Berlinger and Sinofsky expected a similar result to come quickly in the West Memphis Three case. When the pair got the call from Nevins, they mobilized immediately, landing in Arkansas shortly after the arrests. After ending his first marriage, he wed Pamela Hicks Branch in 1986, when her son Stevie was almost 2 years old. That November, he says, HBO agreed to give an honorariumroughly $5,000to the families on both sides. And then there was the public pressure: In August 2010, Vedder and Maines headlined yet another benefit concert, this one in Little Rock. It was a call about Damien Echolshe wasnt dead, but his wife, Lorri Davis, feared he might be soon. 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. While police had focused on Echols and Baldwin in the intervening weeks because of their reputation, the arrests came largely because of a confession by Misskelley, which was leaked to the largest newspaper in the area, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and ran under the banner headline Teen describes cult torture of boys. At a press conference shortly after the arrests, the lead investigator was asked how confident he felt about the case on a scale of 1-10. Jessie took a polygraph. Their advocates believe the Alford pleas represent their own form of injustice, but correcting that is a less pressing issue than the early battlesthe men are free and have been able to mostly live their lives in the years since their release. Terry Hobbs, Actor: Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers. Even without a smoking gun, the circumstantial evidence was enough for a conviction in a place like Crittenden County, Arkansas. The attorneys representing Echols and Baldwin believed that the juries wouldnt accept the prosecutions versions of eventsthat they were too fantastical and tied to second-hand informationand that without conclusive proof, their clients would walk. Rollins not only gave interviews to keep the effort alive in the press, he organized a string of benefit shows and released an album featuring Iggy Pop and Chuck D, with proceeds going to the defense. Paradise Lost is a narration-free documentary filmed with a journalistic remove. Main Page; But on that early morning in 1997, Jason Baldwin wasnt concerned with Berlinger and Sinofskys craft, or legal precedent, or crusading celebrities. Hobbs said he wrote the book so people, especially other victims of crime, could understand the tragedy he has gone through and how it impacted his life. (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.). No explanation has yet been given as to why such a seemingly important lead was dropped. Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers were best friends. We are sad to announce that on September 11, 2021 we had to say goodbye to Terry Hobbs of Sweetwater, Texas. They asked to see a cut, and they immediately said, Not only are we going to let you use all that music, but were not going to charge you anything for it., Metallica would be the first celebrities to throw their support behind the West Memphis Three, but they were far from the last. 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. He was 56. doesn't know how to teach the material and you will end up teaching yourself everything. February 27, 2023 (76 years old) View obituary. They formed the organization Proclaim Justice, a nonprofit that reinvestigates crimes with the hopes of freeing innocent people. Misskelley's coerced confession, as contradictory as it seemed to the evidence, was consistent in implicating Echols and Jason Baldwin. 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. 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. I went to a Baptist school and I got accused of being a devil worshiper because I was trying to learn how to write hieroglyphics, says Sauls, today a screenwriter and VFX designer. But they werent just voices in the growing choir calling for the West Memphis Threes releasethey were leading the movement. Iwould journal something and put it in the box, said Hobbs. Bray asked her if she knew about rumored cult activity in the community. Social media didnt fully exist yet, but the group managed to harness the potential of the nascent information superhighway to bring attention to their cause. With the area secured, Detective Bryn Ridge volunteered to search the ditch. Metallica had never licensed a song for a film before, but when they learned about the case, Berlinger says, they made an exception. 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 governor of the state of Arkansas who will one day pardon the West Memphis Three is probably in junior high right now, he says. A spiritual successor to Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line, and a forerunner of more recent documentaries like Making a Murderer, the film stands today as the most affecting examination of one of the most studied legal cases in U.S. historyone that put heavy metal lyrics and black T-shirts on trial and helped lay the groundwork for the current thinking around false confessions. But Echolss situation changed Baldwins thinking. Mojo was right. They had a daughter together, Amanda Hobbs, who was 4 years old at the time of her brothers death. - The West Memphis 3: Free (2012) . By going into the courtroom and sticking with the case for its entire duration, Berlinger and Sinofsky were able to capture what may have otherwise been lost to time or left out of transcripts. People have come out of the woodwork and said this and this and people have done