weaving supposedly anti-Christian and occult messages into their songs, he discovered her while Googling cold cases, funded an extensive private investigation, a November 2010 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling, biggest allies in the years before his 2020 death, acquitted of capital murder in 2018 after a 25-year legal saga. Wading into the murky water, Allen unknowingly dislodged the pale, grotesquely arched form of Micheal Moore. This is the true story of the West Memphis Three murders. In 1996, HBO released the documentary film Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Explore. In 2013, Jackson and Damien Echols produced a fourth documentary about the case. By getting to the story quickly, the directors were able to document the post-arrest period and two trials that followed in painstaking detail. Misskelley returned to life in West Memphis. I think we were the first internet sleuths, but we were not internet sleuths.. According to Griffis, black hair, black T-shirts, and black jeans were signs that a kid was in league with the devil. Echols said in 2012, he will never give up his mission to exonerate himself. He says his dad and Berlinger werent seeking notorietydocumentaries certainly werent a means to get rich or famous in those days. But then the verdicts arrived: Both Baldwin and Echols were found guilty on all counts, just like Misskelley had been six weeks before them. '", In 1999, a more mature Echols explained the comment. Thursday, August 19th 2021. One of the prosecution's key pieces of evidence linking Jason Baldwin to the crime a survival knife with a serrated edge recovered from a lake behind his home has also come under scrutiny. 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. 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. Although she was unable to recall the exact location or anyone who attended the alleged meeting, she claimed a drunken Echols confessed to the murders. 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. hangyermoon 2 yr. ago. It just needed a catalyst. 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. To send flowers or plant a tree in memory of Terry Hobbs, visit the Tribute Store. On the surface, 18-year-old Damien Echols, an intelligent, but psychologically troubled teen with interests in Wicca and extreme music, fit the profile. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, defense attorneys working for the West Memphis Three filed multiple appeals on their behalf scrutinizing the lack of physical evidence against them. February 27, 2023 (82 years old) View obituary. Echols tweeted, New technology and evidence in science would now allow us to test DNA in amounts so small that it would have been previously impossible. (Police questioned Byers several times during the investigation, but never considered him a suspect.) I wouldn't do something like that. 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. None of the initial trio behind WM3.orgnor their friend Lisa Fancher, who later became a key part of the efforthad ever considered themselves an activist to that point. This is a story of justice delayed and justice denied. He was just taking in the enormity of the defining event of his life to that point, which had been committed to film and was now playing for him inside the cavernous, auditorium-style visitation room. As reported by the Arkansas Times, examination of the shoe laces used to bind Michael Moore contained hair "not inconsistent" with that of Stevie Branch's stepfather, Terry Hobbs. It had been a long fight to clear their names, and the odds seemed better than ever. Metallica had never licensed a song for a film before, but when they learned about the case, Berlinger says, they made an exception. Armchair detectives of today, I think a lot of them dabble in conspiracy theory, Berlinger says. Berlinger and Sinofsky, the latter of whom died in 2015 at age 58, were able to gain incredible and immediate access to seemingly everyone the case had touched: the families of the victims and the accused, the judge, the lead investigator, members of the community. We made a promise early on that we would never pretend to be law enforcement or detectives, Sauls says. Id like to see this put to rest. Timeline Of The West Memphis Three Victims, Motivations For Investigating The West Memphis Case. Critics were effusive in their praise and stunned by the footageparticularly Roger Ebert, who wrote in a four-star review that at the end of the film I was unconvinced of their guilt. The film won Emmy and Peabody awards to go with more than a dozen other nominations. I deeply admire that and I thought it was worthy of putting on film.. The sneaker ligatures in which Terry Hobbs' DNA was found in," Soury said . Pam Hobbs divorced Terry Hobbs in 2004 and has reversed her position on the West Memphis Three's guilt. He was an actor, known for Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988), Fast Food (1989) and In the Heat of the Night (1988). To date, no DNA evidence from the crime scene can be linked to Damien Echols, Baldwin, or Jessie Misskelley. of Auburndale, FL passed away Monday, August 16, 2021. This article was updated after publication to add more context about the honorariums paid to the families of the victims and the West Memphis Three and also to correct the time frame in which Berlinger and Sinofsky informed HBO about the changing scope of the documentary. In 1994, Dr. Dale W. Griffis was a retired police officer who had embarked on a second career as a self-styled consultant on occult and cult-related crime. