Summary and Analysis of Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three: Based on the Book by Mara Leveritt
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Summary and Analysis of Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three: Based on the Book by Mara Leveritt
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This short summary and analysis of Devil’s Knot by Mara Leveritt includes:
• Historical context
• Chapter-by-chapter summaries
• Character profiles
• Timeline of major events
• Important quotes
• Fascinating trivia
• Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work
About Mara Leveritt’s Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three:
In 1993, the brutal murders of three eight-year-old boys shocked the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas. Under pressure to solve the case, and lacking physical evidence to identify any suspects, authorities set their sights on a local trio of misfit teenagers, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, later dubbed the West Memphis Three.
Leveritt’s account of the case, which resulted in one death sentence and two life sentences, is by turns a shocking, appalling, and heartbreaking work of true crime writing. Likening the Three’s plight to the Salem Witch Trials, she calls America’s justice system into question, arguing that these three young men were condemned simply for being different.
The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504044196 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Worth Books |
| Publication date: | 02/21/2017 |
| Series: | Smart Summaries |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 30 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Summary and Analysis of Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three
Based on the Book by Mara Leveritt
By Worth Books
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4419-6
CHAPTER 1
Summary
Prologue
In modern-day America, we like to believe that we live in a far more enlightened society, with a far more rational and scientific justice system, than the Puritans who burned supposed witches at the stake.
Yet the story of the West Memphis Three raises unsettling questions about how far that justice system has actually come, when teenagers can be tried and sentenced based on how they present themselves.
Need to Know: Mara Leveritt's mission is to explore how, at least in this case, the modern American justice system devolved back to the "witch hunt" modus operandi of colonial times.
Part One: The Investigation
Chapter One: The Murders
West Memphis, Arkansas, is a town with a strip of road where two interstate highways merge and truckers make pit stops. Near that stretch of road is a wooded area known as Robin Hood, where a large manmade ditch collects rainwater. On May 6, 1993, three eight-year-old boys, naked, bound, and bearing marks of hideous torture, were found in a gully there.
The boys — Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Stevie Branch — had each been reported missing by their parents the previous evening: The three young friends had gone bike riding that night, and the sky was illuminated from the full moon's glow. It wasn't until the next morning that Chief Inspector Gary W. Gitchell of the West Memphis police department mounted a concerted search effort.
By afternoon, all three boys' naked bodies and their clothes — which had been tied underwater to sticks stuck in the mud — had been recovered. It was a ghastly sight: Their hands were tied to their feet by their own shoelaces. Their bodies bore horrible wounds, and Christopher had been castrated.
Although Gitchell stayed mum with reporters, the Memphis Commercial Appeal got wind of the gory details via a police scanner. Theories almost immediately sprang up among horrified West Memphis residents that the murders were somehow connected to satanic worship. After days went by without leads, the police seemed receptive to taking these spurious rumors as a valid theory.
Need to Know: On the night of May 5, another police report was filed, stating that a bleeding black man had gone into a restaurant, Bojangles, and used the bathroom, leaving blood smeared on the walls. Reginia Meek, the same cop who had filed reports on Christopher Byers and Michael Moore, took the manager's report about the "mentally disoriented" man from the drive-through, but did not actually go inside. One can't help but wonder whether, if she had checked out that bathroom, the West Memphis Three case would have unfolded differently.
Chapter Two: The West Memphis Police
Members of the West Memphis police department, along with members of the Crittenden County drug task force, were being investigated for possible widespread corruption. Some officers had been taking guns seized as evidence in narcotics busts; one, who was pawning the guns to buy drugs, was found murdered.
Need to Know: John Mark Byers, stepfather of Christopher, was an undercover informant to the county's task force and a drug dealer himself. He was chummy with the authorities and socialized with local officers. When he was convicted of threatening to kill his ex-wife, and later busted on drug charges, the charges were wiped out for reasons unknown.
Chapter Three: The Police Investigation: Part 1
Police procedure was inconsistent at best. The coroner's assessment of the bodies was not as precise as it could have been, since police neglected to call him for hours after the bodies were dragged from the water. Autopsy results did not reach the police for weeks.
Detectives interrogated a wide variety of locals, and were all ears when fielding the many tips that poured in. They took down the account of Michael Moore's eight-year-old friend Aaron Hutcheson, who claimed to have seen a black man pick the doomed boy up from school; but ignored a tip about John Mark Byers and his wife being drug informants, and did not pursue an interrogation of two young men who had hightailed it to California soon after the incident. One, Christopher Morgan, had confessed that he might have committed the crime while on drugs, then quickly recanted.
Additionally, detectives' questioning of the boys' parents and stepparents, as judged from police records (or lack thereof), seemed spotty. When questioning John Mark Byers, they ignored inconsistencies about the timeline of that night's search, and failed to venture into topics such as his criminal history.
Need to Know: West Memphis locals were on edge, putting Gitchell under pressure to make a break in the case. Police were frustrated by the lack of leads — but records suggest that they failed to analyze evidence they did have, to ask certain obviously pertinent questions, or to follow up on those they did ask.
