Essentially, it allows the accused to assert their innocence while pleading guilty, conceding that the prosecution has an overwhelming amount of evidence to procure a conviction. As recounted in Mara Leveritt's book, Devil's Knot, a thorough search of Robin Hood Hills directed by Chief Inspector Gary W. Gitchell of the West Memphis Police Department commenced early on the morning of May 6, 1993. Then youd try to find it, and it didnt exist, because when we went out to discussion groups, no one knew about the case yet., After learning that the teens were still in prison, Bakken, Sauls, and Pashley decided to make full use of the budding technological revolution. Its gone from a controversial legal theory to an accepted phenomenon. Case Details Parties . He just didnt know it would take another 14 years to happen. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. Its affected a lot of lives, but for some reason it keeps being brought up, said Hobbs. The third put forth the unusual theory that the killings were committed as a cult ritual. Jesse was gonna take it anyway. Terry Hobbs says he is a church member, a father, and working man and in no way a killer. In February, Netflix released Berlingers Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, a docuseries that looked at the 2013 death of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who died while vacationing in Los Angeles. As more people learned about the case from Paradise Lost and the work of people like Bakken and Sauls, the phrase Free the West Memphis Three caught on as a slogan for progressive musicians and actors in the 1990s, up there with Save the Rainforest and Free Tibet. Eddie Vedder became an early leading voice, soon followed by the likes of Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp, and Natalie Maines from the band then known as the Dixie Chicks. A statement he made to the producers of Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills did little to help his public image. Terry Castleman is a data . We didnt see them grow up.. A graveside service will be conducted on Wednesday, March 17 at Cloverdale Memorial Park beginning at 11am. Misskelley told Hutcheson that he really didn't know much about Echols other than that he was "a weird person." People in West Memphis are going to tell their kids stories. In the minds of many, the bizarre nature of the Robin Hood Hills murders could only have been committed by one of Satan's minions. People would drive by and yell at us, Theyre going to burn in hell, Sauls says. Its something that Baldwin couldnt envision when he first agreed to let the documentarians interview him in jail in exchange for an honorarium, or even when Mojo played that VHS tape for him in 1997. Example video title will go here for this video. In 2004, Vicki Hutcheson recanted her trial testimony, stating that she had lied on the stand. 21, 2021 at 1:51 PM PDT CALHOUN COUNTY, Fla.. 2 Now a judgewho coincidentally works part time in the courtroom where Misskelley was convictedStidham spends time speaking to law students about the judicial system. Another hair found near the crime scene on a tree stump was found to be consistent with the DNA of Hobbs friend, David Jacoby, according to court documents obtained by Oxygen.com. . Once there got to be this global pressure, and there was a big concert here with really big-name musicians within a mile of our Supreme Court building, things started suddenly to change, she says. Other details that have come to light include that many wounds on the slain children, originally attributed to human bites and/or a serrated blade, were the result of animals feeding on the bodies. June 29 Terry Hobbs, 34, 1718 Spyglass Lane, Mishawaka, booked on a warrant from Elkhart County. He was 56. Further down, it includes names such as Rick Dior, a sound mixer who worked on Apollo 13 and Dirty Dancing, and Bob Richman, a three-time Emmy-nominated cinematographer whose rsum also includes renowned docs like An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman. The idea of the average citizen becoming embroiled in a criminal investigation isnt far-fetched in 2021, decades removed from the launch of WM3.org. Explore. To this day, it is still unclear who is responsible for the killings. Wherever it was screened, Berlinger says, it was followed by intense Q&As from audience members who couldnt believe what theyd just watched. Classmates at Weaver Elementary School, the three were active in their Cub Scout troop and responsible enough to be trusted to roam their neighborhood without supervision. They procured the domain WM3.org and made a website, updating it with whatever information they could track down. They couldnt have been cooler, recalls Berlinger, who would go on to direct the 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster alongside Bruce Sinofsky. They were found nude and hogtied in a creek in a wooded area in West Memphis. One of those shows, Truth & Justice With Bob Ruff, became the basis for an Oxygen docuseries last year titled The Forgotten West Memphis Three, which took a closer look at the three victims and tried to shine new light on the evidence. Hes subdued when discussing the facts of the case, but he comes alive while recounting his work with the Jaycees while in prison, or buying Metallicas Black Album when it came out in 