West Memphis Three Leaves Prison – WP3 Updates

It is confirmed that the “West Memphis Three” has already been freed and left the prison cell in Arkansas.

Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. have been taken from their cells in the Arkansas Department of Correction and are being transported to Jonesboro, for tomorrow’s hearing. An official of the ADC reported that they left with all their belongings, which is unusual and suggests that they are not expected back. This is the first time all three have left prison together.

The three men called “”West Memphis Three” were convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys — Christopher Byers, Steve Branch and James Michael Moore — in 1993.

In May 1993, the bodies of the boys were found in a drainage ditch in a wooded area of West Memphis, Ark., called Robin Hood Hills. The bodies appeared to have been mutilated, their hands tied to their feet.

The grotesque nature of the murders led to a theory about satanic cult activity. Investigators focused their attention on Mr. Echols, at the time a troubled yet gifted teenager who practiced Wicca, a rarity in the town of West Memphis. Efforts to learn more about him, spearheaded by a single mother cooperating with the police, led to Mr. Misskelley, a passing acquaintance of Mr. Echols, who is borderline mentally retarded.

After a nearly 12-hour interrogation by the police, Mr. Misskelley confessed to the murders and implicated Mr. Echols and Mr. Baldwin, though his confession diverged in significant details with the facts of the crime known by the police.

New DNA testing found no evidence of the three men at the scene.

Buy the HBO documentary “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills“, which told the story of three convicts.