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55. “I found several instances of animal sacrifices,” Driver later explained. “They were mostly small animals. The largest was a dog. We could tell they had been mutilated. The dogs would be skinned, with the entrails out of them. We found some in an old school building in West Memphis that had a pentagram on the wall and 666. I found, like, a little altar made with sticks and stones. And there was a lot of bird bones there, and a cat that had been skinned.”

56. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, alarm was spreading throughout the United States about crimes that had reportedly been committed as part of cult-related rituals. Concern first arose in the mid-1980s, when a few psychotherapists began to report that a startling number of their clients had described, while under hypnosis, vivid “recovered memories” of ritual abuse they claimed to have suffered in childhood. Many “survivors” of ritual abuse, as they came to be called, reported having been raped; some reported witnessing murders. Interest in the reports spread from the mental health profession to other fields, including religion and law enforcement. Groups were formed to help victims of ritual abuse and to identify likely offenders. A task force formed to address the problem in Los Angeles noted that “ritual abuse does not necessarily mean Satanic. However, most survivors state that they were ritually abused as part of Satanic worship.”

57. “A Law-Enforcement Perspective on Allegations of Ritual Abuse,” Kenneth V. Lanning, supervisory special agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

58. The consultant was Steve Nawojczyk, a former coroner in Little Rock. According to his press releases, Nawojczyk consulted with law enforcement officials nationally on gang activity, as well as on “cults and occultic groups.”

59. Driver also kept in touch with other cult watchers scattered around the country. He and a police officer in New York exchanged faxes in order to compare graffiti. They concluded that some of the graffiti Driver was seeing in Crittenden County resembled graffiti that police in New York had discovered as part of the infamous Son of Sam murder case. As Driver later explained, “There was an abandoned school, and when you went down a long hall and into this room, it looked sort of cavelike. The whole scene looked very similar—eerily similar, I’d say—to a picture that was published in a book about Son of Sam.”

60. Records supplied to Jerry Driver by Charter Hospital of Little Rock.

61. According to family members, Damien had suffered from intense motion sickness since childhood. Even when he turned sixteen, he showed no interest in learning to drive. He’d seemed content to walk, and drivers in Marion and West Memphis had grown accustomed to seeing Damien, often wearing a long black trench coat, walking along the roads.

62. Report of Calvin L. Downey, juvenile department counselor, Washington County, Oregon; August 14, 1992.

63. Damien was taken to St. Vincent Hospital and Medical Center.

64. Affidavit to the Juvenile Division of Chancery Court of Crittenden County, Arkansas, sworn and filed on September 9, 1992.

65. Petition filed in the Juvenile Division of Chancery Court, September 9, 1992.

66. Notarized document authorizing change of guardianship signed by Pamela Joyce Echols in Oregon on September 11, 1992. The Arkansas court order changing custody and the order adjudicating Echols a delinquent were entered three days later, on September 14.

67. Undated report of Joyce Cureton, director of the Craighead County Juvenile Detention Center.

68. Charter Hospital physician’s discharge summary, September 28, 1992.

69. Damien was seen by Sherry Dockins, LMSW, a clinical social worker at the East Arkansas Regional Mental Health Center. He told Dockins that he often slept during the day, that he usually visited Domini at night, and that he liked to “trance out” when he was alone, because it took him away from “what’s going on.” He acknowledged having used alcohol, cocaine, acid, and marijuana in the past, but said he had never been a major drug user