1991. None of the early interviews with the parents were recorded. The first film gave rise to a movement devoted to reopening the investigation in hopes of exonerating, and ultimately freeing, Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelley. Rollins not only gave interviews to keep the effort alive in the press, he organized a string of benefit shows and released an album featuring Iggy Pop and Chuck D, with proceeds going to the defense. Damien Echols (@damienechols) July 7, 2021 Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of Branch who was under suspicion but never charged, said he welcomes new DNA testing. But the list of people who have looked at the facts of the case and come away believing Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley are innocent is long. A spiritual successor to Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line, and a forerunner of more recent documentaries like Making a Murderer, the film stands today as the most affecting examination of one of the most studied legal cases in U.S. historyone that put heavy metal lyrics and black T-shirts on trial and helped lay the groundwork for the current thinking around false confessions. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. All of those factors combined to create a tipping point, says Leveritt. Lying in the open air in near 80-degree temperatures accelerated the decomposition of the bodies. Im not the judge. doesn't know how to teach the material and you will end up teaching yourself everything. Bakken immediately showed her friends Burk Sauls and Grove Pashley, who were both equally gripped by what they had just watched. In 1994, the FBI said there was scant evidence that violent satanic crimes had ever occurred in America outside of a few isolated incidents, but that was long after TV hosts like Geraldo, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Oprah had spread moral hysteria about musicians weaving supposedly anti-Christian and occult messages into their songs, and long after wrongful convictions were handed down in the infamous McMartin Preschool sexual assault trials. In the years since the trial, John Mark Byers, adoptive father of Christopher Byers, and Pamela Hobbs, mother of Stevie Branch, became vocal supporters of the West Memphis Three. WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. The community's worst fears were confirmed. The districts current prosecuting attorney, Keith Chrestman, did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but his predecessor Scott Ellington, whose office negotiated the deals, told The New York Times in 2011 that while new trials would have likely resulted in acquittals, We dont think that there is anybody else. The Moore family has been outspoken about the end result, vehemently protesting the 2012 Oscar nomination for the third Paradise Lost installment. But then the verdicts arrived: Both Baldwin and Echols were found guilty on all counts, just like Misskelley had been six weeks before them. The state of Arkansas continues to attempt to prevent this testing from happening. Their bikes were found by a pipe nearby. Leave your condolences to the family on this memorial page or send flowers to show you care. Echols, who prosecutors argued was the ringleader, was sentenced to death. I don't know if the other 2 did, but even if they did polygraphs aren't admissible in court. The whole point of the web sleuths presented in the Cecil Hotel is that you cannot assume something is truthful just because circumstantially it seems interesting. We were mainly in it for the aesthetics of filmmaking, but the last scene of Paradise Lost, when Damien is chained up and sent away to death row, that was just heartbreaking and devastating for us, Berlinger says. On 04/08/2021 Terry Hobbs was filed as a Bankruptcy - Chapter 13 lawsuit. It ranges from Mark Byers, the crusading stepfather who became one of the West Memphis Threes biggest allies in the years before his 2020 death, to famed FBI criminal profiler (and Mindhunter inspiration) John E. Douglas. The West Memphis Police Department interviewed Hobbs, who was dismissive of the findings, claiming the hair could have been picked up during a visit to his home since the victim "played with our little boy regularly," according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. March 8, 2021, Terry Hobbs passed away on March 8, 2021 in Boise, Idaho. In the Bible Belt, the Satanic Panic took hold with a vengeance. At the time of the West Memphis Three trial, Griffis claimed to have given seminars to 38,000 police officers all over the globe. Branded the West Memphis Three, the mens case was featured in multiple documentaries, earning them support from an array of high-profile musicians, celebrities and activists. Among them was a disoriented, muddy, and bleeding African-American man who stumbled into a West Memphis Bojangles restaurant men's room less than a mile from the crime scene. Baldwin, the youngest member of the trio that had come to be known as the West Memphis Three, was serving a life sentence after being convicted on charges connected to the 1993 killings of three 8-year-old boys. The cult part of the Commercial Appeals headline signaled how the case would be defined by both the media and prosecutors. Terry Hobbs, Actor: Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers. We