Inmate regrets antics in West Memphis trial
By Beth Warren
The Commercial Appeal
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Death row inmate Damien Echols and the stepfather of one of his
alleged victims used to blame each other for the murders of three
8-year-old West Memphis boys.
Now they're pen pals.
Echols, 35, discussed the infamous case, his bizarre courtroom
behavior and his unexpected alliance with a victim's parent during an
interview last week in a glassed-in visiting room at a maximum-security
area of Varner Unit's prison in the rural southeast Arkansas town of
Grady.
It was a brief reprieve from his typical isolation in a 9-by-12-foot concrete cell.
Once he came across as a morose and haughty teen, with sullen eyes
and a round face. Now, Echols looks gaunt, weathered by his 16 years in
prison for a triple murder he insists he didn't commit. He's calm,
contemplative -- and forgiving.
He and John Mark Byers, adoptive father of victim Christopher Byers,
have exchanged letters and, through them, apologies for publicly
accusing each other of killing the boys.
"We're not exactly friends, but we do have a certain bond," Echols said of Byers.
Echols says he never met Christopher or the second-grader's buddies,
Stevie Branch and Michael Moore, and he never went into the Robin Hood
Hills woods where they were killed. He said he was at home in Marion, a
small community bordering West Memphis, talking on the phone for hours
with a couple of other teens when the murders were committed.
Byers now believes him.
Byers traveled from his home in Millington to Little Rock last month
to support Echols while defense attorneys lobbied the Arkansas Supreme
Court for a new trial. The high court could rule as early as Thursday.
Byers, interviewed by phone Thursday, and Echols, who has been on death
row since age 19, admit their lives share some uncommon parallels.
Both say they trusted police and feel they were betrayed.
Both behaved so erratically after the crimes that many believed it
was proof of their individual guilt. Both regret some of their antics.
And both are convinced another man is to blame.
"I think we will be friends," Byers said of Echols.
Byers said he has already apologized through tears to Echols'
codefendants, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., while shaking
their hands at a hearing last year. The two are serving life sentences.
It's a stark turnaround for Byers, who called the three teens "evil
animals" and fashioned their mock graves, setting the ground on fire
and dancing around the flames.
When Echols was arraigned, Byers was among the mob angrily shouting for Echols to go to hell.
Before Echols' trial, Byers' wife, Melissa, who has since died,
described her hatred of Echols on camera for the HBO documentary
"Paradise Lost," which chronicles the case: "I hope he busts hell wide
open," she said. "And if I could get my hands on him, I would eat the
skin off of his face."
Byers said police and prosecutors convinced the couple they had
proof that Echols, Baldwin, then 16, and Misskelley, then 17, sexually
abused, tortured and killed the boys during a Satanic ritual.
Echols said he, too, was misled by police. At age 18, he agreed to talk with investigators without an attorney.
At a time when police had not released details of the crimes, Echols
made several damning comments to police, according to police reports.
Those details include that the boys were mutilated, with one being
cut more than the others, and that the bodies were placed in water and
may have drowned.
Echols said he believes investigators fed him details about the crime.
"They said: 'Do you think it's possible one of them was cut more than
the others?' And I said: 'Sure. It's possible.' I didn't know."
Police reports stated that Echols volunteered those critical details. The police interviews were not recorded.
And when police interviewed Misskelley, then age 16 and identified as
borderline mentally retarded, Misskelley gave them a confession that
proved key to the convictions of the group, known collectively as the
West Memphis Three.
During a 12-hour interrogation, Misskelley told police that Echols
and Baldwin sodomized, beat and stabbed the victims and threw them in a
watery drainage ditch. Misskelley told them one of the boys tried to
run, and that he caught and returned the child.
Most of the interview was not recorded.
Echols said he thinks Misskelley, who later recanted his confession,
was manipulated by police. "The police basically tortured a mentally
retarded child until he said what they wanted him to say," he said.
Echols said he isn't angry at Misskelley or Byers, and that he tries
to forgive police and prosecutors, for his own sake. "If you sit and
stew and soak in anger and bitterness, you're going to poison your own
heart and kill whatever parts of yourself that they didn't," he said.
He said when he was arrested in 1993, he lashed out, masking his fear
with arrogance and contempt. During his trial, he glared at the
victims' families, licking his lips and hissing.
"Your average person won't understand," he said of that behavior.
"Whenever you have your entire life destroyed and you've been set up,
you're in so much shock and trauma.
"That was trauma for me on a scale I can't begin to articulate."
When asked if his behavior could have helped convict him, Echols
said: "On the surface, I would say: 'Yes.' " But, he added that he
believes the public had already turned against him due to pretrial
publicity.
Tensions in the community were so high, police fastened bulletproof
vests around Echols and his co-defendants to protect them before moving
them through crowds. Echols said he didn't know how to react to the
hate and condemnation from "the mob."
"I was a teenager sucked into a world I didn't understand," he said.
"You're raised to believe the police are the good guys, that you're
innocent until proven guilty. In reality, that's not how the system
works."
During the 1994 trial, Echols said he never considered that he would
be convicted. He said he thought, "There's going to be a 'Perry Mason'
moment where whoever actually did it will be exposed."
In retrospect, he said, he would have censored his courtroom behavior.
Byers also said he would alter his own outrageous antics, captured on
camera for the HBO documentary, including blasting a pumpkin with
gunfire while pretending he was killing Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley.
"I was very embarrassed by a lot of my behavior," Byers said during
an interview Thursday. "Rage and anger and emotion had totally taken
over."
Many, including Echols, began to suspect Byers could have been
responsible. He had been so angry at his stepson's routine rule-breaking
that he had whipped him with a belt just a few hours before the child
disappeared.
But new DNA evidence, available in 2007 due to advancements in DNA testing, raised questions.
A hair matching Terry Wayne Hobbs, stepfather of victim Stevie
Branch, was found in a knot tied in a shoelace used to bind Michael's
wrist to his ankle. Another hair, found on a stump at the crime scene,
was similar to David Jacoby, whom Hobbs had seen within an hour before
the boys disappeared, according to court records.
Echols' attorneys are lobbying for a new trial using that DNA
evidence, along with new witnesses who say they saw Hobbs with the boys
just before they disappeared.
Echols won't name who he believes is to blame for the crimes, but Byers has publicly accused Hobbs.
Hobbs, of Memphis, has denied any involvement in the crimes and police have never considered him a suspect.
Byers said he's saying daily prayers for a new trial for Echols. "I
know the day's going to come in court before too long where we can lock
eyes even if we don't get to shake hands," Byers said.
"I told him in my letter: 'We're tied together for life.'"
-- Beth Warren: 529-2383
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