innocent. That's a massive miscarriage of justice that they should have known about.

[01:12:46] Yeah.

[01:12:46] The prosecution they don't want a retrial either, and that's 'cause after 18 years, several of their key witnesses have died. But also many of those original experts have been disgraced, like Frank Peri.

[01:12:58] So knowing [01:13:00] this, the defense lawyers floats an idea and that is the elford plea.

[01:13:05] Basically. This is where Damien, Jason, and Jesse, they all plead guilty, but the state lets them go with time served and probation. So if the boys agree, they all go free. There's no expensive retrial. The state doesn't have to worry about being sued or having to pay compensation later on down the line. It protects their reputation and the prosecution at least gets to say, well, they pleaded guilty, so technically it's a win for us.

[01:13:27] Adam Cox: That's not okay though, is it? They've been in [01:13:30] prison for the majority or half of their lives pretty much.

[01:13:32] They need to rebuild their lives. Everyone thinks it's them.

[01:13:35] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:13:36] Adam Cox: That's not okay.

[01:13:37] Kyle Risi: For Jesse, especially Damien, remember he's sitting on death row. This is a no-brainer, but for Jason, the idea of going free by pleading guilty is not something that he wants.

[01:13:45] Mm-hmm.

[01:13:46] So he initially says no, and he's happy to stay in jail while the others go free. But here's a catch. The alpha plea can't happen unless all three of them agree.

[01:13:55] Adam Cox: Really.

[01:13:56] Kyle Risi: And so Jason saying no means that he's condemning his friend Damien to [01:14:00] death.

[01:14:00] Adam Cox: like, I dunno how you deal with that. I wouldn't want to be the reason someone is gonna die,

[01:14:05] Kyle Risi: Adam, in the end, it is a no-brainer. Like to save Damien's life. Jason agrees to the alpha plea. He signs it. And so on the 9th of August, 2011, after 18 years in prison, all three of them walk out of their courtroom as free citizens.

[01:14:19] Adam Cox: But do they have a criminal record because they admitted that they were guilty?

[01:14:22] Kyle Risi: Technically They are guilty, yes. They have a criminal record. They plead are guilty, but they are free.

[01:14:28] Adam Cox: how do they rebuild their lives? Because [01:14:30] you have to declare if you are a, you know, got a criminal record. Mm-hmm. What's that for? Oh, for murdering children.

[01:14:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I think in a case as big as this, defacto, they're innocent. And I think a lot of people at this moment in time believe that they're innocent This is also why the public are outraged by the alpha belief. Mm-hmm. they recognize they can't go and sue the state for a miscarriage justice. And that just outrages the public even more.

[01:14:54] Adam Cox: Good.

[01:14:55] Kyle Risi: But there is a tragic consequence to the alpha plea it ends up not [01:15:00] triggering the process of reopening the investigation meaning that the real killer is still out there and is scot-free.

[01:15:07] Adam Cox: Yeah. Because if you are like the families of these victims and you've come to realize how yeah, what fast this has been.

[01:15:15] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:15] Adam Cox: You can accept them going free. But you'd want justice still. Right?

[01:15:19] Kyle Risi: Exactly. You'd want them to continue searching for whoever did this.

[01:15:22] Of course, when this is reported on about the alpha plea, this causes massive outrage across America, and it's because over the [01:15:30] years, since 1996, there have been so much interest in this case. There have been a ton of documentaries like the Paradise Lost Trilogies that have been made on the story and they meant that people had woken up to what, as you said, what a far this case had been from the very start.

[01:15:47] It's partly why the state liked the idea of the Al four plea to begin with, because it meant that they would never, ever need to answer to the public.

[01:15:57] And also, if the boys got out free, they would never be able to [01:16:00] even ask for compensation for being incarcerated for 18 years.

[01:16:03] But the idea of the alpha plea meant that the real killer would never be looked into and that to the public was just an outrage.

[01:16:11] And so one of the people who this really strikes is producer Peter Jackson. Of course, we will know him from films such as

[01:16:21] Adam Cox: Lord of the Rings,

[01:16:23] Kyle Risi: the Hobbit. And King Kong.

[01:16:25] Adam Cox: Oh, yes.

[01:16:26] Kyle Risi: Yeah. He's outraged by the blatant miscarriage justice of [01:16:30] this case, and he decides that he's gonna do his own investigation.

[01:16:32] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:16:33] Kyle Risi: So along with his wife, Fran Walsh, they start working on their own documentary called West of Memphis, which is released in 2012. So a year after the boys were finally released.

