The West Memphis 3 were three teenagers who were accused of the brutal murder of 3 eight-year old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. The boys were believed to have been killed as part of a satanic ritual. By the next day, the police had already found their first suspect Damien Echols and were questioning him.
Echols was considered a suspect because of his interest in the Wicca religion and officers investigating the case both thought that the “murders had strong overtones of a cultic sacrifice.” One of the officers said the only person he thought could be capable of committing such a horrible crime was Echols. He was a loner, who had long hair, wore all black and listened to heavy metal music such as Metallica. He had changed religions several times, converting from Buddhism to Hinduism to Islam and finally to Paganism. When he was first interviewed, the police sergeant noticed he had a tattoo of a five-pointed star on his chest and some other unidentified symbol, which may be associated with Wicca religions or cults, and took Polaroid pictures to document it. His friends Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were suspects by association.
Investigators decided they would focus their efforts on finding evidence that would point to Echols as a suspect so they could arrest him. They offered a reward for anyone who knew any information about Echols and the murders. A young man Aaron Hutcheson and his mother Vicki came forward and said Aaron may have been a witness to the crime. Aaron said he had seen the suspects at a playhouse near the location of where the boys bodies were found. They took Aaron to the crime scene and they appeared to be no playhouse found there. Aaron later retracted his statement and said he had seen three men...
... middle of paper ...
...riends and acquaintances. Nobody could even remember seeing the boys together. Despite the lack of evidence, all three teens were found guilty. Echols was sentenced to receive the death penalty and Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life in prison. They each served 18 years in prison before appealing their convictions. The DNA evidence was retested and found that it did not match any of the boys DNA. Additionally, it was found that there was jury and foreman misconduct during the trial (a member of the jury had discussed the case with an attorney and had pushed for the guilt of the West Memphis Three), as well as police misconduct during the invegation. Due to these factors, the prosections came to an Alford plea deal, in which the defendents please to “No Contest” but still maintain their innocence. They were released from prison and sentenced to time served.
Numerous murders have taken place throughout history and sadly, plenty of these murders go unsolved. One of these unsolved murders is the murders of Barbara and Patricia Grimes in 1957. There have been plenty of suspects, but nobody was ever convicted of the murders of the sisters. However, after reviewing possible suspects for the murders of the Grimes sisters, the true identity of the killer has been revealed as Max Fleig.
The book Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8?, written by independent journalist and private investigator Ethan Brown, tells the horrific true story of the bayou town of Jennings, Louisiana located in the heart of the Jefferson Davis parish. During the four year duration between 2005 and 2009, the town of Jennings was on edge after the discovery of the bodies of eight murdered women were found in the filthy canals and swamps. The victims became known as the “Jeff Davis 8.” For years, local law enforcement suspected a serial killer, and solely investigated the murders based on that theory alone. The victims were murdered in varying manors, but when alive they all shared many commonalities and were connected to
On March 25, 1931 nine African American youths were falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned for the rape of two white girls. Over the next six consecutive years, trials were held to attempt to prove the innocence of these nine young men. The court battles ranged from the U.S Supreme court to the Scottsboro county court with almost every decision the same---guilty. Finally, with the proceedings draining Alabama financially and politically, four of the boys ...
In June of 1998, a sadistic murder of a middle-aged black man from Jasper, Texas, rekindled memories of lynching practices from the blood stained American past. James Byrd, Jr., 49, was beaten savagely to the point of unconsciousness, chained to the back of a pickup truck by his neck, and dragged for miles over rural roads outside the town of Jasper. It is believed that Byrd survived through most of this experience, that is, until he was decapitated. Three white men, John William King, 23, Shawn Berry, 23, (both of whom had links to white supremacist groups) and Lawrence Brewer Jr., 31, were arrested. Brewer and King were sentenced to death for a racial hate crime that shocked the nation. Berry was sent to prison for life.