Chapter Four: The Police Investigation: Part 2
On some level, the fate of the West Memphis Three might be traced back to one woman who didn't approve of her daughter's boyfriend.
In 1992, the mother of Deanna Holcomb, then 15, repeatedly called the cops on Damien Echols, 17. After Deanna and Damien were caught with their pants down — literally — in a vacant trailer in the trailer park where Damien lived (unhappily) with his mother, stepfather, and sister, Damien was placed in a juvenile facility.
Juvenile officer Jerry Driver, for whom cults were evidently a bête noire, became convinced that Damien was into "occult activities," if not full-blown Satanism. He put Damien into a mental hospital and continued to track him through a family move to Oregon and then, after a family blowup, back with his stepfather in Arkansas.
Need to Know: Damien Echols had a troubled family life and suffered from bipolar disorder. But he emphatically denied the rumors of Satan worship that dogged him — in fact, he identified with the peaceful and woman-centric practice of Wicca. Authorities nevertheless pegged him into a hole — and it would prove to be a very deep hole indeed.
Chapter Five: The Prime Suspects
When Driver suspects Damien, his girlfriend Domini, his close friend Jason Baldwin, and a few other teenagers are the potential murderers — based solely on a hunch — police detective Donald Bray of nearby Marion found Driver's instincts credible.
Driver shared the same list of names with James Sudbury of the West Memphis narcotics task force, and the detective joined Driver's colleague Steve Jones to interview Damien, Domini, and Jason. Without being briefed on his legal rights, Damien volunteered information, including his psychiatric history, religious beliefs, and awareness of the basic circumstances of the murder.
Damien also took a polygraph test. The results were not captured, but the detective who conducted the test asserted that his answers were untruthful. Damien's ex-girlfriend Deanna (contacted at Driver's suggestion) and Domini's male cousin were also polygraphed, and again the officer administering the test declared they had been dishonest. When police told the latter two teens, they suddenly pointed their fingers at Damien.
Need to Know: Detectives were desperate to solve the high-profile case, suggestible when it came to rumors about Satanism, and eager to seize on potential suspects who fit their theory. They were so eager, in fact, that they questioned minors without a parent or attorney present, conveyed lie detector test results via word of mouth, and shared confidential details of the case off the record.
Chapter Six: The Volunteer Detective
Vicki Hutcheson had been hauled in to the Marion police station on the day of the search for the boys, on suspicion of credit card fraud, but endeared herself to Detective Bray by mentioning that her son Aaron was a friend of Michael Moore. The following week, she met with the detective once more and was asked for any tips that might corroborate the Satanism theory. Hutcheson then took it upon herself to dig up dirt on her neighbors — including Jessie Misskelley Jr., 17, one of the kids Driver suspected of Satanism. She asked Jessie about Damien and Jason, both of whom he knew, but not very well.
Jessie was in many respects an easy target. He'd had behavioral problems for most of his life — a history of fighting and violent behavior — and an IQ that hovered below the border of average — and he had dropped out of school at 16.
Hutcheson told Jessie that she'd like to meet Damien; the cops not only approved of this plan, but suggested she stage her trailer with books on the occult. According to Hutcheson, after this meeting, she saw Damien repeatedly, even accompanying him to a sort of cult orgy — and though her accounts of their time together were sketchy, Gitchell was willing to meet her.
Need to Know: Despite a history of acting out violently, Jessie Misskelley Jr. was essentially a naïve young man, susceptible to being manipulated. Facing charges herself, and with reward money for information on the case up for grabs, Vicki Hutcheson certainly had motive to manipulate him — and the police. But detectives were happy to let this self-styled Nancy Drew do their work for them.
Chapter Seven: The Confession
Jessie agreed to be questioned by Detective Mike Allen and to take a polygraph. When Gitchell and Ridge double-teamed him in an aggressive interrogation, a panicked Jessie started telling them whatever they wanted to hear. Being shown a photo of one of the murdered boys' bodies strongly affected him. Soon enough, Jessie claimed to have witnessed Damien and Jason committing the murders and to have prevented Michael Moore from fleeing the scene.
A taped interrogation followed. Ridge asked many leading questions. Jessie's account of the murders was inconsistent with even the few basic facts the police knew, such as the timeline of May 5's events, and the way and means in which the boys were bound. (Jessie even claimed that Chris Byers had been strangled, although physical evidence contradicted that scenario.) After six hours, Jessie was led to a cell.
Need to Know: The detectives — who knew Jessie well from his juvenile arrests — chose to overlook his limited mental capacity, as well as the blatant inconsistencies of his so-called recollections with the physical evidence. Meanwhile, all Jessie was thinking was that if he gave them the right answers, he would get to go home.
Chapter Eight: The Arrests
On June 3, 1993, Damien and Jason were arrested for murder in a nighttime raid of Damien's trailer. The next day, Gitchell trumpeted his department's triumph at a press conference. The transcript of Jessie's confession was leaked to the media. Press reports played up the satanic angle of the arrests and repeated rumors about the accused.
