By Joshua L. Weinstein at TheWrap
Wed Feb 1, 2012 4:37pm EST
Colin Firth has signed on to star as Ron Lax, the private investigator whose detective work helped get three men who had been convicted of murder released from prison in Arkansas, the producers of the "Devil's Knot" told TheWrap Wednesday.
Lax "really is the unsung hero of this story," producer Elizabeth Fowler said.
The West Memphis Three are Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, Jr., who were convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Ark., in 1993. Their guilt has been questioned ever since, with filmmakers taking up the case in a series of documentaries.
Also read: Out of Prison, West Memphis 3 Ex-Con Seeks Justice
"The Devil's Knot" will take a dramatized approach to the case, which shot back into headlines in August, when a judge ordered the West Memphis Three freed.
The judge freed the men based in large part on evidence that Lax found. The private investigator -- who worked on the case at no charge for more than a decade because he opposes the death penalty -- found DNA evidence that linked the stepfather of one of the murdered boys to material that was used to bind one of the victims.
The movie, however, "is not about how they got out of prison," producer Clark Peterson told TheWrap. "It's about how they got in."
Read the full story at TheWrap.com
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