EXHIBIT A-IOI - West Memphis Three Case - Document Archive
EXHIBIT A-IOI - West Memphis Three Case - Document Archive
EXHIBIT A-IOI - West Memphis Three Case - Document Archive
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<strong>Case</strong> 4:09-cv-00008-BSM <strong>Document</strong> 30-5 Filed 07/17/2009 Page 106 of 297<br />
LexisNexis m<br />
SECTION: TELEVISION; Pg. 059<br />
LENGTH: 727 words<br />
Copyright 1996 Boston Herald Inc.<br />
The Boston Herald<br />
June 6,1996 Thursday FIRST EDITION<br />
HEADLINE: Finding America's lost; HBO 'Undercover' series captures chilling tragedy<br />
BYLINE: By Monica Collins<br />
BODY:<br />
An HBO documentary, "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills," rattles in your head and weighs<br />
down your heart long after the chilling film ends.<br />
Nothing more upsetting than reckoning with murdered children. Nothing more disturbing than realizing that we're<br />
really killing ourselves.<br />
Finely textured despite its blunt impact, "Paradise Lost" (premiering Monday as part ofHBO's distinctive "America<br />
Undercover" series) is a stark, true story about the butchering ofthree young boys in <strong>West</strong> <strong>Memphis</strong>, Ark., in May 1993<br />
and ofthe judicial aftermath, culminating in the conviction ofthree teen-agers. That is the surface story.<br />
The murky undercurrents give "Paradise Lost" its intense resonance. For the murdered children, there was never<br />
any paradise to lose. And this film becomes ajoumey through America lost - a story offractured families, a brokenjudicial<br />
system, sloppy cops and maddeningly irresponsible media.<br />
The slain boys' families are as fragmented as the killers' clans - amalgams ofstepparents, single mothers, girlfriends,<br />
boyfriends, half-sisters, common-law wives, illegitimate children. Amid the cigarette smoke, alcohol and fast<br />
food, these people eke out an existence in <strong>West</strong> <strong>Memphis</strong>, a downtrodden town bounded by an interstate and laced with<br />
trailer parks and neon churches. But this is not God's country. Evil pervades the atmosphere of<strong>West</strong> <strong>Memphis</strong>.<br />
Steven Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore, 8-year-old boys on bikes, met that evil in the woods alongside<br />
the interstate. There, the boys were found dead, naked, hog-tied, raped and mutilated.<br />
"Paradise Lost" shows the crime scene, as recorded by the police, at the beginning ofthe film. It is a sight too gruesome<br />
to sit through passively.<br />
After the killings were discovered, the shocked populace of<strong>West</strong> <strong>Memphis</strong> naturally clamored for swift justice.<br />
And the police quickly obliged by arresting three teen-age boys who were well-known to them.<br />
Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin were the misfits of<strong>West</strong> <strong>Memphis</strong>. After Misskelley confessed,<br />
the police and prosecutors figured they had the case all wrapped up. However, there was virtually no physical<br />
evidence.<br />
All that blood, all that mayhem and yet there was nothing marking the killers at the crime scene, except a couple of<br />
fibers.<br />
Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky went to <strong>West</strong> <strong>Memphis</strong> after the suspects were arrested in 1993.<br />
They stayed until the defendants were convicted in 1994. Along the way, they worked like skillful documentarians, insinuating<br />
themselves into the community, becoming so much a part ofthe place that they gained the confidence ofboth<br />
the suspects' families and the murdered boys' kin.
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