But the police, and prosecutors Brent Davis and John Fogleman, were actually concerned about their tenuous case against the trio. They resorted to re-questioning Vicki Hutcheson's son Aaron. This time, the eight-year-old claimed to have actually witnessed the murders. In two interviews, he gave accounts that contradicted each other as well as the known facts of the case.
Need to Know: While publicly bragging that their case was rock-solid, law enforcement officials were actually relying on two supposed eyewitness accounts — one from a mentally deficient teen, the other from a child. Yet they were unfazed by the contradictions within and between these narratives.
Part Two: The Trials
Chapter Nine: The Defendants
All three suspects were each assigned a pair of court-appointed defense attorneys, and a private investigator named Ron Lax volunteered to help their efforts. One of Jessie's attorneys, Dan Stidham, was initially vexed by Jessie's insistence on his innocence. But after months of hearing inconsistent accounts, he came to the conclusion that Jessie really had made up his story of guilt, under pressure from the cops.
Need to Know: The team tasked with defending Damien, Jason, and Jessie gradually recognized that, far from being cold-blooded devil worshippers as the press had portrayed them, the three were scared, confused kids, in way over their heads with the legal system.
Chapter Ten: Release of the Police Files
Private Investigator Lax was baffled by the chaotic mishmash of documents released by the prosecution and the random order in which they trickled to the defense team. He attempted to catalog the physical evidence that had been amassed — including two sticks that Detective Ridge found in the woods months after the murder that he claimed supported Jessie's account of how the victims were beaten.
Need to Know: The prosecution's documentation and overall investigation seemed to have no rhyme or reason, and there was no transparency as to why certain records had been introduced.
Chapter Eleven: The Pretrial Motions
At the first pretrial hearing on August 4, Judge David Burnett ruled that Jessie would have a separate trial, but Damien and Jason would be tried together — a ruling the latter pair's lawyers unsuccessfully protested, believing that the public perception of Damien as a cult leader could prejudice jurors against Jason. (Damien wasn't helping to combat his negative image; Shettles had to chide him for his brash attitude when being brought into court. In fairness, an angry crowd had gathered to shout hateful things at him.)
During hearings that stretched to November, many other defense motions were similarly rejected. Moreover, Burnett decreed that all three would be tried as adults, although only Damien was 18.
Meanwhile, Fogleman, intent on bolstering his case with physical evidence, had a police diver search the lake behind the Echols and Baldwin families' trailer homes — and he turned up a serrated knife.
Need to Know: The defense team introduced many motions in an effort to ensure their clients would receive fair trials, but the judge would not budge. The unearthing of a knife in November, many months after the crime, raises questions about the integrity of officials' evidence-gathering methods.
Chapter Twelve: The Private Investigation
The prosecution's haphazard non-chronological release of records continued well past August. Reviewing a May interview with John Mark Byers for the first time in November, Lax found it peculiar that Byers had referenced the perpetrators being underage prior to the suspects' arrests.
Lax spoke with a friend of Jessie's who had told police that Jessie admitted to the killings — but now said that he, like Jessie himself, had offered up that information after being browbeaten by the officers. Lax also spoke with the manager of the Bojangles restaurant, Marty King, about the mysterious bloody man who had used the bathroom on the night of the murders. Amazingly, it turned out that the next night, Detectives Allen and Ridge had visited the scene and collected some of the blood traces and a pair of sunglasses left behind — but never followed up.
Questioning a neighbor of Vicki Hutcheson's yielded another disturbing revelation: Aaron had been "out here in the trailer park" on the evening of the murders, contradicting his claim that he had witnessed them.
Need to Know: Other parties were conducting their own outside investigation. Documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, capturing footage for what would become Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Woods, the film that brought the case national attention, interviewed the families of the victims and of the accused. John Mark Byers, filmed at the crime scene, delivered an angry and scathing speech aimed at the accused boys.
Chapter Thirteen: The Bloodstained Knife
Weeks prior to Jessie's January trial, police were sent a knife with blood "consistent with the blood of Chris Byers." It turned out that John Mark Byers had gifted the knife to a member of the Paradise Lost crew, and the filmmakers had opted to hand it off to police.
When questioned, Byers initially said he had never used the hunting knife. Then he said he had used it to slice up deer meat for jerky. When DNA results showed the blood was human and also consistent with his own, he said he had cut himself with it.
Need to Know: Gary Gitchell's kid-gloves approach to questioning Byers was rather unusual. Perhaps tellingly, Byers had a history with Fogleman, who had been the prosecutor of a case against him, and Burnett, who had the eventual conviction from this case wiped from Byers's record.
Chapter Fourteen: The First Trial
Under questioning, Gitchell shrugged off the inconsistencies in Jessie's story. Vicki Hutcheson was allowed to relay her account of accompanying Damien to a cult orgy called an "esbat." (She insisted that reward money had nothing to do with her self-appointed detective role.)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Summary and Analysis of Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three by Worth Books. Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Context,Overview,
Summary,
Timeline,
Cast of Characters,
Direct Quotes and Analysis,
Trivia,
What's That Word?,
Critical Response,
About Mara Leveritt,
For Your Information,
Bibliography,
Copyright,