things and a lot of them are wrong, said Hobbs. Their bikes were found by a pipe nearby. Defense attorneys also pointed out that Griffis' doctorate was obtained through a notorious diploma mill and had been awarded with Griffis having never attended a single class. All of those factors combined to create a tipping point, says Leveritt. Hes since parlayed the popularity of the show into a booming podcast network and documentary deal with Oxygen. Last year, I noticed that Terry went missing. They were naked and hog-tied with their own shoelaces, and showed signs of blunt force trauma and mutilation, the latter of which may have been the work of wild animals, reported the, Three teenage boys were arrested for the crimes , Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life without parole while Echols received the death penalty. West Memphis is pretty much like a second Salem," Echols stated in the 1996 documentary Paradise Lost: The Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Nevertheless, Echols made no incriminating statements. Support came from unlikely corners: a classroom of kids who held a cookie sale that raised $30, local bands in Chicago who held a benefit show and sent $150. He says his students seem to have a better grasp on the idea of coerced confessions than any of his peers in 1994. The arrest, trial, and conviction of the three young men known as the West Memphis Three came under national scrutiny as details of the case became public. 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. The third put forth the unusual theory that the killings were committed as a cult ritual. Griffis also found the devil in nearly every number associated with the crime. Family and friends can send flowers and/or light a candle as a loving gesture for their loved one. It hurt all over again, he said. The sneaker ligatures in which Terry Hobbs' DNA was found in," Soury said . Further down, it includes names such as Rick Dior, a sound mixer who worked on Apollo 13 and Dirty Dancing, and Bob Richman, a three-time Emmy-nominated cinematographer whose rsum also includes renowned docs like An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman. But I had to. With the guards blessings, Mojo led Baldwin to Varners visitation room, where everything had been put away aside from two chairs set up in front of a cart holding a small TV and a VCR. Explore. Show more Show more What's next for West. 1.0. . As detailed by The Hollywood Reporter in 2011, Jackson and Walsh helped fund key investigations for the West Memphis Three's defense during the last seven years of their incarceration. 24 to Jun. The second postulated that they had been slain by one or more strangers. 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. In her recantation, Hutcheson stated that when she asked Echols directly if he had killed "those three kids," he replied, "No. Unaware of what was to come, Allen explained that he just wanted to ask him some questions. Baldwins attorneys even avoided putting him on the witness stand or mounting much of a defense, believing the burden was on the state. Speaking by phone last month, he comes across, in many ways, like the person Berlinger says he encountered in prison in 1994: polite, deferential, soft-spoken. Terry Hobbs passed away in Nampa, Idaho. Robin Lynn Jones. Polygraph tests revealed deception in the answers of both men in regard to the crimes. Except this was 1996, and home internet was still in its infancy. Much of Cecil Hotel focuses on the amateur investigators who turned coincidences into conspiracy theories, ultimately accusing an innocent person of her death. 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. Thursday, August 19th 2021. The first being that boys were killed by someone they knew. Websleuths, an online forum for discussions about unsolved homicides and missing-person cases, has more than 100,000 members, and internet vigilantes have used social media and other online breadcrumbs to help track down actual criminals, such as the Canadian murderer and subject of the documentary Dont F*ck With Cats, Luka Magnotta. The pair abruptly fled to Oceanside, Calif., four days after the murders. He was handed the phone. On August 19, 2011, all three accepted the deal and were immediately released from prison. Then youd try to find it, and it didnt exist, because when we went out to discussion groups, no one knew about the case yet., After learning that the teens were still in prison, Bakken, Sauls, and Pashley decided to make full use of the budding technological revolution. Its something that Baldwin couldnt envision when he first agreed to let the documentarians interview him in jail in exchange for an honorarium, or even when Mojo played that VHS tape for him in 1997. Over two decades after the murders, what really happened to Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore on the evening of May 5, 1993, remains a mystery. It just needed a catalyst. The idea of the average citizen becoming embroiled in a criminal investigation isnt far-fetched in 2021, decades removed from the launch of WM3.org. They werent connected in any direct way, Bakken says. It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Terry Lee Hobbs of Auburndale, Florida, born in Winter Haven, Florida, who passed away on August 16, 2021, at the age of 56, leaving to mourn family and friends. 