PARADISE LOST DOCUMENTARY SUMMARY
On May 5, 1993, the mutilated bodies of three second-graders were found
in a wooded area near West Memphis, Ark. A month later, murder charges
were filed against three local teenagers, who were accused of killing
the children in a satanic ritual. A police officer, asked how good the
state's case was, said, ``On a scale of 1 to 10, it's an 11.'' But a
hypnotic new documentary suggests that the community and the courtroom,
inflamed by emotion and sensationalism, rushed to judgment.
The film opens with sad police video footage from the crime scene,
showing the bodies as they were first discovered, and then reports how
wild rumors swept the area about satanic rituals, animal sacrifice and
blood drinking.
A month after the murders, an undersized 17-year-old named Jesse
Misskelly, with an IQ of 72, was questioned by police and after several
hours of interrogation, confessed that he had been present when Damien
Wayne Echols, 18, and Jason Baldwin, 16, killed and mutilated the boys.
Local prosecutors brought murder charges against the boys based almost
entirely on Jesse's statements alone. In the courtroom, they make a
poignant trio: Jesse, small and blinking; Jason, who does not testify
and indeed hardly speaks except in soft, shy generalities, and Damien,
intelligent and articulate, known locally for dressing in black,
listening to heavy metal music and reading books on Wicca, or ``white
magic.'' These three are obvious outcasts in a small, rural town where
the "normal" teenager listens to country music and goes to the baptist
church every Sunday with their family. There is no significant physical
evidence linking them to the crime, and the crime scene itself lacks any
clues that would point a finger at any of the three. Although one of the
victims lost five pints of blood and the others bled freely, there is no
blood at the murder site. The state's case is based on Jesse's testimony
and hearsay; the defense argues that the statements made by Jesse
contained only facts first supplied to him by the police, and there is a
fascinating cross-examination in which a police transcript shows Jesse
shifting the time of the crimes from morning to noon to after school to
evening (when they actually occurred) under leading suggestions by
police after hours of interrogation.
Jesse, whose trial was split off from the other two, was found guilty
and sentenced to life plus 40 years. He was offered a reduced sentence
if he would testify at the trial of the other two teenagers, but
refused. His mother says she told him she would be sitting right there
in the courtroom, and didn't want to hear him lie. Interviews with the
three accused defendant's also reveal to the viewer that they all claim
to have alibi's for the night of the murder.
At the trial of Damien and Jason, evidence of the satanic orientation of
the murders is supplied by a state ``expert occultist'' who turns out to
have his degrees from a mail-order university that did not require any
classes or schoolwork. For the defense, a pathologist testifies that it
would be so difficult to carry out the precise mutilations on one of the
boys that he couldn't do it himself--not without the right scalpel, and
certainly not in the dark or in muddy water.
Meanwhile, we meet members of the families on both sides. Time and
again, the documentary describes someone as a boyfriend, girlfriend,
stepfather, stepmother, ex-wife or ex-husband; there seem to be few
intact original marriages in this group. The parents of the murdered
children are quick to believe the theories about the crime which are
promoted by the intense media coverage, and unforgiving. One mother says
of Damien, ``He deserves to be tortured for the rest of his life.'' She
curses not only the defendants, ``but the mothers that bore them.'' In
one especially uncomfortable scene, relatives of two of the victims take
target practice by shooting at pumpkins they have named after the
defendants, aiming at parts of the ``bodies'' they have not yet hit.
One of these men is John Mark Byers, stepfather of one of the victims,
who earlier has been seen in a video at the crime scene, re-creating the
crimes in grisly detail while vowing vengeance. In the movie's single
most astonishing development, Byers gives the filmmakers a knife. They
turn it over to the state. Crime lab reports show traces of blood that
apparently came from himself and his stepson. On the witness stand, he
testifies that he beat his stepson with a belt at 5:30 p.m. on the day
of his death. The welts from the belt buckle previously had been linked
to the ritual killing.
The film ends with guilty verdicts against Damien (death by injection)
and Jason (life in prison). The sentences are under appeal.
The film creates a vivid portrait of a small town rocked by a heinous
crime, that is quick to point fingers at those who are different. This
image is promoted by the media, which affects the ability for these
three social outcasts to be given a fair trial and places pressure on
the police to make an arrest.
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