[01:16:43] They speak to a bunch of witnesses, family members, and private investigators that the defense originally hired. And Adam, very quickly, a lot of the light Lance firmly on Terry Hobbs.

[01:16:54] Adam Cox: I bet. Yeah.

[01:16:55] Kyle Risi: One of the very first things that comes from talking to his family is Terry's [01:17:00] history with violence.

[01:17:00] He's not a good guy.

[01:17:02] At one point, he, I believe, shot his brother-in-law, but he's also violent towards Pam and the kids.

[01:17:08] It's to the point that two weeks before Stevie's murder, Stevie told Pam that Terry loves Amanda, but he doesn't love me. And that's a real realization that, you know what? My stepdad's a bit of a dick.

[01:17:21] Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:17:21] Kyle Risi: Stevie's aunt says that Amanda, his little sister, had confided in her over the years about Terry sexually abusing her, starting from the age of four [01:17:30] years old, where she says Terry would digitally penetrate her.

[01:17:34] She also says that Terry would force Stevie to watch him masturbate, and then that escalated into coercing him to mess with Amanda sexually,

[01:17:42] Adam Cox: So this whole kind of incestuous thing that he would impose on them.

[01:17:45] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:17:46] The documentary also raises very serious questions over Terry's alibi, and that leads Adam to a massive revelation.

[01:17:54] Remember the night pan was at work, right?

[01:17:56] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:17:57] Kyle Risi: Stevie, of course, didn't come home when he was supposed to, and [01:18:00] so he was in deep trouble.

[01:18:01] Did Terry go looking for him in a rage, find him with the others and then kill them all? That is the question that people seem to believe potentially happened.

[01:18:10] It's all speculative.

[01:18:11] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:18:12] Kyle Risi: Terry's official alibi in all of this is that he spent the evening looking for Stevie with his best friend, David Jacoby.

[01:18:18] But while David initially backed up this alibi, when he was deposed, their stories didn't line up on very key details.

[01:18:25] On top of that, David Jacoby's hair was found near a tree stu, near to where the boys [01:18:30] were found. Oh.

[01:18:31] At the time the investigators put this down to secondary transfer. Right. But now that Terry's DNA had also been found, David's DNA now seems very relevant in this case as well. Right. Both of them are there, and Terry's was caught between one of the knots.

[01:18:45] I understand finding Terry's DNA, like he's his stepfather, but his stepfather's friend question mark.

[01:18:52] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:18:53] Kyle Risi: And the way that Terry's hair was found in that not, I mean, come on.

[01:18:56] Also, a neighbor testifies that she saw Terry Hobbes with [01:19:00] three boys near Robin Hood Hills ran by 6:30 PM that evening. Now, while police believed that she saw Terry, they think she was mistaken about seeing him with three boys.

[01:19:11] Adam Cox: Right.

[01:19:11] Kyle Risi: And so they discounted that testimony, but she's always, throughout the years, been adamant that she saw Terry with three boys.

[01:19:19] Adam Cox: Interesting. So there were clues, or at least this testament from this woman. There are always things there that actually, if it was a. A genuine police force that was looking at all [01:19:30] avenues. They should have pursued that.

[01:19:31] Kyle Risi: Let me say it like this. If the police had looked at the go-to avenue where you investigate the damn parents or people who know the boys,

[01:19:41] Adam Cox: mm-hmm.

[01:19:41] Kyle Risi: Then they would've gone a lot further and they didn't. They went for the most outlandish explanation. In this case, it's wild.

[01:19:50] But it goes on because going back to Pam, she says, in hindsight, Terry's behavior following the murders was very off because the days after the boys were found, she woke up [01:20:00] one morning to find Terry doing laundry, which is something he'd never did, and at the time she thought he was just trying to be helpful given what the family was going through.

[01:20:08] But she says, looking back with everything we know now, like was he washing evidence?

[01:20:14] Adam Cox: Mm.

[01:20:15] Kyle Risi: She also says that Stevie had a pen knife that his biological father had given him.

[01:20:21] She says that this was Stevie's pride and joy. He literally took it everywhere and she assumed he had it with him the night that he was murdered, [01:20:30] and she even begged police to please try and find it because she wanted to keep that little pen knife.

[01:20:34] Mm-hmm. As a keepsake, years later, she discovers that Pen knife in Terry Hobbs' nightstand

[01:20:39] Adam Cox: Really?

