Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [190]
102. After reading about the case in the papers, Hutcheson explained, she “just thought how they were killed was odd, like, you know, maybe it was like a devil worshiping thing.” She said, “Jessie had told me that Damien hung out at Lakeshore, and so I went out of my way to try to go around Lakeshore. And, you know…I told Jessie I had seen Damien…and he said, ‘Well, you know, he’s kinda weird.’ I said, ‘No, I think he’s hot. I really want to go out with him. Can you fix me up with him?’ And you know, he was real surprised, but he said, ‘Yeah, if you want to go out with him, I’ll fix you up with him,’ and he did.”
103. As Hutcheson described the meeting to the police, she had first sent her children to visit their father in western Arkansas, then she’d removed their photos from her home so that Damien would not see them. She’d then placed “some Satanic books and witchcraft books” strategically around her trailer, which had the effect of prompting Damien to reveal a lot about himself. Among the startling information she reported, as a result, to Bray was that Damien’s cult was called the Dragons and one of its rituals involved the sacrifice of animal genitals.
104. The word “esbat” is not found in theOxford English Dictionary, which is considered the most exhaustive lexicon of the English language.
105. While overlooking some questions that countered the satanic theory, the police sharpened their focus on reports that supported their growing suspicions. The day after Hutcheson’s alleged visit to the esbat, officers questioned two children of Narlene Hollingsworth, the woman who said she’d seen Damien and Domini on the service road near the Blue Beacon on the night the boys disappeared. Hollingsworth’s children said they’d been with their mother and confirmed her account in every detail. They said they’d clearly seen Damien and Domini—both dressed in black and both muddy.
106. No one discussed Aaron’s initial statement, about the tall black man with yellow teeth driving the maroon car who’d picked up Michael Moore after school, nor was that initial report questioned in subsequent interviews, in which Aaron gave sharply different accounts of what happened that afternoon.
107. When the West Memphis detectives questioned Aaron that day in Bray’s office, the boy told them that on at least five occasions, he and his friends had witnessed, from a distance of about five feet, five men with black-painted faces. He said the men had chanted in Spanish around a fire, smoked strange cigarettes, killed animals, talked about “bad stuff,” and done “nasty stuff.” The detectives pressed for details, but Aaron was vague. Ridge asked, at one point, “What kind of bad stuff were they talking about?” “Um, Jesus and God,” Aaron said. “I mean, the devil and God.” Aaron added, “They said they like the devil and they hate God.”
108. Misskelley’s statements drawn from an author’s interview with him, February 2. 2001, at the Varner Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction.
109. Jessie’s friend Kevin Johnson had helped in the search.
110. Statements by Bray in this chapter are from an undated three-page typewritten report prepared by Bray for the West Memphis police.
111. Jessie had known Allen for most of his life, just as he had known Gary Gitchell. As Jessie later explained, “They knew me since 1980, when I was five years old, ’cause that’s when I first started getting in trouble with the police. I got in trouble for stealing and fighting. That’s it: stealing and fighting. I stole toys, bicycles, flags. And I got into fights. When I got older, I’d fight anything; walls, mailboxes, bottles, stop signs, window—anything. Whenever I got mad, I hit something. If it was a person, I hit them.” Since Jessie hadn’t hit anyone lately, he said, he wasn’t worried about this visit. (The times noted in this paragraph are from a report