Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [31]
Next, Griffin and Durham took out a list of questions that Sudbury had prepared for them. Griffin questioned Damien first. The teenagers were questioned in the yard. They were not told they were suspects. They were not read their Miranda rights or told they could have a lawyer present. None of their parents were there.
Damien told Griffin that he had been in a psychiatric hospital, where he was diagnosed manic-depressive and schizophrenic; he gave them the names of his therapist and psychiatrist, and he told them that he was taking antidepressive medication. Griffin later wrote that Damien “used to be involved in Wiccan religion—Covenant of Divine Light, which practices white witchcraft,” and that his girlfriend, Domini, “is four months pregnant with his child.” Griffin asked Sudbury’s questions and noted Damien’s answers on a sheet of notebook paper.
Asked if he knew the boys, Damien said he’d “never heard of them.” He said anyone who would commit such a crime was “sick.” When Griffin asked how Damien thought the boys had died, the detective wrote that Damien said, “Mutilation—cut up all three / heard they were in water drowning—cut up one more than others.”
Then Griffin asked the question that had led police to Damien in the first place: “Do you believe in God, or the devil?” Damien answered, according to Griffin’s notes, “I believe in a god, but a female god. Evil force not a devil.”
“How does being questioned make you feel?” Griffin asked.
“Scared,” Damien replied.
“Would you take a polygraph?”
“No reason I would fail.”
“Why would your prints be in the area of or at the crime scene?”
“They won’t be,” Damien said.
Griffin then ran down the same list with Jason. But the younger boy was more cautious—or more intimidated—than Damien had been. At least, he offered shorter answers. Like Damien, Jason said he did not know the victims. He agreed that the killer or killers should receive the death penalty. He said he did not know why someone would commit such a crime. To the questions “How do you think they died?” and “How do you think the killer felt?” Jason answered curtly, “I don’t know.”
Jason said he did believe in God. He said that killing or watching someone die would make him feel “disgusted.” And he told Griffin that being questioned made him feel “like a suspect.” The detective was nearing the end of his list when Baldwin’s mother, Gail Grinnell, drove up and flew out of the car in a fury. As Durham wrote in his notes, she “was very upset and accused us of picking on her son and said she did not want us talking to him.” He added, “I attempted to reason with her, but to no avail. We then left.”
Damien’s responses to Sudbury’s questions inflamed the lieutenant’s interest. The following day, Monday, May 10, Sudbury asked Damien to come to the police station for more questioning. Damien went and again, unaccompanied by his parents or an attorney, answered the questions that were put to him. This time, Lieutenant Sudbury and Detective Bryn Ridge conducted the interview.
“Damien was very cold and unemotional,” Sudbury later wrote in his report.
Damien stated that the person who did the crime was sick or the act was part of a thrill kill. Damien stated that the penis is a strong symbol of power. Damien stated that the killer was not worried about the boys screaming due to there [sic] being in the woods. Also, he stated that the killer wanted to hear the screaming. Damien thinks that the killer thinks it’s funny that he hasn’t been caught and really doesn’t care if he is caught. Damien stated that there would probably be stones, candles, a knife, and/or crystals in the area where the bodies were found. Damien states that the killer is probably someone local and that he won’t run. Damien likes to read books by the