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

Case 4:09-cv-00008-BSM Document 30-5 Filed 07/17/2009 Page 87 of 297
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LexisNexis"
Copyright 1996 The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times
SECTION: Calendar; Part F; Page 1; Entertainment Desk
LENGTH: 1357 words
All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles Times
June 10,1996, Monday, Home Edition
Correction Appended
HEADLINE: HOWARD ROSENBERG / TELEVISION;
HEAVY-METAL MONSTERS?;
HBO's Stunning 'Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills' Documents the Impact ofDeadly Stereotypes
on an Arkansas Community
FOR THE RECORD
BYLINE: HOWARD ROSENBERG
BODY:
West Memphis, Ark., is a quiet community of28,000 in a region where a local TV station boasts ofbeing one of
the "good neighbors you can tum to." Here in this east Arkansas version ofconservative, small-town U.S.A., just across
the Mississippi River from Tennessee and urban Memphis, folks speak in twangs, God is not just for Sunday and families
gather for outdoor barbecues that spill over with frivolity and cute little Huck Finns.
Three ofthem--8-year-olds Steven Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore--are presently on the screen,
their nude bodies as rigid and alabaster-pale as museum statues, beside a shallow creek in Robin Hood Hills, a clump of
woods along a busy interstate.
Accused ofslaying these second-graders in a grisly, ritualistic sacrifice are three odd-behaving teenagers whose
passion for heavy-metal music and black clothes stamp them as Satanists. Obviously devil worshipers, obviously guilty.
So begins HBO's "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills," another stunning crime documentary
from Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, whose earlier "Brother's Keeper" on PBS was about as good as nonfiction films
get.
Just as mesmerizing, but darker, more troubling and much longer at 2 1/2 hours, is "Paradise Lost," a banner oftattered
Americana that Berlinger and Sinofsky artfully unfurl, again minus narration, byjoining verite sequences and
formal interviews into a twisting, serpentine tale ofintriguing ambiguity and paradoxes.
These guys really can tell a story, in this case a revealing X-ray of a small community that addresses the universality
ofhuman contradictions, all ofit to a background ofheavy metal by Metallica. The band donated the music because,
according to HBO, it shares the filmmakers' beliefthat the case against the defendants was deeply flawed and circumstantial.
Berlinger and Sinofsky consider "Paradise Lost" a companion to "Brother's Keeper." The latter was a 1992 film set
in rural New York, where four aging, unworldly bearded brothers had lived weirdly on their dairy farm--even sharing
the same bed--without much outside contact or notice until one died and another was accused ofmurdering him. In a
startling tactic, the prosecution implied that creaky Delbert Ward and his dead brother were lovers, but his neighbors
stood by him and he was ultimately acquitted, an eccentric but apparently innocent man riding his flatbed offinto the
sunset.