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

Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 30-5 Filed 07/17/2009 Page 8 of 297
SECTION: Calendar; Part F; Page 1; Entertainment Desk
LENGTH: 914 words
Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles Times
March 13, 2000, Monday, Home Edition
HEADLINE: TELEVISION;
MYSTERY OF 'REVELATIONS': THE TRUTH ORPAY-TO-SAY?
BYLINE: HOWARD ROSENBERG
BODY:
No one will ever accuse their films ofbeing drab or uneventful.
After the remarkable PBS documentary, "Brother's Keeper," Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky gave us HBO's
"Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills," a twisting, stunning 1996 account ofthree weird-behaving
teenagers being tried and perhaps unjustly convicted in the grisly slayings ofthree 8-year-olds in West Memphis, Ark.,
a serene town of28,000 along the Mississippi River.
Now comes the disturbing HBO sequel, "Paradise Lost 2: Revelations," which raises as many questions about the
filmmakers--including their monetary payment to John Mark Byers, a key subject in the documentary--as about the bizarre
case they update here. It's' one that sent Damien Wayne Echols, now 24, to death row, and Jason Baldwin, now 21,
and Jessie Misskelley, now 23, to prison for life.
Although the original documentary left open their guilt or innocence--while ominously darkening Byers, stepfather
of one ofthe murdered boys--the new one zealously crusades on behalfofthe accused killers, who were stamped as
Satanists in this Bible-thumping community because oftheir passions for heavy metal music and black clothing. Nor
did it help that Damien was also the name ofthe antichrist in those popular "Omen" movies about devilish evil.
Coming across as demonic in "Revelations," though, is the wild-preaching Byers, a frightening, Bunyanesque
mountain ofa man who lectures in Scripturese and spews tirades at the camera like a mad prophet. On trial in the film
also are the authorities who still insist--despite apparent potholes in the evidence--that the convicted trio slew secondgraders
Christopher Byers, Steven Branch and Michael Moore in 1993.
The nude, rigid bodies ofthese little Huck Finns were found beside a shallow creek in Robin Hood Hills, a clump
ofwoods along a busy interstate. They had been mutilated, persuading authorities that a ritual sacrifice had occurred
and that presumed devil worshipers Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley should be scooped up. Then Misskelley, said to
have an IQ ofjust 72, made a confession to police, which he later repudiated.
Berlinger and Sinofsky are superb storytellers as they use "Revelations" to probe the triple-murder's inky comers
and attempt to cast more doubt on the prosecution's original case. They again omit narration and seamlessly converge
verite sequences and interviews into an account that also monitors Echols' attorney and a "criminal profiler" preparing
for a legal appeal that may determine whether lethal injection is ahead for their client.
Echols is hardly recognizable here in his scholarly spectacles, these days looking and sounding more like a serious
law student than the preening, almost-girlish narcissist viewers met in the first film when he wore his dark hair swooped
to one side and titled himself "the West Memphis boogeyman."