EXHIBIT A-IOI - West Memphis Three Case - Document Archive

Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 30-5 Filed 07/17/2009 Page 109 of 297
SECTION: Section C; Page 16; Column 4; Cultural Desk
LENGTH: 812 words
HEADLINE: FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW;
In the Shadows ofRell and Hatred
BYLINE: By JANET MASLIN
BODY:
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company
The New Yark Times
March 26, 1996, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
In making "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills," Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky discovered
the kind ofsmall-town nightmare that is a documentary film maker's dream. In this sad, lurid and darkly transfixing
story, they locate all the elements oftrue crime reporting at its most bitterly revealing.
They also deliver a rich and painfully intimate portrait ofWest Memphis, Ark., a town tom apart by the strong
emotions captured on screen. "West Memphis can go to hell," one party to this story exclaims angrily. "West Memphis
is hell," somebody else replies. This mesmerizing two-and-a-half-hour documentary by the makers of"Brother's
Keeper" often appears to corroborate that claim.
The genesis of"Paradise Lost" was the horrific 1993 murder ofthree 8-year-old boys, one ofwhom was genitally
mutilated by his killer. Arrests soon followed: three teen-agers with well-known tastes for pop satanism -- i.e., books on
witchcraft, Metallica records -- were charged with the crime. The confession of one suspect, Jessie Misskelley, a tiny
l7-year-old with an LQ. of 72, implicated two ofhis friends, Charles Jason Baldwin, 16, and Damien Wayne Echols,
18. Damien's affectations of demonic spookiness had made him especially unpopular around town.
The arrests unleashed a wave ofcathartic hatred from the victims' families, who became instant local celebrities in
the process. Pam Branch, the mother ofone ofthe dead boys, showed up in a red dress to vamp for a handsome television
reporter, who asked her whether she was having suicidal thoughts. (It didn't look that way.) John Mark Byers, the
stepfather ofanother victim, let the film makers watch him boast about vengeance while shooting holes in a pumpkin
("Oh, Jessie, I done blowed you halfto Tucson!"), croon for his church congre'gation and take Polaroids at the dead
boy's grave.
The film makers may have begun this project with the thought ofsimply indicting small-town prejudice, since the
nonconformity ofthe three suspects provoked their neighbors' venom. ("Johnny Cash wears black, doesn't he?" Damien's
father asked plaintively, trying to defend his son against the charge ofwearing sinister clothes.) But it soon became
clear that this case had a complicated, unpredictable life ofits own.
Watching closely, dividing itselfbetween revealing interviews and courtroom drama, "Paradise Lost" takes many
surprising turns while building a circumstantial argument against someone other than the three teen-agers -- someone
who, astoundingly, had a knife that may have been the murder weapon and gave it to the film makers as a gift. Even
before they decided to tum that knife over to investigators, Mr. Berlinger and Mr. Sinofsky had, by training their outsiders'
camera on the hard lives and harder attitudes ofWest Memphis, themselves become part ofthis story.
The film also looks on as adolescent arrogance, while not a criminal offense, helps one ofthe teen-age suspects
possibly dig his own grave. When one ofthe boys giggles that he has been only half-listening in court, his lawyer says
tartly, "Maybe they'll only halfway kill you ifthey convict you."