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. But its closing moments point to how the filmmakers felt: that a horrific tragedy had just been compounded by a monumental miscarriage of justice. Share Memories & Support the Family. Update: I was totally wrong. He was an actor, known for Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988), Fast Food (1989) and In the Heat of the Night (1988). It was born out of genuine admiration for the fact that these guys took the time out of their lives to dedicate, to go down to Arkansas, to build a website, to really step out of their lives, Berlinger says. Luminol tests, which reveal the hidden presence of blood, were not performed at the scene until six days later. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. Since the West Memphis Three were released, no one else has been charged in the murders of Stevie, Christopher and Michael. Terry Hobbs was born in 1958 and grew up in Northern Arkansas. I'm not stupid." 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. Bakken immediately showed her friends Burk Sauls and Grove Pashley, who were both equally gripped by what they had just watched. You need corroborating evidence.. Two questions plagued the conservative, middle-class community: Why would anyone commit such a heinous act, and, more importantly, who? In February, Netflix released Berlingers Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, a docuseries that looked at the 2013 death of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who died while vacationing in Los Angeles. To date, no DNA evidence from the crime scene can be linked to Damien Echols, Baldwin, or Jessie Misskelley. Griffis also knew how to spot a Satanist. The consequences of that online campaign were ruinous: The person they targeted, a Mexican metal musician who worked under the name Morbid, was harassed into hiding. TERRY HOBBS OBITUARY Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021. William Holford Griffiths. In the Bible Belt, the Satanic Panic took hold with a vengeance. A native of Winter Haven, born December 21, 1964, Terry has been a lifelong resident of Auburndale. 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. The whole point of the web sleuths presented in the Cecil Hotel is that you cannot assume something is truthful just because circumstantially it seems interesting. Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of Branch who was under suspicion but never charged, said he welcomes new DNA testing. 2012 West of Memphis (Documentary) Self - Steven Branch's Stepfather. Hobbs described what it was like the day the three walked free. the only grade you receive is from quizzes, exams, and the final. She said it was one of the highest-rated pieces they had. 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. None of the early interviews with the parents were recorded. One of Kathy Bakkens earliest jobs in Los Angeles allowed her a certain kind of cultural currency: She designed movie posters for an entertainment-advertising company, which meant she got to see films months before they were released. (WJHG) By Nikki Sheaks Published: Jul. Quality. 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. He also lost the defamation case because of his violent past. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Sheila Nevins, the HBO exec who pushed for Berlinger and Sinofsky to make that initial trip to Arkansas, is most proud of the companys willingness to let her finance three documentaries over 18 years without knowing where they would go. To learn more, watch The Forgotten West Memphis Three on Saturday, March 28 and Sunday, March 29at 8/7c on Oxygen. Hobbs was Branch's stepfather. Well, perhaps not nobody. Case Number : 2:21-BK-21177. 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. Among them was a disoriented, muddy, and bleeding African-American man who stumbled into a West Memphis Bojangles restaurant men's room less than a mile from the crime scene. (Police questioned Byers several times during the investigation, but never considered him a suspect.) Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life without parole while Echols received the death penalty. Spotting a small, black tennis shoe in the water, Jones radioed for help. You still dont really know what happened to these kids. The idea, Berlinger says, was to tell a story of disaffected youthabout kids killing kids., There was no reason not to believe the press, Berlinger says. At that time, I was a little naive that what you read in the paper must have some truth to it, and all the press reports coming out of Arkansas were saying that this was like a slam dunk, an open-and-shut case with a confession that was printed in the newspaper.. The case status is Pending - Other Pending. Covered in wounds, all three showed signs of having been beaten. 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. While Berlinger says that the work of people like Bakken and Sauls was more impressive than that of any celebrity, its undeniable that the famous and influential brought a megaphone and funding mechanism to this case that most never get. Another hair found near the crime scene on a tree stump was found to be consistent with the DNA of Hobbs friend, David Jacoby, according to court documents obtained by Oxygen.com. It has happened to a lot of people that just dont have the spotlight of a documentary, he says. During Misskelley's trial, Hutcheson testified that she had attended an "an occult Satanic meeting" she referred to as an "esbat." Misskelley, who had entered the West Memphis police station that morning with hopes of reward money he might use to purchase a new truck for his father found himself instead charged with murder and facing life plus 40 years in prison. After 18 years in prison, the West Memphis Three were finally free, but not exonerated. WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. 