Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [189]
88. From a sermon by the Reverend Fred Tinsley, the rector of Holy Cross Episcopal Church, where the Moores attended.
89. The same day that officers questioned Deanna Holcomb, they received a call from Memphis police about an inmate in the jail there. The officer in Memphis said the man had been heard discussing devil worship and human sacrifice with two other men in the jail. Memphis police sent records on all three to police in West Memphis, and these were placed in the murder case file, but there was no record of any follow-up, no indication that West Memphis detectives ever crossed the river to question any of the men.
90. She identified the friends as Randy and Susan Sanders.
91. The West Memphis police were receiving a lot of encouragement to consider the satanic theory. At the end of the first week of investigation, a patrol officer who identified himself as “the official cult and occult expert for the New York City Police Department” contacted them to offer his opinion that the murders might be “occultic in nature.” The New York patrolman volunteered that missing body parts were a key sign that the murders were “occultic.” He advised the police in West Memphis to look for signs such as a circle, candle wax, an inverted cross, a pentagram, the numerals 666, or an altar where the bodies were found. But the site where the bodies were found had already been scoured, and police had not found one of those signs. The same day, a local teenager told police that he’d heard that members being initiated into an area cult were required to do something “real bad,” such as drilling three holes into the heads of their victims and draining out the blood. Also that day, a Texas woman sent Gitchell a book about how cults that engaged in murder were proliferating in America. And two girls telephonedAmerica’s Most Wanted to report that two teenagers they knew in West Memphis—neither of whom was named Damien—were “into devil worship.” The girls said that one of the boys had told “one of the caller’s boyfriend’s best friends” that he had committed the murder. Another man told police that he knew nothing about the crime, but that a friend of his felt certain that Damien was the killer.
92. Statements attributed to Bray in this chapter were drawn from an undated three-page typewritten report about his conversations with Vicki and Aaron Hutcheson that Bray provided to the West Memphis police.
93. Statements of Vicki and Aaron in this chapter were compiled from police notes and transcriptions of interviews that were conducted with the pair on May 27 and 28. and June 2, 8, and 9, 1993.
94. Statements attributed to Jessie are drawn from an author interview, conducted February 2, 2001.
95. On October 25, 1983, Jessie was administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Revised; the Peabody Picture Vocabulary; and the Bender Gestalt Test.
96. James Fitzgerald, a clinical social worker at East Arkansas Regional Mental Health Center, recorded that Jessie was seen at the center, along with his father and stepmother, Shelbia Misskelley, in the spring of 1983.
97. Quotations are from the notes of Dr. Terry B. Davis.
98. Psychological assessment by Terry B. Davis, Ph.D., March 25, 1983.
99. Assessment by Dr. Davis, October 23, 1985.
100. Psychoeducational evaluation conducted at Marion High School, April 14, 1992.
101. Jessie said, however, that he and Jason had never been close friends. Jason’s recollection was that he and Damien had “hung around” with Jessie for a couple of years, beginning in about the sixth grade, a time “when there wasn’t too many people who would associate