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Speaker 4: Meaning the live man like this man letting butterfly, flapping.
Speaker 2: His wing, dig down in the forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 2: cause a tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man,
Speaker 2: nobody's seen, nobody you know, need no Man. They pluck
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Speaker 2: Don't like to dag on the panel. Man, Man don't matter. Man.
Speaker 4: All right. Finally, uh, after many many requests, Thomas and
Speaker 4: I are returning to our series on the Occult. I
Speaker 4: think it was good to take a little break. This
Speaker 4: stuff does obviously get depressing, but we weren't done yet.
Speaker 4: So you can stop sending me emails, you can stop
Speaker 4: leaving comments. We're continuing the series, so Thomas, I'll kick
Speaker 4: it back to you.
Speaker 2: Man. Yeah, thanks for hosting me. You can't talk about
Speaker 2: the phenomena of late twentieth century occultism in America and
Speaker 2: that whole liminal tendency without dealing with the case of
Speaker 2: the West Memphis three. And for those who don't know,
Speaker 2: I assume most people do. They've at least heard of it.
Speaker 2: This came into the public mind because in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: six there was this HBO documentary that was very heavily promoted.
Speaker 2: It was called Paradise Lost the child Murders at robin
Speaker 2: Hood Hills. And back then HBO had a reputation of
Speaker 2: pretty serious documentary filmmaking. There was a series called America Undercover.
Speaker 2: They produced that brand are the things that produced that
Speaker 2: movie about Irish Mickey Ward's brothers crack addiction called High
Speaker 2: on Crack Street. They made a whole movie about Mickey
Speaker 2: Ward and his brother and they that documentary is a
Speaker 2: plot device on the movie. And you know it it was.
Speaker 2: It attracted pretty serious filmmakers. And also there's a lot
Speaker 2: of money behind promoting these projects. So what the deal
Speaker 2: was with this documentary film? These three little boys, these
Speaker 2: three eight year old boys, they were savagely murdered in
Speaker 2: this interstate town in rural Arkansas called Marion. Where the
Speaker 2: boys were found was in this forest preserve behind a
Speaker 2: truck stop called robin Hood Hills that was in West Memphis. Technically, Okay,
Speaker 2: so that's why the defendants were called the West Memphis three.
Speaker 2: This was on May fifth, nineteen ninety three, and nobody
Speaker 2: really heard about it other than locally. But this film
Speaker 2: dropped in nineteen ninety six. And the guys who were
Speaker 2: behind this film, there's a guy named Joe Berlinger and
Speaker 2: Bruce Sinowski, and they were both kind of these wannabes.
Speaker 2: They came up through the There was kind of an
Speaker 2: American version of the cinema veritaean movement. If you've ever
Speaker 2: seen Gimme Shelter, this's the documentary on the on the Stones,
Speaker 2: you know, the ultimat Speedway concert that was, you know,
Speaker 2: the end of the sixties, as people have kind of
Speaker 2: branded it. That was kind of the prime example of it.
Speaker 2: And Berlinger and Sinofsky they'd been proteges of the guy
Speaker 2: who made that film. Okay, so Sinofsky he was always
Speaker 2: trying to establish himself as as this kind of serious documentarian,
Speaker 2: but by the nineties that wasn't really in style. People
Speaker 2: weren't really thirsty for that kind of filmmaking. And uh,
Speaker 2: Sinofsky in his own right. What he was most known
Speaker 2: for later that idiotic Metallica documentary where they're all crying
Speaker 2: like bitches and going to therapy and stuff. He worked
Speaker 2: on that. He was always kind of a wanna be
Speaker 2: rock and roll guy. Okay, So Paradise Lost it was
Speaker 2: really kind of shocking because the opening scene of it,
Speaker 2: the camera pans over Robinood Hills and then it's almost
Speaker 2: like trying for the will or something. It descends the
Speaker 2: ground level. Then it costs the actual footage of the
Speaker 2: dead bodies, you know, so it's it's like jarring, and
Speaker 2: the film kind of presented this narrative of this town
Speaker 2: being an evil town and there being something that conspired,
Speaker 2: you know, within the within the culture to make this happen.
Speaker 2: It didn't declare that these that the defendants were innocent,
Speaker 2: but like all all documentary films about true crime, it
Speaker 2: always tries to raise a at least the suggestion a
Speaker 2: reasonable doubt, otherwise there's no narrative to it. But ultimately
Speaker 2: these three teenagers were arrested for the crime. Damian Eccles,
Speaker 2: Jesse mss Kelly Junior, and Jason Baldwin. And these three
Speaker 2: guys all kind of fit a rural stereotype. Jesse miss
Speaker 2: Kelly was this redneck with a mohawk, who was known
Speaker 2: to his dad was next con. He was into hot
Speaker 2: rods and getting drunk and growing. Jason Baldwin was this
Speaker 2: unassuming guy, and this becomes relevant, the fact that he's
Speaker 2: so unassuming, but he he kind of seemed like a
Speaker 2: soft spoken every man kid with a mullet, you know,
Speaker 2: in a soft Southern drawl. But Damien Eccles, he was
Speaker 2: a fella my acolyte with a self identified Satanist and
Speaker 2: he was infamous in this town for being involved in
Speaker 2: occult activities. So the documentary it kind of came to
Speaker 2: focus on Damien Echo just because he was so strange
Speaker 2: and like a lot of poor Southerners, both white guys
Speaker 2: and black guys, he had that kind of sensibility that
Speaker 2: for some reason fascinates a lot of bougie types. So
Speaker 2: he kind of became the focus of this movie. Okay,
Speaker 2: and it's the film is full of shots of these
Speaker 2: Southern people kind of acting in stereotypical ways. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of shots of them at church where there's a
Speaker 2: fire and brimstone pastor. You know. It kind of made
Speaker 2: the people in this town seem as culturally out of
Speaker 2: step and alien, as possible, and Berlinger then it kind
Speaker 2: of become his m O. What put him on the
Speaker 2: map as a documentary filmmaker was this movie called Brothers
Speaker 2: Keeper that came out in nineteen ninety. That was this
Speaker 2: gruesome case that took place in Utica, New York, which
Speaker 2: is an upstate New York and these elderly brothers who
Speaker 2: lived on this old estate that was worth a lot
Speaker 2: of money, but they were these kinds of hermit hoarders.
