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The state police reported to Prosecutor Brent Davis that in interviews just two months before the murders, Sudbury had admitted that he’d taken guns and other items from the evidence locker and that he’d lied when investigators had first questioned him. But Sudbury was not placed on administrative leave. He was active in the murder investigation. And after Damien, Jason, and Jessie were arrested, Davis declined to prosecute him.

Sudbury remained a narcotics detective for the next several years, but his job security ended abruptly when a new chief of police fired him in 2001. “We were dealing with police corruption, is what it amounts to,” the new chief of police said.424At a press conference called to announce the dismissal of Sudbury and two other narcotics officers, the chief reported that the FBI had been investigating “indiscretions” within the department, some of which he said traced back “as far as ten years.”425

Jessie, Damien, and Jason

“It’s crooked,” twenty-five-year-old Jessie Misskelley said, offering his opinion of Crittenden County. By the spring of 2001, Jessie had spent a third of his life in prison. He had seventeen tattoos, including one with his nickname, Midget Biker. He said he was thinking of getting another one. “I want to get a tattoo on my head,” he said. “I want a brain. I want a brain tattoo on the top of my head. Because I ain’t never seen no one that has one.” He described himself as hopeful—and a bit smarter than when he’d been arrested. Now, he realized, “If you didn’t do it, don’t ever admit that you did.”

Damien’s interest in metaphysics—which had so colored his trial—continued on death row.426He’d read books on Buddhism and come to embrace that philosophy. As a result, many Arkansans were doubly surprised when they read, in December 1999, not only that Damien had married but that the ceremony had been a Buddhist one performed at the prison.427The woman marrying him was Lorri Davis, the architect from New York with whom he’d been corresponding since the release of the first documentary.428

Captain Allen said he was “stunned and dismayed” to learn that Damien had wed. “I thought to myself, ‘What’s this old world coming to?’” he told theArkansas Democrat-Gazette . “I know it’s federally mandated, but unless [a prisoner] is getting married to a cellmate, they really need to revamp the system.” Brent Davis said he thought it was “strange” that Damien had so many supporters, and that one would even marry him. “We made him what he was,” the prosecutor said. “We elevated Echols from a psychotic-fringe to being admired by thousands.”429

As the ninth anniversary of the murders approached, Jason was living a life as close to a middle-class life as he could manage inside a prison. Because he was quick to learn computers and maintained an impeccable prison record, he’d been assigned to a series of white-collar jobs in various clerical positions. He’d joined the prison Jaycees and begun to study investments. “I don’t want to get out and be that sixteen-year-old kid I once was,” he said. “I want to keep up.”430

He’d taken college courses in subjects like anthropology, accounting, and American politics—“because I want to see what our government’s built on”—and dreamed of attending law school. And he had a sweetheart. The correspondence that he’d begun in 1997 with young Sara Cadwal lader had grown into a serious romance. She was in high school when they’d met. Now Sara had graduated from college and had herself been accepted into law school. Jason credited Sara, his faith in God, and the support of friends, many of them “total strangers,” for his emotional stability—for his ongoing belief “that right will prevail.”

“I have grown up in prison,” he wrote at the end of 2001. “Even with all that I have suffered, I have not allowed myself to become hateful, spiteful or resentful of either those who put me here unjustly, or of those who allowed it to happen. I know you’ve got to love life, enjoy it, embrace it while you’ve got it. I love