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letter said, “‘Choose life,’ whatever that means.” By then, Damien had come to see life—and especially his own—differently than he had before. “I came in here as a child,” he explained, “and a few years have passed, and in this type of environment, I think you might age a little more rapidly.”336Damien’s world widened through contacts from people who’d seen the film and visited the Web site. Many sent him books, which he read voraciously. His reading tastes expanded to include major works of literature. And he too began a serious correspondence with a woman who’d seen the film and made the effort to contact him. Lorri Davis, a New York architect and film buff, had seenParadise Lost when it premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She began sending Damien books, and when phone calls were allowed from death row, most of his were placed to her. He’d been off his antidepressant medication since his arrival on death row, and by the end of 1996, he acknowledged that “unfortunately” he’d grown “quite a bit more cheerful”—“unfortunately” because, as he put it, “I always feel like an idiot when I’m cheerful.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Drug Informant

LIFE AFTER THE TRIALSremained hard for the families of the victims, including little Aaron Hutcheson. Though he was not a direct victim, in that he had not been killed, his involvement in the investigation had certainly exposed him to the crime’s horrors. Even after the trials, his mother’s interest in the case continued, and thus so, to an extent, did his own.

After the trials concluded and the defendants had been locked away, Vicki Hutcheson contacted Ron Lax, the Memphis private investigator, several times to report that she was “bothered” about parts of the investigation. In April 1994, a few weeks after Damien and Jason were taken to prison, Lax paid a call on Hutcheson in the apartment where she now lived. During the visit, Lax later wrote in his notes, “Vicki turned to me and asked who had received the reward money. I told her I did not think anyone had and she stated she felt she should have since her son’s voice is what ‘broke the case.’ She then went on to tell me the police had interviewed Aaron on numerous occasions without her being present and that they had no right to do that and she intended to sue the city because their actions had caused Aaron severe mental problems.”

But those were not her only concerns. According to Lax’s notes, Hutcheson also “stated she had never signed a release to have the tape recorder installed in her trailer and that Gitchell was lying on the stand when he said there was a release”; she reported “that Bryn Ridge told her they would take care of the hot checks in return for her testimony, but Ridge cautioned her not to tell anyone about that”; and when Lax told her that Damien did not drive, she said, “Well, maybe I dreamed that.”

Three months later, in July 1994, Hutcheson called Lax to ask if anything new had developed. “When I told her we were still working on Damien’s appeal,” Lax wrote, “she began telling me of her experience in New York onThe Maury Povich Show . According to Vicki, the Hobbses were present, as were Mark and Melissa Byers and Mr. Hicks, Pam Hobbs’s father. Vicki stated Mark Byers was out of control and the full tape of his comments and actions should be viewed.”337

In the following month, Hutcheson called Lax’s office four more times. The first time, Lax was unavailable, and she asked to speak to Glori Shettles. Shettles later wrote, “I asked Vicki what her three biggest concerns and issues were presently, to which she responded: One, why is Mark Byers on the street? Two, why is most of the West Memphis Police Department quitting? And three, why are three boys behind bars when police had much more evidence on Mark Byers than the three?” Hutcheson called Shettles again the next day, and again two days later. “She stated she was thinking of calling Channel 13 News in Memphis to advise she had, in fact, perjured herself,” Shettles wrote after the second conversation. “She went on to say she did not lie, but