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. The first and likely simplest gauge is continued interest in the case. That type of support made observers question the verdicts perhaps more so than any rock star who shouted Echolss name into a mic because of an HBO documentary. But further down, in the section for the music department, theres a curious inclusion of a consultant who never worked in film again: Alex Sinofsky, the son of Bruce who was 12 at the time of Paradise Losts release. The level of corruption in the American justice system is glaring and sickening.. According to Devil's Knot author Mara Leveritt, the investigation of the murders was divided along three lines. When the case was given the option for DNA evidence, everyone but Terry Hobbs said yes. On Aug. 11, 2011, the West Memphis Three entered the courtroom for the final time. 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. Few celebrities at the time did as much as Henry Rollins, however. In 1996, a screener for Paradise Lost passed her desk. Mojo, however, was considerably more fired up, believing the same thing many of Paradise Losts viewers did: that the movie showed an incredible miscarriage of justice, one that would surely be fixed. And yet Hobbs was not interviewed at all in the months after the crimes. The first film gave rise to a movement devoted to reopening the investigation in hopes of exonerating, and ultimately freeing, Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelley. Damien Echols (@damienechols) July 7, 2021 Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of Branch who was under suspicion but never charged, said he welcomes new DNA testing. We didnt see them grow up.. (WMC) - Not a single piece of evidence ever connected the West Memphis Three, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, to the 1993 murders of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore. Knowing that the police were already focusing on Damien Echols, Hutcheson asked her neighbor, Jessie Misskelley Jr., about the brooding teen and his occult connection. Now, he was being asked to consider something that he never dreamed he would: accepting a plea deal that would set the West Memphis Three free, but require them to give up their quest for exoneration. Even today, years after his name was cleared and authorities ruled Lams death accidental, Morbid still receives threats. "Everyone has a story and this just happens to be mine," said Hobbs. Make a life-giving gesture He died on April 4, 2019 in Panama City Beach, Florida, USA. I spoke with one of the jurors, years later after the trials and convictions, and he said he had no doubt that people could throw their lot in with the devil and be commanded to do things that they wouldnt have done otherwisethat they have basically made the deal with the devil, Leveritt says. They saw this movie and they felt like, I have to do something.. To send flowers or plant a tree in memory of Terry Hobbs, visit the Tribute Store. In an email to The Ringer, Rollins stressed that inaction was not an option., Myself and the many people I worked with did what we could to help bring attention to the case and generate much needed financial aid, he wrote. Pam Hobbs divorced Terry Hobbs in 2004 and has reversed her position on the West Memphis Three's guilt. Although Griffis' testimony was dramatic, it showed only a tenuous grasp of occult knowledge much of it, including a reference to a cult called "Crytos," was simply made up. But we stuck with it, and every so often something would happen, and little by little, people would come around., They spread word about the website through online discussion groups and by hanging flyers in the art houses that screened Paradise Lost, and by 2000, WM3.org was getting 4,000 to 8,000 hits a day. I just checked again and HE IS STILL MISSING. In 2007, new DNA and physical evidence arose that seemed to further distance the West Memphis Three from the murders. The footage included raw jailhouse interviews with the defendants, strategy sessions held by legal teams on both sides, and extended monologues from Mark Byers, the tall, goateed stepfather of one of the victims, who spoke as though he were reciting the Book of Revelation and who, at one point in Paradise Lost, fired a handgun at a pumpkin while reciting the names of the accused. He is from USA. My first thought is, I hope this dude isnt trying to pull me into some type of escape, Baldwin says nearly a quarter-century later. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. Inevitably, the West Memphis Three case always comes up. After hours of questioning, a frustrated Morgan blurted out that he had been hospitalized for drug and alcohol abuse and might have committed the murders. Attorneys for Echols have submitted a formal request to inspect the records that are available, involving cataloguing of the evidence as well as information on the loss of the evidence. Sign up forOxygen Insiderfor all the best true crime content. The West Memphis Police Department interviewed Hobbs, who was dismissive of the findings, claiming the hair could have been picked up during a visit to his home since the victim "played with our little boy regularly," according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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