Speaker 2: One brother killed the other one, and as was alleged
Speaker 2: by the state, it wasn't clear if he died in
Speaker 2: natural cause, as if he was strangled. But there was
Speaker 2: all these lured suggestions about homosexuality, incest, all kinds of
Speaker 2: gruesome stuff, and this got whatever was going sort of
Speaker 2: a tabloid story. It got all this praise from these
Speaker 2: sort of artsy people in Hollywood types. So Berlinger really
Speaker 2: got the bug for kind of trying to impress that
Speaker 2: that whole community.
Speaker 4: You know well, and Thomas, you spoke earlier about the narrative,
Speaker 4: you know, within the documentary, But the way that this
Speaker 4: story is cast in popular culture is very much in
Speaker 4: the same language as the Satanic Panic. It's basically the
Speaker 4: superstitious country pumpkins, you know, trying to you know, frame
Speaker 4: these innocent teenagers. And I think that that's a big
Speaker 4: part of the reason that this story and several of
Speaker 4: the figures into it remained relevant through the George Bush
Speaker 4: years because it became a sort of piece of that
Speaker 4: anti fundamentalist narrative during the reaction to Bush the lesser.
Speaker 4: But I'll kick it back to you, no.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent, and that's exactly what Echos and the
Speaker 2: documentary really leaned into that, saying, you know, these people
Speaker 2: in this town just hate my ass and they think
Speaker 2: I worshiped Satan because they don't understand my religion. And
Speaker 2: to be clear, this was nineteen ninety three, so even
Speaker 2: if you accept the Satanic panic myth, that was all
Speaker 2: over by then. What people were worried about in early
Speaker 2: nineties was race, war stuff, organized gangs, which was a
Speaker 2: real thing. The you know recession, particularly in places like
Speaker 2: Mary in Arkansas, a lot of people are out of work.
Speaker 2: And I made this point of people too, this came
Speaker 2: up speaking of the sort of fundamentalist Christian boogeyman. You're
Speaker 2: too young to remember this, but when McCain was running
Speaker 2: against Obama, and he took on that silly woman as
Speaker 2: his running mate, Sarah Palin. I remember people talking about
Speaker 2: Palin and Alaska like these were a bunch of holy
Speaker 2: roller hicks. I'm like, man, Alaska's first. It's like seventy
Speaker 2: percent mail. It's full of rough and tumble military guys, uh, fishermen.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a very it's a very unsavory culture.
Speaker 2: A lot of prostitution, a lot of drugs, casual violence.
Speaker 2: People don't really understand what rural America's about. It's not
Speaker 2: it's not a bunch of it's it's not a bunch
Speaker 2: of Mormons sitting around hiding people for having a beer.
Speaker 2: It's very it's very rough and.
Speaker 4: Oh exactly, and again not to keep interrupting you here, no,
Speaker 4: but that is very much. It's sort of this like
Speaker 4: view of everywhere that isn't you know Brooklyn or California
Speaker 4: as just the kind of like narrowly constituted South, which
Speaker 4: is basically this like you know, insane vision of like
Speaker 4: you know what Selma must have been like. And to
Speaker 4: your point, like Alaska is, I mean, sure, you know
Speaker 4: they they vote read, but very very different culturally, very
Speaker 4: different people it is not small town Southern America. But
Speaker 4: back to you, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also Gary mess who wrote a really he
Speaker 2: was a journalist for I think the I think the
Speaker 2: Little Rock Gizette or whatever the Little Rock main legacy
Speaker 2: print brand was. He wrote a lot of serious stuff
Speaker 2: on this case, very critical of the documentary. But he
Speaker 2: was when this was going on. I think he was
Speaker 2: in his late twenties, and he's like, look this narrative
Speaker 2: that Echos particularly was singled out for being a for
Speaker 2: being into Metallica and wearing black. He's like, okay, Metallica
Speaker 2: was the number one band in America in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: and if you've ever been to the rural South, everybody
Speaker 2: likes heavy metal. Everybody likes black T shirts. I miss
Speaker 2: I think actually got he captured a shot. One of
Speaker 2: the cops who rested Echos was he was like this, Uh,
Speaker 2: he was some special Task Force guy wearing a Mega
Speaker 2: Death shirt. So this idea like, oh, in the South
Speaker 2: and the nineties, everyone hates heavy metal when rock and
Speaker 2: roll and they're afraid of you know, metallic. It's it's
Speaker 2: like these people watched, uh, that old Kevin Bacon movie
Speaker 2: where you're not allowed to dance and decided footloose or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's like very gay and very silly, but like.
Speaker 4: It know that was actually funny story that was actually filmed.
Speaker 4: Uh not too far away from me. I've actually been there.
Speaker 4: Interesting that looks like yeah because yeah.
Speaker 2: No that you know, so this kind of crazy narrative
Speaker 2: developed around it and then you know once uh and
Speaker 2: to be originally, like I said, the original film, most
Speaker 2: of that was coming from what Eccholes himself was saying
Speaker 2: and Beryling you're obviously was trying to treat his subject
Speaker 2: matter like a geek pit and say, look at these
Speaker 2: crazy redneck hull abilities. But it wasn't really until after
Speaker 2: it was released that beryln Dur and Sinofsky would fall
Speaker 2: on into claiming these three guys were framed by the
Speaker 2: bigoted South and the reason that happened. See I watched
Speaker 2: that when it aired, because again this was summer nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six and that was a huge boxing fan. And
Speaker 2: that's right after HBO's Boxing After Dark had aired. This
Speaker 2: was their they'd have championship boxing, usually welterweight and middleweight
Speaker 2: and lightweight, but it was on at ten thirty pm
Speaker 2: Central Time and they started promoting. They started running an
Speaker 2: ad for this movie during Boxing after Dark, and they
Speaker 2: presented it as, yeah, this was the Satanic Murderer, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, wow, that's nuts. So I watched it
Speaker 2: and I'm like, Okay, that wasn't bad, but it's obvious
Speaker 2: those guys are guilty. And pretty much everybody I knew
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, that that was an interesting documentary. Really
Speaker 2: nothing to see there. But then suddenly Hollywood said, this
Speaker 2: is a great movie about these people being framed and
Speaker 2: this is an outrage. And first of all, I was like,
Speaker 2: that's bizarre that Johnny Depp and Peter Jackson and the
Speaker 2: Dixie Chicks and Henry Rollins He's always an idiot, but uh,
Speaker 2: they really circled the wagons around this. And I remember
Speaker 2: at the time even other people in media saying, well,
Speaker 2: what did you see about this movie that I didn't see?