have estimated Terry Hobbs's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. Some believe the West Memphis Three are guilty to this day, and others, including some victims family members, point to their innocence and maintain the real perpetrator is still at large. Hobbs denied seeing the boys that night and questioned why eyewitness evidence surfaced 16 years later. Family and friends can send flowers and/or light a candle as a loving gesture for their loved one. Blood and urine samples from both men were collected and sent to the West Memphis Police Department. Almost 30 years ago, three eight-year-old West Memphis boys were found murdered and three teenagers were charged in the murders. It hurt all over again, he said. The sneaker ligatures in which Terry Hobbs' DNA was found in," Soury said . The state of Arkansas continues to attempt to prevent this testing from happening., New technology and advances in science would now allow us to test DNA in amounts so small that it would have been previously impossible. He was handed the phone. Berlinger and Sinofsky began to take notice. The sheer mountain moving amount of money it cost to prove the obvious innocence of Jessie, Jason, and Damien still staggers me. I dont know if they were questioning it, but they werent mistreating me and telling me that what I was telling them wasnt true., While Berlinger admits that he and Sinofsky may have tilted pro-prosecution in the early days of filming, that quickly changed after witnessing how the cases came together and spending time with the three teens during pretrial jailhouse interviewsparticularly Baldwin, who Berlinger describes as sweet and studious.. Hobbs said, I still believe in my heart that Jessie, Jason, and Damion, 'Feels Like Home:' electrical failure from a light fixture caused December fire that killed 1, Shelby County reporting an increase in drug-related overdoses, largely due to fentanyl, Severe weather threat is over | Prepare for a sunny weekend, Daylight saving time starts soon. After roughly 18 months of editing, Paradise Lost debuted at Sundance in January 1996 before heading out to other festivals. The pair abruptly fled to Oceanside, Calif., four days after the murders. A benefit album was released in 2000, and the phrase made it into a Dawsons Creek episode when Pacey shouted Free the West Memphis Three over an airport intercom. Berlinger also concedes Revelations had some ethical problems, chiefly because it raised the possibility that Mark Byers committed the killings. the only grade you receive is from quizzes, exams, and the final. Terry Hobbs is the one suspected of murder and the wounds that were inflicted on my nephew were where turtles bit his face. Hobbs says his book is 25 years in the making, adding it is called Boxful of Nightmares for a reason. For Rollins, it was a moral imperative: Id find myself up at 3:30 a.m. thinking about Damien. La Mirada, California. eyewitness evidence surfaced 16 years later. Paradise Lost also led to a famous citizen-activist campaign championing the release of the three teens that caught on at the dawn of the Internet Age and would eventually pull in Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins, and a whos who of the rich and famous. Update: I was totally wrong. This is the true story of the West Memphis Three murders. He responded proudly, 11.. He also lost the defamation case because of his violent past. But its closing moments point to how the filmmakers felt: that a horrific tragedy had just been compounded by a monumental miscarriage of justice. The prosecutor would later say, There was a lack of physical evidence to tie anyone or anything to the crime scene, while the lead investigatorthe same one who told the press the case was an 11 out of 10would concede, Youve got a lot of circumstantial evidence is what youve got. Debates still occur regularly onlinethe West Memphis Three subreddit is fairly active for one on a 28-year-old caseand podcasts have looked at the crime from all angles. February 27, 2023 (76 years old) View obituary. Terry L. Hobbs, 63, of Caldwell, HOBBS, Terry L., passed on March 7,2021 at the age of 63. Mara Leveritt, a journalist who followed the case throughout the 1990s and wrote the 2002 book Devils Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, calls the strain of Christianity that runs through the region very literal and says that even her children faced harassment as teenagers for playing Dungeons & Dragons and listening to Ozzy Osbourne. Baldwins attorneys even avoided putting him on the witness stand or mounting much of a defense, believing the burden was on the state. " (Detective Allen) told me if I knew anything, that there was a $35,000 reward, and if I could help them out, we'd get the money," said Misskelley, as quoted by Mara Leveritt in Devil's Knot. Michelle McNamara helped crack the Golden State Killer case by poring over thousands of pages of case files while working on her book Ill Be Gone in the Dark, which was published two years after her 2016 death, while Chris Lambert and his podcast Your Own Backyard were highlighted by authorities after two arrests in April in connection with the 1996 disappearance of Cal Poly student Kristin Smart. Berlinger says that after months of filming, the parents of one of the victims raised the issue of payment. Hes since parlayed the popularity of the show into a booming podcast network and documentary deal with Oxygen. So when I saw this tiny little article in the Times, I wasnt about to free anybody that was guilty. Baldwin is the co-founder of the legal advocacy organization Proclaim Justice. Much of Cecil Hotel focuses on the amateur investigators who turned coincidences into conspiracy theories, ultimately accusing an innocent person of her death. After 18 years in prison, the West Memphis Three were finally free, but not exonerated. