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and had used no drugs for several months. Dockins also noted that Damien told her that he had a history of self-mutilation; that he usually felt “neutral or nothing”; that “he feels people are in two classes—sheep and wolves. (Wolves eat the sheep.)”; that he revealed “a history of abuse as he talked of how he was treated as a child [but] denies that this has influenced him, stating, ‘I just put it all inside’”; that he “describes this as more than just anger—like rage. Sometimes he does ‘blow-up.’ Relates that when this happens the only solution is to ‘hurt someone’”; and that “when questioned on his feelings, he states, ‘I know I’m going to influence the world. People will remember me.’”

70. According to a 1998 Southern Focus poll conducted by theAtlanta Journal-Constitution and the University of North Carolina, more than 60 percent of Southerners polled—and almost three-quarters of all churchgoers—said they believed that humans are sometimes possessed by the devil.

71. Martin B. Bradley et al.,Churches and Church Membership in the United States (Atlanta: Glenmary Research Center, 1990). Nationally, Southern Baptists accounted for about 8 percent of the population.

72. In November 2001, the Arkansas Baptist State Convention passed a resolution to “firmly denounce” J. K. Rowling’s best-selling series of books about the boy wizard Harry Potter. The resolution was intended to alert merchants—particularly booksellers—to the Baptists’ concern that the series was “inconsistent with biblical morality,” sounded an “anti-Christian theme,” and “promoted pagan beliefs and practices.”

73. Driver was an Episcopalian. His wife, a Roman Catholic, attended St. Michael’s Church in West Memphis—the same church that Damien Echols had attended for a time. Driver knew that before his hospitalizations, Damien had taken an interest in Catholicism. He knew that the teenager had completed a course for converts and that he had been baptized into the Catholic faith. Damien had told Driver the same thing that he had told officials in Oregon, that he had changed his first name from Michael to Damien when he was adopted by Jack Echols, and that he had chosen Damien in honor of a famous Catholic priest by that name who’d cared for the lepers of Hawaii. But Driver doubted the story. He knew that a century ago, there was a Father Damien who’d cared for Hawaii’s outcasts. But Driver also knew that Damien was the name of the demon child in the 1976 movieThe Omen, and he suspected that, if any identification was being made, it was with that character.

74. Author interview with Driver, November 2000.

75. Baldwin’s account of his early life, as presented in this chapter, is drawn from interviews by and correspondence with the author while he was at the Grimes Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction, during 2000 and 2001.

76. Jason’s favorite band since first grade was Metallica. He liked the way the group could “build with music, the way they build all these different harmonies and melodies with their single instruments, and yet the music that they build independently becomes an instrument in itself, to make the overall song.” By the time Driver had focused his attention on Damien—and secondarily on Jason—Jason’s favorite song was Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” He loved the music as well as the lyrics. Music played a big role in the boys’ lives, partly because there was so little else. Jason would recall, “Damien listened to different music for the same reasons.”

77. The friends had much in common—and many differences. “People thought we did drugs because we looked wild,” Jason would recall, “but we didn’t. We didn’t need them. Damien smoked cigarettes. I never have. He was smoking cigarettes before we ever met. If he wasn’t smoking when we met, he would never have started that bad habit. Most of the people we knew smoked, and a lot of people did drugs, like smoking marijuana. We couldn’t have afforded to buy drugs, anyway. We just never had any money to do anything wild or adventurous. We lived on a lake, so that was cool. I liked to fish,