Speaker 2: Like why why do you think that? But Berylinger, who
Speaker 2: was always a starfucker to begin with, he goes full
Speaker 2: odd like, yeah, you're right, that's why I made this movie.
Speaker 2: So suddenly he becomes, you know, mister Innocence Project for
Speaker 2: the West Memphis three. When he realizes that he got
Speaker 2: the attention of Hollywood, which he was always trying to
Speaker 2: do period. So he proceeded to make this crazy easy
Speaker 2: sequel that now no one talks about anymore, that was
Speaker 2: essentially a hit piece on one of the victim's stepfathers,
Speaker 2: which uh it made no sense whatsoever, you know, and
Speaker 2: that he couldn't capture the same fire in a bottle
Speaker 2: with that one. But uh, you know, this became this
Speaker 2: became this huge uh cause celebrate and one of the uh,
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I'm disgusted by John Douglas is because,
Speaker 2: you know, the the the mind Hunter guy. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's a total fraud criminal profiling is nonsense, total pseudoscience.
Speaker 2: When the when when Damian Eckles got all this Hollywood
Speaker 2: money and uh in g O money to fight his
Speaker 2: case post conviction, you know, uh Douglas is available to
Speaker 2: hives bidder, you know, to claim that based on his
Speaker 2: mind Hunter probably profiling expertise, he can divinate if people
Speaker 2: are guilty or not. So he came out he joined
Speaker 2: this this uh bandwagon too. I mean he does that
Speaker 2: all the time. He's he got paid by jeoh Many
Speaker 2: Ramsey's mom, who obviously murdered her and uh the lead
Speaker 2: detective on the case wrote a whole book about it,
Speaker 2: which I advise anybody read if they're taken in by
Speaker 2: this delusion that there's some mystery behind what happened to
Speaker 2: that little girl. But her very wealthy parents hired John
Speaker 2: Douglas to basically either pr man. I mean, he's he's
Speaker 2: a scumbig, but uh, you know he uh he's he's
Speaker 2: very much got clout with the kinds of rubs or
Speaker 2: in the true crime and things, so that further sort
Speaker 2: of I'm a de momentum behind this. But what it uh,
Speaker 2: what when it comes down to, was that what was
Speaker 2: presented in this film doesn't reflect the evident record at all. Okay,
Speaker 2: the claim is that Damian Nichols was just this cool
Speaker 2: kid who was into heavy metal music. He got singled
Speaker 2: out by fundamentalist biggots who hated him. He having to
Speaker 2: be friends with this guy Jason Baldwin who just got
Speaker 2: roped in for being friends with him and Jesse miss
Speaker 2: Kelly was mentally retarded and the police tortured him for
Speaker 2: two days and an interrogation, and then he signed a
Speaker 2: false confession. That's not what happened, and we'll get into
Speaker 2: this as we go on. But the police didn't even
Speaker 2: intend to indict Jesse miss Kelly because they had no
Speaker 2: idea he was involved. He confessed repeatedly, then he confessed
Speaker 2: to his lawyer, then he confessed to his cellmate, then
Speaker 2: he confessed after he was convicted and sitting in prison
Speaker 2: serving his fifty year bit that this kid can't stop confessing,
Speaker 2: you know, and again he he's not mentally retarded, he's stupid.
Speaker 2: But even by the metric of the Supreme Court, you know,
Speaker 2: they arbitrarily said, if your IQ is under seventy, you
Speaker 2: can't you can't be executed because she likes the ability
Speaker 2: to You're too stupid basically to formuly specific intent, I
Speaker 2: think is the reasoning. But I mean, even by that
Speaker 2: metric or the colloaquial metric, he's not mentally retarded. But
Speaker 2: the way the way this basically shook out was obviously
Speaker 2: triple homicide a three eight year olds that that them
Speaker 2: that's shocking. But also I mean that's that that's a
Speaker 2: very strange crime, Okay, And to be clear, I mean
Speaker 2: this is a this is a disgusting case. So if
Speaker 2: that kind of thing upsets you, you might want to
Speaker 2: skip forward or two out. But one of the boys
Speaker 2: bled to death because he was castrated. The other two
Speaker 2: were severely beaten. Then they were immersed in this irrigation
Speaker 2: ditch and drowned. They know that the one boy bled
Speaker 2: out because he didn't have water on his lungs. He
Speaker 2: was and this becomes important to what was alleged in
Speaker 2: the post conviction appeals. Okay, being that they were immersed
Speaker 2: in water, that eliminated quite a bit of evidence, particularly
Speaker 2: biological evidence. But one of the boys, there was trace
Speaker 2: him us a seminal fluid on his genes, and obviously
Speaker 2: an eight year old is not mature enough to ejaculate,
Speaker 2: so it's clear that there was some sort of I mean,
Speaker 2: based on these circumstances, it's clear that that there was
Speaker 2: there was a sexual aspect to this too. Okay, they
Speaker 2: couldn't type the DNA of the seminal fluid because it
Speaker 2: wasn't an adequate leave luminous sample. But you know the
Speaker 2: reason why Eccles became the folks of this investigation was
Speaker 2: for a few reasons. The police kept on hearing that
Speaker 2: Eccholes had confessed to this to various people when he
Speaker 2: was drunk not in a remorseful way, but in an
Speaker 2: offhand way or because he was bragging. Now Echles wasn't
Speaker 2: arrested for until months later. Okay, so this wasn't some
Speaker 2: rush to judgment, and he wasn't even arrested when the
Speaker 2: police first received sworn statements from people claiming that he'd
Speaker 2: made these confessions in their presence. But you know, proble
Speaker 2: cause to arrest is not probable cause to convict, and
Speaker 2: it's it has nothing to do with the manifest weight
Speaker 2: of evidence. It's merely probable cause to arrest. So the
Speaker 2: character is somebody and their behavior patterns overall is relevant.