[01:20:40] Kyle Risi: And Terry never once mentioned that he had it even after knowing how much she wanted it.

[01:20:46] Adam Cox: Yeah. You just think whether he did it or not, he sounds like a dick.

[01:20:50] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. And so the West of Memphis documentary basically layers all this stuff about Terry, and it eventually builds into what interviewers and private investigators call the Dark family [01:21:00] Secrets, something that Terry's nephew, Michael Hobbs Jr. Says that he's carried with him since he was a kid.

[01:21:07] And basically he says that sometime after the murder Terry had come to visit the family, he says that he heard his dad and Terry talking downstairs.

[01:21:17] Terry was bawling his eyes out and he kept apologizing and he says that Terry admitted to killing all three boys.

[01:21:24] Adam Cox: Bloody how?

[01:21:25] Kyle Risi: Michael Jr. Had two of his friends with him there that day and they heard it and they [01:21:30] corroborated all this on a polygraph test, which they all passed.

[01:21:33] Adam Cox: So how old were they then?

[01:21:35] Kyle Risi: So they would've been maybe early teenagers, maybe 13 or 14.

[01:21:39] Adam Cox: And this would've been, I guess, still relatively recent after the murders.

[01:21:43] Kyle Risi: That's right.

[01:21:43] Adam Cox: And they've kept it, why didn't they not do anything about it? I guess they still young though, right? Yeah. Will they be believed? All that sort of stuff, getting worried. Their parents won't believe them.

[01:21:52] Kyle Risi: The thing is though, throughout all of the boys appeals, the West Memphis three, a lot of this information was building up as part of the subsequent evidence that was [01:22:00] collected. Right. Like damning stuff that, uh, is really worth looking into. Right. This judge who kept rejecting all their appeals, would've seen a lot of this stuff.

[01:22:09] Mm-hmm. And yet he rejected it every single time.

[01:22:12] And it is hard not to wonder why. And it comes down to the state basically wanting to protect itself.

[01:22:20] That alpha plea in effect was their protection from scrutiny. And the question is there any evidence for this? Well, remember, as I said earlier on all the evidence [01:22:30] that Damien was told was destroyed in the fire. It wasn't, it turned up in 2021.

[01:22:35] So who was actively trying to hide that and for what reason? You can only wonder whether or not it was the state that was deliberately hiding that to prevent any future appeals from being initiated.

[01:22:46] Adam Cox: Yeah. Well, clearly they could see, like the odds were stacking against them with the additional evidence that was being found and being brought up they just didn't see any other way out of this.

[01:22:56] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So you're left with this horrible feeling that the system wasn't just [01:23:00] saying no, it was making sure Damien couldn't keep pushing because it likely knew there was enough to force a retrial.

[01:23:06] one, They likely would've won and the state would've looked like idiots, right?

[01:23:10] Adam Cox: Yeah. There'd been a lot of people, I guess, in trouble because would some of them have gone to prison be fine? There'd been a lot, I would've thought there'd been an investigation to the judge, right? Mm-hmm. So all of this stuff, what did happen then? Because did people happened to Terry?

[01:23:24] Kyle Risi: This is the thing, the boys have effectively pleaded guilty. There can be no reopening of the [01:23:30] case. And so there will be no one looking into Terry Hobbs' involvement in this case.

[01:23:33] Adam Cox: But then does it mean Terry's free.

[01:23:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:23:36] Adam Cox: Wow. How can you get away with murder like that?

[01:23:39] Kyle Risi: Which brings us to today because Damien, Jason and Jesse, they are still fighting for full exoneration. Damien is especially vocal, but he isn't an idiot. He knows the state is ironclad protected itself with his L four plea.

[01:23:52] And so while he may never be exonerated, he's determined to have all that DNA tested, which is why in November, 2025, [01:24:00] he has requested all those samples from that missing evidence that showed up in 2021 to be properly analyzed forensically using kind of 2026 kind of technology.

[01:24:10] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:24:10] Kyle Risi: And. Look, this story, like I said, is bigger than what we can cover. There are so many other aspects and angles and side stories that are generally worth their own episode, including a lot of the information around Chris Byers and Michael Moore's fathers

[01:24:26] for example, there was a load of controversy around Chris Bayer's [01:24:30] father having his teeth removed so that a bite sample couldn't be taken off his teeth.

[01:24:34] Adam Cox: Really?