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. I couldnt not watch it at this point. The reason for the credit gets less curious when hes asked about it: He was a huge Metallica fan. We were finally winning, he says. 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. February 27, 2023 (76 years old) View obituary. Eventually, they began traveling to Arkansasabout 35 trips in total, always on their own dime, Bakken and Sauls sayto collect case documents, which they scanned and uploaded to the site, also transcribing the documents so that the text could be searchable. Terry Hobbs Memphis 32, 14-Jun, Superior Funeral Home-Hollywood. They procured the domain WM3.org and made a website, updating it with whatever information they could track down. For the next two hours and 29 minutes, the two inmates sat in near silence watching Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, the landmark documentary released on HBO 25 years ago this week that captured the trials of Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Damien Echols, the three teenagers convicted in 1994 of the crimes that ripped through the small, working-class community of West Memphis, Arkansas. 2012 West of Memphis (Documentary) Self - Steven Branch's Stepfather. At the time of the West Memphis Three trial, Griffis claimed to have given seminars to 38,000 police officers all over the globe. That the slain boys were each 8 years-old was important because eight was a "witch's number." All of them were convicted after Misskelley confessed to helping Echols and Baldwin with the murders, which he later recanted. Its affected a lot of lives, but for some reason it keeps being brought up, said Hobbs. Investigators never found any evidence that tied him, Jason Baldwin, or Jessie Misskelley to the murders of the boys, Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers. A year after the DNA results were released, Hobbs sued Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines for defamation, claiming she implied he was a murderer on the bands website and at a 2007 rally, according to The New York Times. As part of the deal, they cannot file wrongful-conviction lawsuits, which both Berlinger and Baldwin say couldve cost the state tens of millions of dollars. But on the subject of Paradise Lost, he speaks emphatically: He understands how important the movies were in helping him, Echols, and Misskelley walk free 10 years ago this August. Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of Branch who was under suspicion but never charged, said he welcomes new DNA testing. Its first season ostensibly focused on the disappearance of a Georgia beauty queen, but it spent nearly as much time digging through the salacious details of the victims love life and dipping into amateur psychology as it did looking at evidence. Despite the best efforts of the police, dozens of volunteers, a search-and-rescue team, and a helicopter dispatched from nearby Memphis, Tenn., searchers came up empty handed. In the joint trial of Baldwin and Echols, which took place separately from Misskelleys, Berlinger and Sinofsky filmed the surreal moments that juries were actually present for: a rundown of the books Echols checked out of the library, a parade of band T-shirts worn by the pair, a copy of a Blue Oyster Cult record found in Damiens girlfriends house that became evidence because of the word cult and song titles like Dont Fear the Reaper. What the cameras couldnt capture, however, was the introduction of physical evidencethe prosecution didnt offer much of that aside from a knife that was never directly linked to the crimes and fabric threads deemed microscopically similar to items found in Baldwins and Echolss homes, an assertion that has been questioned in the years since the trials. However, under pressure, leading questions, and scare tactics, Misskelley wove a contradictory story that first placed him at the crime scene as an eyewitness to the murders and then as an active participant. Inevitably, the West Memphis Three case always comes up. By the end of Paradise Lost, you cant believe they were found guilty, Bakken says. I don't entirely think Hobbs did it, but I . Its like ripping a Band-Aid off a wound. He was 56. This case was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Courts, Tennessee Western Bankruptcy. A hair found on one of the ligatures to bind the boys, however, was found to be consistent with the DNA of Hobbs, according to court documents obtained by Oxygen.com. 