Speaker 2: And looking into ecchos background because desplayer when Eckles claimed
Speaker 2: he wasn't terrorized by the police throughout his life and
Speaker 2: they weren't keeping a dossier on him. Nobody even really
Speaker 2: knew who he was other than his in his local
Speaker 2: you know people, his own age and stuff. But he
Speaker 2: had a history of violence. He'd been in and out
Speaker 2: of psychiatric hospitals, most recently in Little Rock at Charter
Speaker 2: Hospital in June nineteen ninety two. He had a history
Speaker 2: of setting fires. He got in trouble for chasing another
Speaker 2: kid with an axe He was kicked out of school
Speaker 2: for a time for trying to gouge a kid's eye out.
Speaker 2: He was repeatedly suspended for fighting. He Jason Baldwin's cousin,
Speaker 2: was interviewed by a homicide detective named Brent Ridge. This
Speaker 2: witness attested to the fact that he and Eccles and
Speaker 2: Jason Baldwin had been walking down the main road outside
Speaker 2: of the trailer park they lived in, the Leafshore Trailer Park.
Speaker 2: Echles came upon a dog that was in some way
Speaker 2: sick or injured and uh that Goles calmly grabbed a
Speaker 2: brick and began banshing the dogs head in until it died.
Speaker 2: You know this, Uh, a pattern emerges of sadism and
Speaker 2: violent tendencies outside of the what's normal for you know,
Speaker 2: your accounting for the kind of anti social tendencies a
Speaker 2: teenager boys. You know. But what was most h what
Speaker 2: got the police's attention, particularly Brent Ridge and his immediate superior,
Speaker 2: Gary Gotschell Lewis, the lead investigator. Eckles had gotten in
Speaker 2: trouble for having relations with an underage girlfriend named Deanna
Speaker 2: Holcombe when Eccles was seventeen or eighteen and she was
Speaker 2: fourteen or fifteen, and he caught charges for statutory rape
Speaker 2: or whatever the equivalent is in that hotel, and Echoles
Speaker 2: had apparently told Deanna Holcombe. She attested to this to
Speaker 2: the juvenile officer in charge of the case. Jerry Driver
Speaker 2: told her that he wanted to get her pregnant and
Speaker 2: he wanted her to deliver bring the child to term,
Speaker 2: and he wanted them to sacrifice the child to some
Speaker 2: deity because he said that, you know, if you if
Speaker 2: you can divinate the correct deity or supernatural intelligence and
Speaker 2: sacrifice to them, you can absorb that victim's power. And
Speaker 2: he said that according to Thelema. Whether this is an
Speaker 2: accurate reading of Theelema or not, I don't know. He said,
Speaker 2: according to Thelema, you know, the crowleag system, an infant
Speaker 2: or a little boy, particularly a male child, they've got
Speaker 2: the most power that could be taken by somebody who
Speaker 2: sacrifices them incident to the correct ritual, you know. And
Speaker 2: this didn't lead the more enhanced charges against Echos, but
Speaker 2: it did lead to the court ordering a psychiatric evaluation.
Speaker 2: And now, mind you, I don't have any great faith
Speaker 2: in the medical profession on its own terms. But I
Speaker 2: also don't if discount diagnosedes rendered by qualified experts without
Speaker 2: cause to do so. This evaluation ordered by the court
Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety two suggested that, according to the diagnostic
Speaker 2: criteria then utilized by the APA, Echoals had sociopathic tendencies
Speaker 2: and he was prone to gradiose and delusional thinking. He
Speaker 2: apparently disclosed that he drank the blood of other people
Speaker 2: because he said that you can obtain power by doing
Speaker 2: so in small ways, because life force is contained in
Speaker 2: certain bodily fluids, particularly blood, and he claimed that he
Speaker 2: learned about this owing to his unusual religious beliefs. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: he never referred himself as a Satanist. When he was
Speaker 2: being availed to these sorts of diagnostic protocols, he'd he'd
Speaker 2: simply say that, you know, he was a male witch,
Speaker 2: or he was a pagan, or he was, you know,
Speaker 2: an accolyte of Crowley. But that's that's where the police
Speaker 2: got this idea of him being an occultist. He said
Speaker 2: he was, and we'll get into this and some of
Speaker 2: this witness testimony. People said multiple witnesses, Miss Kelly Echoes
Speaker 2: himself declared himself to be an occultist Miss Kelly himself
Speaker 2: said Echos and a lot of people he knew were
Speaker 2: into Satanic worship. Another witness named LG. Hollingsworth, who was
Speaker 2: dead by the time of the proceedings, I believe, he
Speaker 2: said that in Marion it was well known that there
Speaker 2: was an occult subculture. So I mean, this is what
Speaker 2: the police were hearing from all these people who were
Speaker 2: in the prime suspect's orbit, and this is what their
Speaker 2: prime suspect was had told the juvenile officer presiding over
Speaker 2: his case for statutory rape. And this is what he
Speaker 2: was telling the psychiatrists who'd interview him when he was
Speaker 2: periodically ending up in psychiatric facilities for violent conduct. People
Speaker 2: weren't looking at Damon Eccols and saying, oh, he has
Speaker 2: a metallic assured I think he worships the devil, you know.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, and I mean, I I'm not
Speaker 2: one of these people who looks down on the rural
Speaker 2: South or something like quite the contrary, but there is
Speaker 2: a weird subculture and a lot of these rural places,
Speaker 2: and particularly places that are kind of sustained by the interstate,
Speaker 2: like Marion, you get you get a lot of carnival
Speaker 2: workers you get a lot of guys who spend most
Speaker 2: of their life on the road. You You've got you know,
Speaker 2: very very people with very very deep roots in this
Speaker 2: country who still abide folk ways from the old country.
Speaker 2: There's something pagan uh about it. A lot of these
Speaker 2: people's belief structures, you know, in a way that you
Speaker 2: don't really find among white people up North, Okay, even
Speaker 2: poorer ones. That's not some kind of prejudice or some
Speaker 2: or some sort of stereotype about you know, stupid primitive
Speaker 2: hillbillies or something. I mean that that's a fact, you know.
