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of the West Memphis investigation, had lost its accreditation by the National Association of Medical Examiners. There was a site in German. A calendar announced legal activities in Arkansas and fund-raisers throughout the country. Links offered connections to a wide range of materials including numerous police interviews, partial transcripts of court testimony, a poem written by Pam Hobbs, essays from a Canadian group on religious toleration, an apology from Geraldo Rivera for his exaggerated reporting about alleged satanic crimes, information about the Innocence Project founded by Barry Scheck and other attorneys, and a report by two Web site supporters who’d examined boxes of evidence held in storage by the West Memphis police. The site became a vehicle by which visitors could scrutinize the case. For example, one overview of the case reported: “A scrap of what appears to be dark cloth is seen in the photographs taken at the site where the bodies were found, held tightly in the hand of one of the young victims. This scrap does not appear in later photographs. We can only guess what happened to it.” By 1999, the Web site reported averaging 150 hits a day.

332. In chat rooms, many supporters recalled their own isolation and even persecution as teenagers; painful experiences with exclusion that were based on nothing more than unconventionality. For some, the exclusion was based on poverty or their religious beliefs. For others, it was some physical or social distinction. Others recalled being shunned simply for harboring nonconformist tastes in clothes, literature, music, or art. Site cofounder Sauls said his own nephew had suffered harassment from “moral crusaders” in Florida, “who were simply punishing him for being different.” He said his response to the events in West Memphis almost certainly had been in reaction to the tragedy his own family suffered when his nephew had committed suicide at seventeen. Other supporters felt they too could have been blamed for crimes they did not commit, just because they did not adhere to local religious norms. “My background pretty much mirrors Damien’s,” one said. “I didn’t buy everything the religious people where I lived believed.” He said he’d been told he was going to hell. Others voiced concerns that money—or the defendants’ lack of it—had played a role in the verdicts; they said they’d joined the fight for the West Memphis Three because they saw the case as a symbol of poverty’s impact on justice. “This wouldn’t have happened if their parents were rich,” was an oft-repeated refrain. A similar one cited regionalism, the fear that, if justice in America related to money, it also might relate to place. Supporters new to the Web site often commented that “this would not have happened in” New York, Seattle, or any large city, rather than a rural community.

333. RAO Video on Main Street in Little Rock, Arkansas.

334. Comments from the founders of the Web site and its supporters quoted here are drawn from author interviews conducted between 1998 and 2001.

335. Issues surrounding the inmates’ mail would become a serious grievance for many supporters who tried to contact them. Letters to Damien, in particular, were frequently not delivered by staff at the maximum security unit. The problem, which cropped up repeatedly, was often temporarily solved only after the senders contacted United States postal officials.

336. In that 1996 interview with the author, Damien also said, “I’ve always had this extremely self-destructive streak, which coming here has somehow made me overcome.” He recognized that his behavior during the police investigation and at his trial was “stupid” and a form of “extreme vanity.” Asked why he had not moderated his behavior by, for instance, refusing to talk to the police, he answered, “I guess for the same reason that people dodge trains. It’s something to break the mundanity of their lives, something to give them some distraction.”

337. The episode ofThe Maury Povich Show was titled “Murder in a Small Town.” It aired in West Memphis and east Arkansas on August