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. 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. Stidham, who was just 30 years old and not long out of law school when the court appointed him to be Misskelleys attorney, went in thinking he would negotiate a deal for his client, who had told police that his acquaintances Baldwin and Echols committed the crimes and that he was present and played a role as an accessory. You still dont really know what happened to these kids. The documentarians found me in one of the worst things a person could go through, Baldwin says. The IMDb credits page for the first Paradise Lost is modest, but impressive. At the suggestion of the police, Hutcheson hid microphones in her home and borrowed occult books from the library to inspire Echols' interest. Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021. Sinofsky family connection aside, Berlinger says this was an important part of the film: The prosecutors had put heavy metal lyrics and Baldwins and Echolss Metallica fandom on trial as much as the teens themselves. Covered in wounds, all three showed signs of having been beaten. Searching obituaries is a great place to start your family tree research. To learn more, watch The Forgotten West Memphis Three on Saturday, March 28 and Sunday, March 29at 8/7c on Oxygen. The Messed Up Truth About The West Memphis Three Murders, citing the discovery of her son's favorite pocket knife, One of the prosecution's key pieces of evidence linking Jason Baldwin, With their 2007 request for a new trial rejected, Baldwin is the co-founder of the legal advocacy organization Proclaim Justice. The sheer mountain moving amount of money it cost to prove the obvious innocence of Jessie, Jason, and Damien still staggers me. More than 2,500 people attended and the story dominated the local press for days. The Alford plea is a seldom-invoked and somewhat confusing legal maneuver, but the basics are fairly straightforward. She has since expressed her belief that her ex-husband was involved in the murders,citing the discovery of her son's favorite pocket knife in Terry Hobbs' belongings. Terry. Paso Robles, California. The cult part of the Commercial Appeals headline signaled how the case would be defined by both the media and prosecutors. And the seemingly endless stream of threats against them and the frequent clashes with Mark Byers did nothing to dissuade them. Echols attorneys got a letter from the custodian of records for the West Memphis police department saying some of the evidence ended up lost, or misplaced, and some destroyed by fire. the only grade you receive is from quizzes, exams, and the final. 25, 2021. "The reason I made the West Memphis boogeyman comment during the first film was because I was making light of the situation," Echols says in Paradise Lost 2: Revelations. 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. Two of the West Memphis Three's most ardent supporters were director Peter Jackson, best known for The Lord of the Rings films, and his partner Fran Walsh. 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. When the case was given the option for DNA evidence, everyone but Terry Hobbs said yes. I had a big box. 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. The knife was thrown into the lake by Baldwin's mother a year before the murders. Much of Cecil Hotel focuses on the amateur investigators who turned coincidences into conspiracy theories, ultimately accusing an innocent person of her death. For Rollins, it was a moral imperative: Id find myself up at 3:30 a.m. thinking about Damien. Echols, who prosecutors argued was the ringleader, was sentenced to death. " Every crime, no matter what it is, gets blamed on Satanism.". So with less urgency surrounding full exoneration and no documentary cameras rolling, the question 25 years later becomes: Who is paying close enough attention to the case to pick up the fight? I still believe in my heart that Jessie, Jason, and Damion Echols [sic] are responsible for what happened to our children, Hobbs told Memphis ABC affiliate WATN in June 2019. Terry Hobbs was born on November 25, 1969 in Columbus, Georgia, USA. A native of Winter Haven, born December 21, 1964, Terry . Stating that she would ask around, Hutcheson agreed to "play detective.". Although the bodies were discovered at 1:30 p.m., investigators didn't call the coroner until 3:58 p.m. By the time the coroner arrived, fly larvae were already present in the nostrils and eyes of the victims. Produced and directed by filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the film and its two sequels, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, gave audiences a unique and detailed look into the case, the accused, and the families of victims. The only possible culprits were 18-year-old Damien Echols, a poor teen with an interest in the occult and a record of mental illness, his friend Jason Baldwin, a quiet kid whose talent for art tended toward dark subjects, and Jessie Misskelley, a 17-year-old misfit