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! It's affected a lot of lives, but for some reason it keeps being brought up," said Hobbs. William Holford Griffiths. Attorneys for Echols have submitted a formal request to inspect the records that are available, involving cataloguing of the evidence as well as information on the loss of the evidence. The concept of citizen investigations intrigues Berlinger just as much as it did in the 1990s, though today hes often more concerned with the moral implications. That included Mojo, who came calling around 2 a.m. that day trying to coax him out of his cell. Echols' disdain for authority, penchant for black clothes, and propensity to make shocking statements didn't help his plight. And they used that visibility to help raise funds for the defense. "People probably think I'm in Satanism because what they don't understand they try to destroy or ridicule. This is before considering the 2013 dramatized movie based on the events (and Leveritts book), Stidhams plans to release the book Harvest of Innocence, and how elements of the case made their way into True Detectives third season. Yes, the West Memphis Three are out of prison, but as long as they are considered guilty in the eyes of the state, the case is closed, meaning no further investigation can occur. Terry Wayne Hobbs was born on May 21st, 1958. Here's when clocks will 'spring forward' in 2023. there are no assignments to cushion your grade, so either pass or fail. And that is why Echols has attorneys who want to use a new DNA test called M-Vac, a wet vacuum system that can find more DNA than older tests. Replacing Burnett was Circuit Court Judge David Laser. It was almost like an out-of-body experience., When the credits rolled shortly after the unforgettable final scene, which shows a now-convicted Baldwin and Echols leaving the courtroom in handcuffs and entering a police cruiser as Metallica plays, Baldwin sat stunned. That came partially through the exposure they got through this film., But perhaps the best measure of Paradise Losts impact is the work being done by Baldwin today. I went to a Baptist school and I got accused of being a devil worshiper because I was trying to learn how to write hieroglyphics, says Sauls, today a screenwriter and VFX designer. In this first confession, Miskelley often agreed to details suggested by the police or attributed to prior statements which he did not make. When Alex Sinofsky is asked about his fathers work on the film, he recalls the frequent trips and long hours spent editing film on a Steenbeck he kept in the house. Initially, Misskelley repeatedly denied having knowledge of the crime, aside from rumors that Damien Echols was involved. Unfortunately, for three teen outsiders, the West Memphis Police Department chose to focus on the cult angle to the detriment of their efforts to investigate the other two, more likely scenarios. And that makes him hopeful that exoneration is on the horizon. All three had been submerged face down in the mud, stripped naked, and bound with their shoelaces. No knives and not weapons were used," says Jo Lynn McCaughey. It's one. Nevertheless, Echols made no incriminating statements. But we stuck with it, and every so often something would happen, and little by little, people would come around., They spread word about the website through online discussion groups and by hanging flyers in the art houses that screened Paradise Lost, and by 2000, WM3.org was getting 4,000 to 8,000 hits a day. Although Griffis' testimony was dramatic, it showed only a tenuous grasp of occult knowledge much of it, including a reference to a cult called "Crytos," was simply made up. Berlinger says that he counts Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line as one of his greatest influences, not just for the innovations Morris brought to the documentary genre, but also because it helped free Randall Dale Adams from a sentence for the murder of a Texas police officer that he did not commit. Sauls says that the former Black Flag frontman was one of the few big names who dug deep into the evidence, wanting to learn as many details as he could about the case. Although the Alford Plea set the West Memphis Three free, they are, at least in the eyes of the law, guilty, and therefore, the state of Arkansas is under no obligation to continue investigating the crimes at this time. With the area secured, Detective Bryn Ridge volunteered to search the ditch. Rather, they were fighting for something they believed in. "They said close to the crime scene because at one time I did walk near where they had found the kids with Terry Hobbs But I didn't wear hats back then, my hair could have blown around anywhere, Jacoby told Memphis NBC affiliate WMC-TV in 2013. Last year, I noticed that Terry went missing.