Speaker 2: So I tend to I tend to believe what some
Speaker 2: of these people were saying. This wasn't just them being
Speaker 2: paranoid or or developing paranoiac ideas or something. You know.
Speaker 2: It uh in two thousand and one, and we're jumping
Speaker 2: ahead a little bit, but it's material to the subject
Speaker 2: matter or the point that we're at in the subject matter.
Speaker 2: At Doctor George W. Woods, a Berkeley, California psychiatrist, he
Speaker 2: evaluated echoes incident to one of his post conviction appeals.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, a post conviction appeal, you're arguing
Speaker 2: it on, I won't over the subs at death with
Speaker 2: all the nuances. Once your direct appeals are exhausted, a
Speaker 2: post conviction appeal it's a collateral attack on your conviction,
Speaker 2: either premised on actual innocence or subset of violation of
Speaker 2: constitutional rights. So it's always timely, okay, and you can
Speaker 2: file as many of them as you want. So it's
Speaker 2: not clear to me who of echals attorneys commission woulds
Speaker 2: to analyze echals record or if he just did this
Speaker 2: on his own accord, But they're no. His evaluation of
Speaker 2: their quest by the Eccles defense team, all right, strike that,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, and his evaluation was promised on the claim
Speaker 2: was gonna. What eccles post conviction team was trying to
Speaker 2: allege was that he'd been incompetent to stand trial. Okay,
Speaker 2: So this was several years after his conviction, and what
Speaker 2: was the termine That Eccles was periodically actively delusional owing
Speaker 2: to a tendency towards manic episodes, and that one of
Speaker 2: that throws of psychotic euphoria Eccles. Eccles believed that deities
Speaker 2: or supernatural forces were transforming him into a superior entity
Speaker 2: or conferring power upon him, and direct his activity in
Speaker 2: criminal capacities would claim was that or his conclusion was
Speaker 2: that Echos wasn't incompetent as a matter of law, but
Speaker 2: that he was delusional and periodically psychotic. The Minnesota Multiphasic
Speaker 2: Personality Inventory, that's what the court generally relies upon in
Speaker 2: terms of psychiatric and mental health experts. Echles was administered
Speaker 2: the MMPI on June eighth, nineteen ninety two, September second,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, in February of nineteen ninety four. Each
Speaker 2: of these test results indicated strong profiles of mania, delusional psychosis, depression,
Speaker 2: and periodic psychotic periodic or intermittent psychotic thinking, including paranoid ideation, delusions,
Speaker 2: and related emotional disturbances. Now, once again, and obviously, I
Speaker 2: mean this is part of the public record because these
Speaker 2: reports and this testimony was udded into evidence. These conclusions
Speaker 2: were based on symptoms and belief structures and ideas that
Speaker 2: that that Egos conveyed to the to the psychiatrists or
Speaker 2: the diagnosticians were presiding over these tests. The administrators of
Speaker 2: these tests didn't confabulate speculative things about Damien Eckles. He's
Speaker 2: the one who's reporting belief in deities. He's the one
Speaker 2: who's reporting ideas about drinking human blood. He's the one
Speaker 2: who's reporting belief in supernatural phenomena that he could access
Speaker 2: owing to some sort of competence and in divinating these
Speaker 2: these these things or these alien intelligences, you know, and
Speaker 2: something else that's relevant to me. I mean, that's relevant
Speaker 2: in my opinion. I although it's not just positive anything
Speaker 2: in of itself. You know, Eccles or at his defense
Speaker 2: team both that trial and post conviction, they claimed, Okay,
Speaker 2: so Eckles is supposed to the subject of this witch
Speaker 2: hunt in this small town and this is prejudiced against him. Well,
Speaker 2: Eckles had this bizarre familial arrangement. I guess his mom
Speaker 2: was fifteen and his dad was seventeen when they got married.
Speaker 2: And and they got married because she was pregnant. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying anything wrong with young people getting married and
Speaker 2: in event of pregnancy or not, but you know, they
Speaker 2: it was a shotgun marriage. I guess eckles birth father
Speaker 2: was for all practical purposes it literate and had all
Speaker 2: kinds of mental problems. So they got his name was
Speaker 2: Joe Hutchinson, and they got divorced early on, So Eccles
Speaker 2: was raised by this much older man, whose mom subsequently
Speaker 2: married name of Eccles. Then, when Eccles was a young teenager,
Speaker 2: his birth father came back into his life and his mom,
Speaker 2: who was estranged from this Eccles, they remarried his birth father.
Speaker 2: And eccles birth father was just a terran kind of
Speaker 2: laborer who has lived a kind of unstable life, and
Speaker 2: he moved he up and moved the family to Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 2: when Eccles was seventeen, sixteen seventeen in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: So Eckles is living in Portland and he's doing everything
Speaker 2: he can to get back to Marion, and he's acting out.
Speaker 2: He's saying, I don't belong here. I belong in Marion
Speaker 2: with my friends. You know, It's like, Okay, Portland, even
Speaker 2: back then, if you want to fly your freak flag
Speaker 2: and do what Eccles did, that'd be about the best
Speaker 2: place he could do it. Okay. So he's doing everything
Speaker 2: he can to was skate Portland that he hates staying
Speaker 2: there and he wants to go back to Marion, where
Speaker 2: supposedly he's being terrorized by these witch hunt rednecks. Really
Speaker 2: does that make any sense? So he ends up hospitalized
Speaker 2: in UH Portland because his father calls the police on him,
Speaker 2: saying and the and the police report said that Eccholes
Speaker 2: was threatening to kill the family, kill his father and
Speaker 2: and and and kill his whole family basically if they
Speaker 2: didn't let him go back to Marion, and he was
Speaker 2: threatening suicide and everything else. So he ends up in
Speaker 2: the psych word yet again in Portland. And this is
Speaker 2: all he was on probation from the statutory rape charge
Speaker 2: he caught, and his probation had been transferred to Oregon,
Speaker 2: so there was this issue of him having the transfer
Speaker 2: his paperwork back to this juvenile officer Jerry Driver, who
Speaker 2: again Eckles claim, was supposedly out to get him and
Speaker 2: framing him. So he's he's going back into the out,
Speaker 2: out of the out of the frying pan, into the fire,
Speaker 2: recording his own claims about what goes on in this town,
Speaker 2: you know. But finally he ends up going back to
Speaker 2: Marion and lives with his UH, lives with Eccles, his UH,
Speaker 2: his stepfather who's now a strange from his mom. You know,
Speaker 2: we apparently didn't get along with basically his parents begged
Speaker 2: this mister Eckles to take him in because they couldn't
Speaker 2: deal with him, and he was demanding to go back
Speaker 2: to Marion. You knows he did everything in his power.