with an IQ of 73. He says that while he was in the supermax prison in Varner, he would write letters trying to drum up support for not just himself, but also for other inmates he believed were wrongfully convicted. La Verne, California. The test results showed that no genetic material on the crime scene evidence was a match to Echols, Baldwin or Misskelley, reported the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. That's not the same Terry Hobbs. Hobbs says his book is 25 years in the making, adding it is called Boxful of Nightmares for a reason. Reaching its apex in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Satanic Panic was a wave of paranoia rooted in the belief that Satanic cults intent on corrupting the souls of the young had infiltrated American society. He began his career in the. I just checked again and HE IS STILL MISSING. Terry Hobbs (1969 - 2019) Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers (Nightmare Vacation II) (1988) [Rob Darrinco]: Stabbed and hanged (after gaging), off-screen by Pamela Springsteen in Walter Gotell's office; his body is shown afterwards when Carol Martin Vines discovers him. Investigators kept minimal notes and omitted pertinent details including criminal records. View Source Suggest Edits Memorial Photos Flowers Created by: Legend Added: 11 Aug 2021 Find a Grave Memorial ID: 230642037 Hold for Elkhart County. Who Killed The Forgotten West Memphis Three? With the area secured, Detective Bryn Ridge volunteered to search the ditch. It's one. As the 20th century turned to the 21st, the movement seemed to be picking up steam. Under order of the Arkansas Supreme Court, there were to be new evidentiary hearings in the case. In 2004, Vicki Hutcheson recanted her trial testimony, stating that she had lied on the stand. "I'd like to see this put to rest. It has happened to a lot of people that just dont have the spotlight of a documentary, he says. Theyve had several victories, including the case of Daniel Villegas, who was acquitted of capital murder in 2018 after a 25-year legal saga. Blood and urine samples from both men were collected and sent to the West Memphis Police Department. 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. (Shortly after Villegass acquittal, Baldwin had something of a full-circle moment with his client: He took him to a Metallica show in El Paso, Texas, where they hung out backstage on the invitation of Lars Ulrich.). Peter Jackson, who would produce a separate documentary about the case titled West of Memphis in 2012, and his partner, Fran Walsh, funded an extensive private investigation and helped hire forensic experts to comb through evidence. Updated: 9:42 AM CDT June 11, 2019. That story line would make up the bulk of 2000s Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, a rare sequel for a documentary, especially before the streaming era proved that true crime series like Making a Murderer and The Staircase could maintain audience interest for years. . Polygraph tests revealed deception in the answers of both men in regard to the crimes. 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. (Maines briefly became a part of the story when Terry Hobbs, stepfather of another of the victims, sued her for defamation after she wrote a blog post pointing out that physical evidence at the crime scene potentially pointed at him and not the three convicted for the crime. Two questions plagued the conservative, middle-class community: Why would anyone commit such a heinous act, and, more importantly, who? Show more Show more What's next for West. I had a friend who was working on 20/20, and they had done a film about exorcism in one of the magazine pieces, Nevins says. In June 1996, Paradise Lost debuted on HBO, bringing the story of the West Memphis Three to TV sets and showing the power of the camera in the courtroom. 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. Terry Hobbs is the one suspected of murder and the wounds that were inflicted on my nephew were where turtles bit his face. Leave a sympathy message to the family in the guestbook on this memorial page of Terry Hobbs to show support. More than 25 years after the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis,a new book gives a first-person account of what was happening behind the sce More than 25 years after the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis,a new book gives a first-person account of what was happening behind the scenes. The boys were so mutilated, investigators thought the murders were part of some kind of Satanic ritual. Now, I see they can. What has never been definitively answered, however, is who committed the 1993 murders, and The Forgotten West Memphis Three, premiering Saturday, March 28 at 8/7c on Oxygen, reexamines the case and key theories. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. 