They had an alibi witness, a gas receipt, a ticket on the day of the murder. A police officer who would not come unless the judge subpoena him and the judge of course refused and would not pay the $650 to summon him. There were also two jailhouse snitches who lied about their testimony. The police misconduct was used in how they charged these individuals originally and how they have been accused initially with robbery, which later turned into murder. The police created the story and intimidated an eye witness who refused to testify and threatened to charge her with the murder if she refused. The attorneys told a moving tale and Ron Keine and company ended up being convicted. This case was before DNA testing but what exonerated these individuals was the actual murder confessing to the crimes. The entire case seemed like a fluke and malicious attack on these people. A guy in Carolina, confessed to all charges and had an epiphany and told the police where the weapon was located and how everything happened and how he dragged the body. He had to fight to get the police to accept his confession because the police were acting as if they already had their
The primary thing that persuaded my current viewpoint on race relations was the George Zimmerman trial for the homicide of Trayvon Martin. This was a case that took place when I was relatively young, around the age of ten, so I feel that the event has shaped the way that I view racism today. My mother studied racism for her degree, so I was never particularly ignorant about the topic of race. However, the Trayvon Martin case was the first time in my life that I could remember a blatant and publicized act of racial injustice. Hence, it provided evidence and validation for all the things that I had been taught about race up until this point. However, it further influenced the way I viewed race because it allowed me to see specifically see the
In February 1998, Watertown, SD, was not bursting with riveting activity. Watertown had a population of 20,127 people in 1998, which is not much less than the 22,000 residents it has today. Brenda Barger was mayor of Watertown, SD, during the years of some of the worst flooding ever in Watertown. Although the little town of Watertown seems like the perfect rural town to raise a family, it’s not all butterflies and rainbows. On February 1, it was reported that two teenage girls were accused of beating a 47 year-old man to death in his home. David Paul Bauman died of a head injury caused by the girls. Bauman was currently unemployed and mildly disabled due to a car accident a number of years earlier (“2 Teen-agers Arrested in Watertown Killing”
My name is Jim, just Jim it’s easier this way, and I was one of the nine survivors in the Waco compound standoff. Before I go into what I think went wrong to our religious sanctuary, let me tell you how I met David and a little about our great deciple.
Bardsley, M., & Bell, R. (n.d.). The Atlanta Child Murders. Famous Atlanta Child Murders and
To understand the why these youths were killed in Alabama, one must come to understand the events that led up to their death. Birmingham, Alabama was a very unstable area during the 1960’s, and this instability stemmed from pure racial hatred brewing within this city. Bombings started as early as the 1940’s and gave a section of Birmingham the nickname dynamite alley. The resulting civil unrest caused a man to step forward to stop it, a man by the name of Fred Shuttlesworth. Mr. Shuttlesworth was a part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and he organized many events and demonstrations but the only result that came from them was more violence.
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year old African American boy who was murdered in Money, Mississippi after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Since he was from the north, he did not know that he was not allowed to talk to a white woman in the south. Till was from Chicago, Illinois, visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region, when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Several nights later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam went to Till's great uncle’s house. They took the boy away to a barn, where they beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river. Roy and Milam were acquitted of murder because of the all-white, all-male Mississippi jury. At the same time, Sheriff Strider booked Levi "Too Tight" Collins and Henry Lee Loggins into the Charleston, Mississippi jail to keep them from testifying. Both were black employees of Leslie Milam, J. W.'s brother, in whose shed Till was beaten. Therefore, racial bias effects jurors’ ability to give an impartial trial.
What happened to children and famalies involved is very unfortunate. Justice was not served in this case due to the lack of punishment served to those that were accountable for this crime. Once this case was active it opened the eyes to the public and similar cases were discovered around the world. after the case was over society discovered secret tunnels under the school after the case was over where most of the rituals took place. The McMartin Preschool trial is one that should not go unforgotten. What happened to children and famalies involved is very unfortunate. Words to describe the McMartin Preschool Trial would be cruel, traumatic, and life changing, because no family should ever have to go through what the familes of the children attending McMartin Preschool had to go
... murder a tiger in the grave yard; The Kellers had murdered a man with a chainsaw. All of the children has also admitted that they had been abused by their very own parents. All of these accounts were clearly obscene and did not occur however, The Kellers were tried and imprisoned until 2012 when the Therapist denied that The Kellers actually did any of the things they were arrested for. The Therapist had to have a horrible time living with the fact that he jst ruined two people and their children’s life it’s time like these that the death penalty should be reinstated. After being released The Kellers have separated and are trying to live their lives as best as they can however, they will always remember how they were falsely accused and had to spend 21 years in prison. This has to be the worst case of Satanic Ritual Abuse to ever occur in the history of Satanism.
“The trial was brought to a speedy conclusion. Not only did Judge Evans find the twelve guilty, fine them $100 each, and committed them to jail, but five people in the courtroom who had served as witnesses for the defense arrested. […] The police were then instructed to transfer the seventeen prisoners that night to the county jail”(30).
Racial discrimination in this time period was a very crucial issue. This case should have never happened. Why were these men murdered for fighting for what they believed in? The civil rights act of 1964 was a prime example of what should have been done before these men were murdered and all of these executions might have been prevented. To this day racial segregation, religion and other forms of discrimination still go on but something is being done about it. Innocent people are not being murdered because of three men who lost their lives due to discrimination. Even though these men are gone it is because of their death that people are still fighting for equality.