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

Paraaise Lost Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 30-5 Filed 07/17/2009 Page 268 of 297
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Paradise Lost
The child murders at Robin Hood Hills
Revelations: Paradise Lost II
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
Dolan Cummings
posted 2 August 2005
As this renowned pair of documentaries is released on DVD, Berlinger and Sinofsky are at work
on an eagerly-anticipated third. The films work on a number of levels: as documentary they
hover between 'true crime' and, especially in the case of the second, campaigning journalism.
There is also an element of pure American Gothic, with an array of human gargoyles performing
to a Metallica soundtrack.
Not least, though, the films are interesting studies in documentary itself: the second film deals with
circumstances heavily influenced by the first, and the third is likely to deal even more with the effects of the
earlier films on their actual subject matter. It is the interplay, and the tension, between these elements that
make the documentaries particularly interesting.
The films concern the gruesome murder and mutilation of three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in
1993. The first tells the story of how the bodies were found, and the effect of the murders on the local
community, mediated by frenetic press and television coverage. Suspicion qUickly centred on three misfit
teenagers, one of whom, 17-year-old Jessie Misskelley, confessed after lengthy interrogation to having
been involved, and agreed to testify against the others. He was, however, somewhat simple-minded, and
his testimony was initially at odds with the facts. The other boys were Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols,
both 18, and given to dressing in black and listening to heavy metal. Damien especially was considered
dodgy because of his interest in 'wicca' or witchcraft. All three were convicted.
Thus, the first Paradise Lost film was really about how prejudice bordering on superstition, a 'Satanic Panic',
condemned three probably innocent teenagers to life sentences in the cases of Misskelley and Baldwin, and
death by lethal injection in the case of Echols. The cases are all under appeal, and there is a substantial
campaign to free the 'West Memphis Three', largely inspired by Paradise Lost, and featured heaVily in the
sequel.
The films can be read as a searing indictment of small town prejudice, then, but interestingly they suggest
prejudices of their own. The American Gothic aspect of the films centres on John Mark Byers, the stepfather
of one of the murdered boys, who cuts an increasingly outlandish figure over the course of the story. Byers
shouts and rants like John the Baptist, promising to spit on the graves of the killers, whom he is convinced
are the accused. Heavy-set and long-haired, with wild facial hair, he fulfils all the stereotypes of the inbred,
Bible-bashing, hick Southerner, straight out of Deliverance. While one has suspicions about him in the
first film, the second strongly implies, playing on prejudice rather than hard eVidence, that he killed not
only the three boys, but also his wife.
The campaigners who show up in West Memphis from Los Angeles and elsewhere to support the appeal
come across like the Democrat activists bussed into Midwestern Republican strongholds from the coastal
metropolises during the last presidential election. Well-meaning but somewhat contemptuous, their reaction
to someone like Byers is every bit as prejudiced as his own reaction to someone like Damien Echols,
substituting nervousness about 'Christian fundamentalism' for Satanic Panic, and this is very much the
point of view of the films themselves.
http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2005-01/paradise.htm 0511412009