Speaker 2: You know that that a teenager tan by acting out
Speaker 2: cajoling threats to go back to the jurisdiction where he
Speaker 2: claims he was framed and cident to this years on
Speaker 2: pattern of terrorism and are asked, you know, and anecdotally,
Speaker 2: that doesn't make any sense it, you know, And again
Speaker 2: a lot of particularly in criminal cases, not just because
Speaker 2: the evidentry standard is different. It's a totally different thing
Speaker 2: than a similar matter. It's I mean that that's a
Speaker 2: discussion in its own right, but the totality of circumstances
Speaker 2: mayors particularly compared to what people do incident to the
Speaker 2: circumstances they describe, and whether it complies with the sort
Speaker 2: of picture of reality is they perceived it or if
Speaker 2: it doesn't, And if it doesn't, that indicates deception, you know.
Speaker 2: And if you're on trial for your life, why are
Speaker 2: you lying about things that If I want to trial
Speaker 2: for my life, I'm either gonna say nothing at all, well,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell the truth because and to be clear,
Speaker 2: Echoes was looking at the death kind of leap. You know,
Speaker 2: So there's that which I don't know itself, doesn't prove anything,
Speaker 2: but it's absolutely material and relevant, you know, to be clear.
Speaker 2: The way, uh, y'all say that for next time. There's
Speaker 2: something I wanted to approach, but I I don't want to.
Speaker 2: I don't want to go to that rabbit hole. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So don't go ahead. I'm just trying to find my interjection.
Speaker 4: You spoke a little bit about the scene of the
Speaker 4: crime and the way in which obviously the fact that
Speaker 4: there was you know, these boys were found basically in
Speaker 4: like a drainage ditch or a creek, several things. One effectively,
Speaker 4: what happened is that the you know, the boys' parents
Speaker 4: had sent them out to play together at around six
Speaker 4: point thirty, right around eight, they began to get worried.
Speaker 4: They walked all over the area of the woods they
Speaker 4: were playing in, even to the point of basically apparently
Speaker 4: forming you know, line to line arm and arm and
Speaker 4: walking across the area, getting apparently quite close to the
Speaker 4: eventual scene of the crime. When they found them the
Speaker 4: next day, I believe an officer discovered one of their
Speaker 4: shoes in the ditch, which led to discovering the rest
Speaker 4: of the bodies. There are a couple of interesting things. One,
Speaker 4: the victims were found hogtied, basically bound kind of doubled
Speaker 4: over backwards, right, their wrist bound to their ankles.
Speaker 2: It was very weird because yeah, it was like right wrist,
Speaker 2: right ankle, left wrist, left ankle. I've got a theory
Speaker 2: on that being go ahead.
Speaker 4: Well, right, and as you've said, you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of several pieces of their clothing were missing, some were
Speaker 4: never recovered, but because of the fact that they water logged,
Speaker 4: that made it somewhat difficult to determine. And the defense
Speaker 4: really leaned into this, right They tried to you know,
Speaker 4: dispute you know, if they drowned, if they were killed
Speaker 4: with a knife, which was you know, one allegation. And also,
Speaker 4: of course the more kind of the sinister injuries which
Speaker 4: you mentioned earlier. They tried to you know, constitute that
Speaker 4: as animals after the fact, right, kind of scavengers coming
Speaker 4: and you know, doing the worst of the damage. Already
Speaker 4: deceased boys. So one, I'm curious to get your your
Speaker 4: theory on the way that the you know, the victims
Speaker 4: were discovered. And also what do you make of you know,
Speaker 4: that defense. I mean a certain point. Look, if your
Speaker 4: job is to you know, defend someone, you defend them
Speaker 4: how you can, right, But at a certain point it
Speaker 4: seems almost entirely irrelevant, you know, if this were you know,
Speaker 4: after the fact of the murder anyway. But I'm curious
Speaker 4: to get your thoughts, Thomas.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The reason they focused on that and claimed to
Speaker 2: his animal predation is because the one of the a
Speaker 2: knife that was recovered from behind Baldwin's house. It was
Speaker 2: a Rambo knife like serrated type knife. And uh, at trial,
Speaker 2: the corner concluded that a knife like that with a
Speaker 2: serrated blade was used to cast rate the victim. So
Speaker 2: the defense said, this boy wasn't castrated at all, it
Speaker 2: was animal predation. Well, he bled out, okay, unless these
Speaker 2: were trained animals that murdered him. Okay, not to be
Speaker 2: flippant about the murder of a child, but that's nonsense.
Speaker 2: I I looked at a lot of the evidence that
Speaker 2: there's this website, it's called Calvahan eight K it's every
Speaker 2: evidentary exhibit from the trial. And I spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time going over there, or I have like over
Speaker 2: the years. And this ditch at robin Wood Hills was
Speaker 2: sort of a there's this pipe bridge. It was literally
Speaker 2: a giant pipe, but it had rails welded on at
Speaker 2: some point and it went across this irrigation. It was
Speaker 2: like this irrigation ditch sort slash small pond, okay, and
Speaker 2: with a muddy bottom. I believe post mortem, they were
Speaker 2: shoving or two of the boys. At least one of them.
Speaker 2: They he was still respirating, but he was unconscious post
Speaker 2: mortem in the case of two of them. The third
Speaker 2: I'm pretty confident they thought was dead. I believe they
Speaker 2: were trying to push them into the mud and limbs
Speaker 2: kept popping up, so they took the shoelaces and tied
Speaker 2: a arm to or wrist to ankle, wrist to ankle,
Speaker 2: shoved them into the mud, and at least for a time,
Speaker 2: the bodies remained submerged. That's a conclusion I came to.
