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The Boys on the Tracks

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2002 by Mara Leveritt

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-7434-1761-5

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To LSB,

with love and gratitude

Acknowledgments

I thank my beloved family; my many generous friends; the filmmakers, musicians, and other artists who have recognized this story’s importance; the reporters whose accounts have contributed to this book; the public officials who provided information and access to records; the lawyers who explained aspects of the case; and everyone who granted me interviews. I thank, in particular, Sandra Dijkstra, Wendy Walker, Tracy Behar, Judith Curr, Ron Lax, Dan Stidham, Burk Sauls, Grove Pashley, Kathy Bakken, Stan Mitchell—and, of course, the inmates whose story this is.

Author’s Note

Many of the figures in this book were juveniles when the key events took place. Others were on the cusp of adulthood. One or two had recently reached their majority. It is customary in reporting events involving children to refer to them by their first names. I have tried, in general, to do this. The ages of two of the accused, as well as many of the witnesses, were factors in the events related here. I felt that it would distort the story to refer to the children in it as though they were adults, though most were treated as adults by the legal system.

Three teenagers figure at the center of this book. Although one of them had recently observed his eighteenth birthday at the time this book begins, I opted to refer to all three consistently by their first names.

Because of the attention this case has received—and the further scrutiny I believe it deserves—I have written it on two levels. The text tells the story. The endnotes deepen it.

Occult.1. Hidden (from sight); concealed (by something interposed); not exposed to view. 2. Not disclosed or divulged, privy, secret; kept secret; communicated only to the initiated. 3. Not apprehended, or not apprehensible, by the mind; beyond the range of understanding or of ordinary knowledge; recondite, mysterious. 4. Of the nature of or pertaining to those ancient and medieval reputed sciences (or their modern representatives) held to involve the knowledge or use of agencies of a secret and mysterious nature (as magic, alchemy, astrology, theosophy, and the like); also treating of or versed in these; magical, mystical.

Oxford English Dictionary

Prologue

WERE THEWESTMEMPHIStrials witch trials?

Had a jury sentenced someone to death based on nothing more than children’s accusations, confessions made under pressure, and prosecutors’ arguments linking the defendants to Satan?

Were the 1994 trials in Arkansas like those in Salem three centuries ago?

These were the questions that gave rise to this book. These, and a couple more:

If talk of demons had diverted reason,how had things gone so awry—in the United States of America, at the end of the twentieth century—before not just one jury but two, in trials where lives were at stake? And if something so terrible had happened,why ?

Modern readers might think it impossible that prosecutors in a murder case, facing a dearth of factual evidence, would build their argument for execution on claims that the accused had links to “the occult.” Educated readers might recoil from the idea that prosecutors would cite a defendant’s tastes in literature, music, and clothing to support such an archaic theory. Even fans of lurid fiction might find it a stretch to believe that a prosecutor in this day and age would point to a defendant and say, “There’s not a soul in there.”

Yet in the spring of 1994, that is whatseemed to have happened. A teenager was sentenced to death. His two younger codefendants were dispatched to prison for life.

Impossible.

And