[01:24:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he's a right hillbilly and he does act really weird. He goes on these big ran as well. So a lot of that is covered in the documentaries as well. But of course to me it looks like it was Terry Hobbs that is the key suspect here. And I think a lot of people come to believe that it was Terry Hobbs in the end.

[01:24:51] But at the heart of the story, Adam is a system that has become more committed to protecting itself and pursuing the truth.

[01:24:57] There's also a cultural center to the story, [01:25:00] and it's a warning about what happens when you let a moral panic replace forensic fact.

[01:25:05] And like we can sit here and go, yeah, but that was the eighties. But panics like this do take hold in modern societies today. Just look at what happened with the whole anti-vax steria. Like during COVID, right. Look at Q Anon and how that birthed the Pizzagate scandal.

[01:25:21] This story was a panic that created cultural pressure to exploit a vulnerable, mentally disabled teenager to service a story that the country had already been primed to [01:25:30] believe for years.

[01:25:31] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:25:31] Kyle Risi: And it shows you something very important that moral panics, they don't just vanish overnight when the headlines move on. If we let them, they linger. And the West Memphis free happened in the long shadow of the Satanic panic, even after it was supposedly put to bed. The fear was still there. It was still steering a lot of decisions.

[01:25:53] That is a warning that we should be paying attention to. What effect will modern day moral panics, like Q Anon or the [01:26:00] anti-vaxxer movements, or hell even Jeffrey Epstein, how will they shape kind of how we kind of bring justice

[01:26:06] In future cases.

[01:26:07] Adam Cox: Exactly. They linger on for probably a good decade or more afterwards. Right?

[01:26:12] Kyle Risi: For sure. And that's exactly what happened. Like with the Satanic panic, it was 20 years in the making, and we still, I think, are in the shadow. We still have a fear of, for example, male preschool teachers. It's just not a thing culturally, it's not a thing.

[01:26:28] However, when you look at the [01:26:30] history between the fifties and the seventies, that was very commonplace. Mm-hmm. Right. It was almost 50 50 split. Now, you'd be lucky if you found 10% of males working as preschool teachers.

[01:26:42] That is a direct effect of the Satanic panic and the whole kind of, we should take all sexual abuse cases very, very seriously and it's caused a vilification of men in certain roles.

[01:26:53] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's almost like. People question, why would you wanna work with kids? Sure. It's adults or teenagers sort of thing. Mm-hmm. You're right. [01:27:00] Yeah. It's, I never thought of it like that.

[01:27:02] Kyle Risi: So these things have an effect and in this case, it sent three boys to prison without parole. One of them to death row.

[01:27:09] Adam Cox: I mean, in some ways it's a good thing that death row can take so long just because of

[01:27:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I don't think he was ever actually given an official date of when he would be executed. But the thing is though, he's sitting in his cell knowing that that could come any day.

[01:27:21] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:27:21] Kyle Risi: And Adam, that is the story of the West and this three.

[01:27:26] Adam Cox: That is, I can see why it was, you know, people are so [01:27:30] fascinated because I, I, I just don't understand how that even happened.

[01:27:33] I mean, I can, based on some of the other stories we've covered, but I, I'm angry that the killer is still out there.

[01:27:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah, me too.

[01:27:40] Adam Cox: Whoever he might be. Allegedly whatever.

[01:27:43] Kyle Risi: When I was looking at, some aerial footage of Robinhood Hills, like I said, they're on a main road and across the road is a truck stop.

[01:27:50] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:27:51] Kyle Risi: Massive truck stop.

[01:27:52] I wonder whether or not it was just someone passing by, someone who's parks up for the night, went into those woods, found these [01:28:00] three boys and murdered them, and then he was off.

[01:28:02] I think that's possible.

[01:28:04] Adam Cox: I guess we'll never know unless a case can be opened or reopened against this. But if we're saying that's not possible,

[01:28:10] Kyle Risi: no, not with the, the plea in place.

[01:28:13] Adam Cox: Well, someone, you know what, that was a rule that someone put in place.

[01:28:16] Surely someone can put in place a new rule.

[01:28:18] Kyle Risi: Sure. Of course. Rules are there to be changed, right?

[01:28:20] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:28:21] Kyle Risi: Anyway, Adam, fancy doing some member shout outs.

[01:28:24] Adam Cox: Let's do it.

[01:28:25] Kyle Risi: As you guys know, HR have been hard at work assigning the ideal roles for our [01:28:30] certified priests and big top tier members. The only problem is,

[01:28:33] Adam Cox: we don't actually know what your job entails.

