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

Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 30-5 Filed 07/17/2009 Page 70 of 297
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LexisNexis"
Copyright 1996 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune
September 27, 1996 Friday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: FRIDAY; Pg. K; ZONE: CN; Take 2. FRIDAY'S GUIDE TO MOVIES & MUSIC. Movie review.
LENGTH: 773 words
HEADLINE: FASCINATING 'PARADISE' TAKES A DISTURBING LOOK AT AN UNSPEAKABLE CRIME
BYLINE: John Petrakis.
BODY:
On May 6, 1993, the lifeless bodies ofSteven Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore -- three 8-year-old
boys from the rural town ofWest Memphis, Ark. -- were found in a shallow river bed near Interstate Highway 40, in an
area known as Robin Hood Hills. The boys had been murdered and mutilated; Byers had been castrated.
The town went into shock, and as the days dragged on, pressure increased on local law authorities to fmd the killers.
One month later, the police got their fIrst break when 17-year-old Jessie Misskelley Jr., a local high school dropout
with an IQ of72, confessed that he had been at the crime scene but hadn't done any ofthe killing. For that, he implicated
two other teenagers from West Memphis -- Damien Echols, 18, and Jason Baldwin, 16, -- known in the community
as oddballs for their interest in devil worship and satanic ritual.
Echols was a perfect suspect. He always wore black, dyed his hair black,
and was partial to heavy metal bands such as Metallica, whose dark, suggestive
lyrics had already drawn the ire ofconservative groups around the country.
Once the "satanic cult murders" angle became known, the story drew national
attention, including that offilmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, who
already had delved into an offbeat murder trial in their well-received 1992
documentary "Brother's Keeper."
For the next two years, Berlinger and Sinofsky made regular trips to West
Memphis, where they got to know the accused, the families, the lawyers, the
townsfolk and everyone else associated with the grisly crime. What they have
come up with is a documentary that works well on two separate levels.
One level is the trial itself(actually two trials, since Misskelley was
tried separately), complete with mediocre attorneys, inarticulate witnesses
and assorted experts, like the specialist in satanism who received his
"doctorate" without taking a single class on the subject.
As the trials progress, it becomes clear that these teenagers are such
outcasts in their own community that it is nearly impossible for them to get a
fair, impartial verdict. Echols, in particular, with his soft-spoken,
sometimes creepy observations and effeminate manner, looks like a dead duck
from the opening gavel, even though the prosecution doesn't have a shred of
physical evidence to prove the boys were even at the crime scene.
But it is on the second, more personal, level that "Paradise Lost" truly
succeeds, as it peeks into the chain-smoking, trailer-park living,
Bible-misquoting lives ofthe friends and families ofthe victims and the
accused.
Take, for example, the mother of Steven Branch, who seems ecstatic that