Speaker 2: You know, the Corners report or the police report describes
Speaker 2: them as being a hog tiede like not to be pedantic,
Speaker 2: but being properly hog tied is you know, like in
Speaker 2: a bundle.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 2: I think that's why that happened. And I'll get into
Speaker 2: blow by blow and the interrogations and the defendants in
Speaker 2: the next episode. But basically, here's what I believe happened,
Speaker 2: and at based this not just done the trial record,
Speaker 2: but what Gary Meaest described as well as miss Kelly's
Speaker 2: many confessions. Despite what people think, Baldwin actually was the
Speaker 2: ringleader of this because Baldwin's a straight up psycho. Okay,
Speaker 2: Eccles is a sick fuck. He's a sexual deviand he's
Speaker 2: a sadist. He isn't he's he isn't a cultist. Baldwin
Speaker 2: doesn't care about all that. Bald is just stunk cold.
Speaker 2: He just likes to hurt people. Miss Kelly is just
Speaker 2: a goon. Miss Kelly claims he was drunk and Evan
Speaker 2: williams he's hanging out with miss Kelly. He's hanging out
Speaker 2: with Baldwin and Eccles and eccles girlfriend lived across town.
Speaker 2: Baldwin and Eccles and miss Kelly all lived in this
Speaker 2: trailer park and across town was h eccles girlfriend's residence.
Speaker 2: Her name was Dominie Tier. He'd walk pretty much every
Speaker 2: day to go see Dominie Tier and the short cut
Speaker 2: he take was through robin Hood Woods. Okay, So Baldwin
Speaker 2: and Eccles go to miss Kelly's trailer and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're gonna we're gonna go party and we're gonna like
Speaker 2: fuck up these kids who've been like at our spot,
Speaker 2: meaning robin Wood Hills. Miss Kelly's like, okay, he's always
Speaker 2: down to like go fuck somebody up. So they get
Speaker 2: there and they see these three little kids playing around
Speaker 2: and according to uh, according to miss Kelly, Baldwin goes
Speaker 2: and grabs one of them, and his friends start running.
Speaker 2: So Baldwin pulls a Knight and say it's come back
Speaker 2: or he's dead. So Baldwin escalated right away, So the
Speaker 2: kids come back. Miss Kelly grabs on the bomb and
Speaker 2: starts just beating on him. He looks over, he says,
Speaker 2: Eccles is got this kid and he's like molesting him.
Speaker 2: So miss Kelly says, he's kind of like the fuck.
Speaker 2: Then he says he looks over at Baldwin and Baldwin's
Speaker 2: cutting on the kid, and he said the kid's screaming,
Speaker 2: and then he goes silent, and then he said he
Speaker 2: saw Baldwin. He said, I thought he was stabbing him,
Speaker 2: but he was castrating him. Eccles isn't shocked because even
Speaker 2: though he's like raping this kid, basically, according to miss Kelly,
Speaker 2: goes with no idea, like bald was getting straight up
Speaker 2: like murder the kid. So Eccles freaks out starts strangling
Speaker 2: the kid that he's got. Miss Kelly says, he's kind
Speaker 2: of in shock, so he let the kid go. He
Speaker 2: starts running, he said, Baldwin goes get him, and either
Speaker 2: out of fear of Baldwin or just you know, fear
Speaker 2: of a witness ideing him, miss Kelly goes and brings
Speaker 2: the kid back, and he said quite literally delivered him
Speaker 2: to Baldwin, and then Baldwin did him too, you know.
Speaker 2: And uh, that basically tracks with the crime scene. And uh,
Speaker 2: the luminol test thing obviously exists on soft ground, basically wetlands.
Speaker 2: It was limited in what could be revealed, but what
Speaker 2: was revealed it basically tracked with what miss Kelly said.
Speaker 2: And the filmmakers Bell and jurn Sinofsky, as well as
Speaker 2: the post defense team, they made a big issue out of, Oh,
Speaker 2: miss Kelly was wrong by the time of day. No,
Speaker 2: here's what miss Kelly was doing. The kids were murdered
Speaker 2: after dark, Okay. Miss Kelly kept saying, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 2: was there, and you know, I helped him restrain the kids.
Speaker 2: Then I left. Oh it was before it got dark
Speaker 2: that I left. Like in his kind of like ignorant mind,
Speaker 2: he thought he was getting himself off of murder charges
Speaker 2: by saying, oh, yeah, I believe me. I participated in it,
Speaker 2: but I was gone before the murder happened. That's what
Speaker 2: he was doing. He wasn't being fed dada by the
Speaker 2: cops and screwing up the time of day. It's obvious
Speaker 2: if you read that, that's what he's doing. Okay, and
Speaker 2: what's really the cops? Two things here and again this
Speaker 2: is very gross. One of the boys head, uh, you'reine
Speaker 2: in his stomach and obviously, uh you know the uh,
Speaker 2: the other boy was castrated. That wasn't release to anybody.
Speaker 2: Miss Kelly knew that, you know, it wasn't even release
Speaker 2: that there was any edged weapon injuries, let alone castration.
Speaker 2: And the first thing out of miss Kelly's mouth is yeah,
Speaker 2: then Jason started cutting on him. How do you know that?
Speaker 4: So what do you make of this other character that
Speaker 4: call him you know mister Bojangles right that, you know,
Speaker 4: after the crime, a manager at a local boj Angles said, yeah,
Speaker 4: there's this you know, older black guy comes in, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of bloody, disgruntled, cleans himself up in the bathroom
Speaker 4: and leaves. And at least some sources indicate that there
Speaker 4: was you know, hair found in one of the blankets
Speaker 4: wrapping up one of the bodies that could have been
Speaker 4: linked to a you know, a guy of African descent.
