How a famous former prisoner came to call Seattle home.
By Erin K. Thompson Wednesday, Mar 21 2012
On August 20, Jason Baldwin boarded a flight from Memphis to Seattle. He was 34 years old and had never been on an airplane. The farthest north he'd been was the Craighead County Jail in Jonesboro, in his home state of Arkansas. The farthest south was the Varner Unit in Grady, Arkansas; the farthest west was the Diagnostic Unit in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
The geographical boundaries of his life had been prisons. In 1994, Baldwin, his best friend Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. were convicted of murdering three 8-year-old boys the year before in one of the most sensational child-murder cases in U.S. history. Baldwin was 16 at the time.
Nearly 20 years later, the story of the West Memphis Three is familiar to the public, especially those who've seen Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's HBO documentary trilogy, Paradise Lost. The first film was largely responsible for raising awareness about the bizarre aspects of the trial that convicted the Three: Misskelley's forced confession, leads not followed, the conclusion that Baldwin was involved in an insidious satanic cult with Echols because he owned black Metallica T-shirts. Johnny Depp, Natalie Maines, and Eddie Vedder subsequently got involved in the cause to "free the West Memphis Three."
Read the full story at SeattleWeekly.com
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