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. He says his students seem to have a better grasp on the idea of coerced confessions than any of his peers in 1994. Griffis also knew how to spot a Satanist. But most notably, his initial timeline of events didnt match what was known about the crimes, and every time he offered a detail that diverged from the accepted chronology, the interrogating officers seemed to steer him back in the direction of the official version. Replacing Burnett was Circuit Court Judge David Laser. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie. Nobody was saying, This is an outrageous case that needs to be looked into.. But the lawyer quickly noticed inconsistencies in Misskelleys purported confession. They saw the same thing you did. Hobbs said, I still believe in my heart that Jessie, Jason, and Damion Echols are responsible for what happened to our children., He added, You look at what happened and then you wonder, what if this did not happen, where would our boys be today? Bakken immediately showed her friends Burk Sauls and Grove Pashley, who were both equally gripped by what they had just watched. But they werent just voices in the growing choir calling for the West Memphis Threes releasethey were leading the movement. Creator Payne Lindsey, a filmmaker with no previous experience investigating crimes, had no connection to the victim before he discovered her while Googling cold cases in hopes of finding his own version of runaway successes like Serial and Making a Murderer. The next day, their bodies were found in a nearby canal. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Terry Roland Hobbs <p>Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021.</p> <p>Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs .Terry graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. He had been expecting a visitation, but was instead led to the prison chapel office, where inmates were typically brought only if someone close to them had died. Nevertheless, Echols made no incriminating statements. Mojo had a different idea of what might get the man he affectionately called J.B. out of prison. West Memphis is in the heart of the Bible Belt: just a two-hour drive from where, legend has it, the devil tuned Robert Johnsons guitar, in a state thats 46 percent evangelical Protestant. eyewitness evidence surfaced 16 years later. A theory held is that Terry Hobbs was the one who actually killed the three boys and had pinned it on the Memphis 3 boys. Theres no smoking gun. March 8, 2021, Terry Hobbs passed away on March 8, 2021 in Boise, Idaho. He had always maintained he didnt commit the crimes, and outside the Varner Units walls, a growing chorus of activists and legal observers were arguing that same thing on his behalf. A statement he made to the producers of Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills did little to help his public image. But none of that support has been able to fully exonerate the trio, something theyre still fighting for. WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. Boxful of Nightmares is the personal memoirs of Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the children murdered. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs .Terry graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. He also lost the defamation case because of his violent past. In August 2011, Jason Baldwin was pulled from his prison cell under confusing circumstances once again. By the time she got done watching it, her life was forever changed. Baldwin, who had been coached by his lawyers to avoid speaking to the press, says money was the only reason he agreed to the added pressure of appearing in the documentary, especially when everyone else in a position of authority seemed adversarial toward him. TERRY HOBBS OBITUARY Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021. Filming the activists work seemed like the best place for Berlinger and Sinofsky to turn their attention; what better way to show the continued plight of the West Memphis Three than to show regular people dedicating their free time to fighting for them? And that makes him hopeful that exoneration is on the horizon. Over the years there has been lots of speculation and finger pointing as to who was responsible. Wherever it was screened, Berlinger says, it was followed by intense Q&As from audience members who couldnt believe what theyd just watched. After 18 years in prison, the West Memphis Three were finally free, but not exonerated. He responded proudly, 11.. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. The nonprofits work hasnt always been easyfundraising is hard, and because hes a convicted felon, hes unable to visit clients in prison or discuss pleasbut its been essential for him as he strives to live the words by 14th-century Persian poet Hafez that he keeps as an email signature: The small man builds cages for everyone he knows / While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low / Keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful rowdy prisoners. Baldwin says hes learned that justice isnt a computer programthat you can input all the evidence and testimony and still get the wrong results.