Speaker 2: I mean, I the rule. I mean, if you want
Speaker 2: to raise reasonable doubt, just generally, you've got you've got
Speaker 2: to produce this alternative suspect. You got to say, oh,
Speaker 2: there's this guy. Okay, that's great man, you know, like
Speaker 2: I it's who is this guy? You know? That doesn't
Speaker 2: rise to the level of it doesn't rise a standard
Speaker 2: of reasonable doubt. And also I basically what they're saying
Speaker 2: is that there was some presumably like black hobo who
Speaker 2: was hanging out in the woods. He somehow could control
Speaker 2: three eight year old kids, assault them, murder all three
Speaker 2: of them, all by himself, you know, without any of
Speaker 2: them run and uh then he staggers presumably on the
Speaker 2: woods through the blue beacon car wash is walking down
Speaker 2: the highway all bloody and messed up. Then he just
Speaker 2: like ends up in this fast food restaurant bathroom. Like
Speaker 2: I don't I don't find incredible anyway. It's also they've
Speaker 2: tried to make a big deal about the fact that,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think UH DNA and five evidence is
Speaker 2: dubious in my opinion, not because the science if identifying
Speaker 2: it as dubious. It's because people put too much it's
Speaker 2: it's not binary in terms of what it indicates. The
Speaker 2: people put too much weight on it. But one of
Speaker 2: the uh, one of the kids shoelaces that they were
Speaker 2: bound with their shoelaces, like interstitially bound on the shoelaces
Speaker 2: was a hair like one of the kids stepfather's friends,
Speaker 2: because which obviously got picked up at the kid's house
Speaker 2: where this man was regularly. And you know, there's people
Speaker 2: who advocate for the in a sense of these defendants claiming,
Speaker 2: oh that that that proves that this random guy, David
Speaker 2: Jacobi did it because there's a hair consistent with his
Speaker 2: uh DNA profile that you know was at the scene.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I think that that's nonsense. And uh
Speaker 2: there clearly had to be multiple offenders because you can't.
Speaker 2: I mean that that's that's like trying to hurd cast.
Speaker 2: You can't. Like, one man wouldn't be able to control uh,
Speaker 2: three eight year old boys. He'd be able to accost
Speaker 2: one of them. And then I mean, even even if
Speaker 2: the guy was as fast as like an NFL wide receiver,
Speaker 2: he's not gonna be able to murder one kid, grab
Speaker 2: the next one, murder him, and grab the next one
Speaker 2: without them running, you know. And and also they they
Speaker 2: took their time with these kids, which is one of
Speaker 2: the really horrible things about it. This wasn't a quick thing.
Speaker 2: They tortured these kids, you know.
Speaker 4: See, Thomas, I think we're coming up on time. There's
Speaker 4: a couple other aspects, uh, that I want to get into.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: You have this this female witness who plays sort of
Speaker 4: an interesting role in the trial, as well as this
Speaker 4: uh shall I say somewhat sinister character, Richard offsh Yeah, right, Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, the the so called expert on h you know,
Speaker 4: coerced confessions. Interestingly enough, there were actually two trials, if
Speaker 4: I'm not mistaken, right, Uh, they sort of split them
Speaker 4: up and you know, limited which confessions could be used
Speaker 4: in which trial. Uh do you want to speak to
Speaker 4: that just a little bit before we wrap and obviously
Speaker 4: we'll be around for another one.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, the it's a Miskill, he's uh Baldwin
Speaker 2: and Echoles there they were tried together. Miss Kelly was
Speaker 2: tried separately, and uh that was tactical. But also they
Speaker 2: you know the confrontation clause if they if miss Kelly
Speaker 2: refused to take the stand, they wouldn't have been able
Speaker 2: to introduce his his his uh confession against Eckles and
Speaker 2: Baldwin because he just didn't he'd invoke his Fifth Amendment
Speaker 2: rights and refused to testify. And so then okay, well
Speaker 2: now you're using statements against that gals in Baldwin that
Speaker 2: they can't challenge the declarant on and as I'm constitutional.
Speaker 2: And also it was uh even that notwithstanding they they
Speaker 2: had miss Kelly dead the rights, despite what the Berlin
Speaker 2: Jersonofski documentary says, had they joined his trial to Echals
Speaker 2: in Baldwin, any defense counsel with as Salt would uh
Speaker 2: would have said, hey, he was there, but it's these
Speaker 2: two scumbags who did it, and they made very well
Speaker 2: have gotten his charge is knocked down. If not a
Speaker 2: full on a quill, Okay, like, hey, my client's slow witted,
Speaker 2: and yeah he you know, he's he's not a good
Speaker 2: man and he might maybe he's a bully, but he's
Speaker 2: no child molester and he's no killer. And he was
Speaker 2: led astray by these two sadists and you know, blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. You know, I don't see acquittal coming out
Speaker 2: of the app but I definitely see you know, I
Speaker 2: definitely see mitigation, you know.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 2: Uh. And also I mean, like I said, they Dan Stidham,
Speaker 2: who uh was Meskill's defense counsel, he did a very
Speaker 2: good job, you know. Uh, I don't agree with but
Speaker 2: sori of the case obviously, but you know he was
Speaker 2: he was adequately represented. Baldwin had some I don't know
Speaker 2: where he got the money for this because his family
Speaker 2: was poor. Maybe the guy did it pro se or
Speaker 2: pro bono. I mean, but uh, Baldwin had a real
Speaker 2: he had he had he had a real lawyer, you know,
Speaker 2: he had private council. It was some local big shot
Speaker 2: who you know, had had a lot of trial work
Speaker 2: to his name. Ecoles had an appointed attorney, but he
Speaker 2: wasn't a PD if memory serves, and I'll double check
Speaker 2: the record for this before he reconvene the way they
Speaker 2: he was a private attorney was appointed by the court.
Speaker 2: So but I mean again, so these guys weren't they
Speaker 2: weren't being set up for a fall by not being
Speaker 2: afforded adequate talents that wouldn't getting it.
Speaker 4: Well, sure thing. We will continue the discussion in a
Speaker 4: week or so. Thank you so much, Thomas. This was
Speaker 4: a ton of fun, obviously, I, like many other people,
Speaker 4: am eagerly awaiting your new manuscript. I know it's getting close.
Speaker 4: People can find you on your website on substack.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know everything will be linked down in the description.
Speaker 4: As far as my stuff, Jay Burdens Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
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Speaker 2: Man, thank you buddy, everyone to know them.
Speaker 4: Keep your head up. I can't last forever. Good night,