[01:28:36] Kyle Risi: So when you hear your name, take notes of your job title, the one that we say, and then use in the link in the show notes, submit your official job description to hr.

[01:28:44] Adam Cox: Yeah, we want to know what your duties involve,

[01:28:47] Kyle Risi: duties,

[01:28:48] Adam Cox: who you report to, and any major instance that have happened under your watch.

[01:28:52] Kyle Risi: They also wanna know how you guys are tracking against your KPIs, and we will read some of the best job descriptions in a future episode.

[01:28:59] Adam Cox: Okay. [01:29:00] So this week a very big welcome to

[01:29:01] Kali our Lead Coordinator of Mildly Concerning Animal Shenanigans

[01:29:05] we work very closely together.

[01:29:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Uh, we have Taylor Rose our Trapeze Grip Powder Allocation Overseer

[01:29:12] Adam Cox: IngridB our Nighttime Shadow-Puppet Authenticity Auditor

[01:29:16] Kyle Risi: nice.

[01:29:17] Heather Duncan or Senior Cloud-to-Tent Static Electricity orecaster. I

[01:29:22] Adam Cox: don't even know what that means.

[01:29:23] Kyle Risi: I, I think Heather knows what it means.

[01:29:25] Adam Cox: She will. Yeah.

[01:29:26] Eashaan Vajpeyi our Ringmaster Hat Tilt [01:29:30] Angle Enforcement Lead.

[01:29:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah. She works for me.

[01:29:32] Adam Cox: Okay.

[01:29:32] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Yeah. And we are Becca our Compliance Monitor for Excessive Clown Confidence.

[01:29:37] Adam Cox: Okay. Too much. Too much clowning around.

[01:29:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah,

[01:29:40] Adam Cox: she'll be in touch.

[01:29:41] Kyle Risi: And this week's best job description is from Rebecca McIntyre. she's known as Avery, well, a self-appointed circus breeze analyst.

[01:29:50] Adam Cox: Okay,

[01:29:52] So she says she's responsible for assigning blame to moving air and pointing confidently at nothing during moments of [01:30:00] crisis.

[01:30:02] Kyle Risi: Nice

[01:30:03] Adam Cox: her experience includes arguing with gusts, weaponizing drafts for dramatic timing, uh, releasing scarves to distract from non-events, release the scarves and stopping a breeze once by sheer denial. It didn't happen.

[01:30:17] Kyle Risi: It didn't happen.

[01:30:18] Very good skills include advanced breeze, gas lighting, cape inflation theory, and Finger to the Air Analytics and professional shrugging.

[01:30:28] And her references [01:30:30] are unavailable due to atmospheric conditions.

[01:30:32] Adam Cox: Hmm. Key performance indicators include audience gasps per minute, number of secrets not discovered, successful breezes that feel natural, and incidents where someone says, huh, weird and then forgets why.

[01:30:45] Kyle Risi: Yes. Very good.

[01:30:47] Adam Cox: And a reminder, if you're a certified freak or a big top member and you didn't hear your job title this time, don't panic. You'll role exists somewhere in Sue's filing cabinet, and we'll read more of them in our future episode.

[01:30:59] But if you [01:31:00] want yours now, message us on Patreon or Instagram and we'll dig it out so you can get cracking on your job description.

[01:31:06] Kyle Risi: Very good. I really enjoyed that one today.

[01:31:08] Adam Cox: Very good. Yeah.

[01:31:09] Kyle Risi: Right. Shall we, uh, shall we run the outro for this week, Adam?

[01:31:11] Adam Cox: Let's do it.

[01:31:12] Kyle Risi: And that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium.

[01:31:16] Adam Cox: And if today's episode has sparked your curiosity, then please do us a favor and follow us on your favorite podcast app. It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people like you discover the show

[01:31:27] Kyle Risi: and for our dedicated freaks out there, don't forget that next week's [01:31:30] episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon and as always is completely free to access.

[01:31:34] Adam Cox: And if that is not enough for you,

[01:31:36] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[01:31:36] Adam Cox: And you want even more?

[01:31:37] Kyle Risi: Yes,

[01:31:38] Adam Cox: then join our certified Freaks tier. To unlock the entire archive. You get to delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek of what's coming next.

[01:31:45] Kyle Risi: We drop new episodes every Tuesday and until then, remember, robinhood heels did not just take these three boys, it exposed what a panic can do to justice.

[01:31:55] We'll see you next time.

[01:31:56] Adam Cox: See you. [01:32:00]