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119. Misskelley’s strange way of referring to Christopher Byers and Stevie Branch may have reflected both his confusion (calling Byers “Myers”) and a mangled version of the manner of speech he had been hearing from detectives, some of whom referred to the victims as “the Byers boy” or “the Branch boy.”

120. During the pretrial testimony of Detective Bryn Ridge, Paul Ford asked, “Judge Rainey was assisting in preparing the search warrant affidavit. Is that what you’re telling me?” Ridge said, “Yes sir.” Ford asked how Rainey had assisted. “He was informing us as to the elements that needed to go in this affidavit in order for it to be a legal document,” Ridge replied. Ford asked, “So he told you what you needed to get and you went out and came back and met with Judge Rainey?” Ridge said that that was correct. “Who was present?” Ford asked. Ridge answered, “Myself, John Fogleman, Gary Gitchell, [James] Jimbo Hale, and the court clerk.”

121. Jason’s brothers, Matt and Terry, were fourteen and ten years old.

122. Long after his arrest, Baldwin would have time to reflect on the circumstances that had brought it about. “The way I figured,” he said, “the police had been accusing me and Damien of satanism for the longest. They’d spread the rumor that the motive for the murder was satanism. At that time, they were picking up a lot of people and talking to them. And one they talked to was Jessie. Now, Jessie’s got some hate and vengeance in his heart for me because of the girl thing. And maybe he thinks, ‘I’ll get a whole bunch of money.’ Maybe they came and talked to him and he had a spur-of-the-moment idea, and went along with it, and got his foot in his mouth. He didn’t understand the seriousness.”

123. He said that all that registered was that he was being led in handcuffs out of Damien’s house. “They took me to the police station,” he later recalled. “We went through all kinds of rooms, and ended up upstairs, in a room with blue walls, and pictures and certificates on them, and a ball bat in the corner. They handcuffed me to a straight-back chair. Ridge and Allen were there, and a uniformed officer. They came in and tried to get me to admit to murder. They had this statement already typed up and told me to sign it, but I wouldn’t sign. They told me there was no way out of it. I might as well admit to it. I was trying to tell them where I was at that day, but they said, ‘No, that’s a lie. We know different. Somebody’s already ratted on you. You committed the murders. We want you to admit it.’ Somehow, I fell out of the chair. I fell backwards. I think Allen pulled it out with his foot. He said, ‘You ain’t nothing but white trash.’ Later on, Ridge was in the room with me by himself. He said, ‘Nobody knows you’re here. We could throw you into the Mississippi River and write you off as a runaway; nobody would know the difference.’”

124. After he’d come home from school, Jason said, “Damien and Domini were already at my house waiting for me. They didn’t go to school. We went in and played Super Nintendo. I got something to eat. Then Dennis, my mom’s boyfriend, said I had a phone call. It was my uncle Herbert. He said, ‘You forgot something.’ I was supposed to mow his yard. I was supposed to have done it earlier, but I had an art exhibit at school, so I’d put it off. My friend Ken and Damien said, ‘We’ll go over there with you.’ I cut my uncle’s yard. And while I was there, Damien had to call his mom, and tell her to pick him up at my uncle’s house instead of at my house. He and Domini went to the Laundromat to call, and his mom picked them up there. It took an hour to finish the lawn. My uncle paid me $10. Me and Ken went to Wal-Mart. Then we went to Sam’s and bought ten-cent Sam’s sodas. We played Street Fighter for a quarter. Then we went back to my house. Ken left to go home, and then I went over to my friend Adam’s house. It was dark by then. He had this Iron Maiden tape I’d been wanting. I went over there to try to