Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [39]
“When I first heard about the kids come up missing, it was early in the morning, about nine o’clock. I was going to work with a friend of mine.” Jessie said he heard the news on the radio as he and a friend drove east on I-40 toward Memphis, where they’d gotten a roofing job. When he returned from Memphis that afternoon, another friend told him that the bodies had been found.109
A few weeks later, Jessie said, Hutcheson asked him to introduce her to Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin. He found the request odd in light of her age, but he liked to help her out. The next time he saw Damien and Jason he told them that she wanted to meet them and brought them to her trailer. Jessie did not know that Hutcheson was in contact with Detective Bray or that Hutcheson believed she was doing undercover work for Bray.110He was not aware, by the end of May, that the West Memphis police considered Damien a suspect. Nor did he realize that information provided to the West Memphis police by Driver, Bray, and Hutcheson connected him to their prime suspect. He was so unaware of the circumstances that were closing around him that, on the night of June 2—four weeks exactly after the night the boys disappeared—Jessie agreed to stay at Hutcheson’s house because her boyfriend was at work and she’d heard reports of a prowler in the neighborhood. According to both Jessie and Hutcheson, he slept on the couch with a gun nearby.
The next morning, Jessie was awakened around 9A.M . by the sound of banging on the trailer’s door. It was his father. “He said [Detective Sergeant] Mike Allen wanted to talk to me,” Jessie said. “Did I have a problem with that?” Seeing that Allen was with his dad, the teenager answered no, he had no problem talking with the detective. He dressed and drove off with Allen at about 9:45A.M .111
As Misskelley later recalled, “He said we was going to the police department. I didn’t know what was going on. But I wasn’t scared. At that time I didn’t know what he wanted to talk to me about.” Once inside the station, Allen filled out a standard form. Along with the usual height and weight, he noted that Jessie had several tattoos, including one on his right arm that said “FTW” (it was noted that that stood for “Fuck the World”), one of a skull and dagger on his left arm, and the word “bitch” on his chest. Allen explained that he wanted to ask Jessie some questions about the murders.
But then he told me he couldn’t ask me no questions without my dad signing papers. I told him my dad wouldn’t have a problem with that. So we left the police station to go where my dad was at. While we was on the way, he told me if I knew anything, that there was a $35,000 reward, and if I could help them out, we’d get the money. We met my dad down on the service road. I talked to my dad about it. He said if I knew anything, to tell the police, and then my dad could buy him a new truck. We went back to the police station. I just told them what I knew—about the kids I seen on the side of the service road and what my friend told me. That’s all I knew. That’s when they gave me a polygraph.112
Allen was dispatched to get permission from Big Jessie, because Jessie Jr. was still a minor. The elder Misskelley was found at a McDonald’s restaurant, where, without consulting an attorney, and apparently without reservation, he signed the form the police needed to polygraph his son.
Durham’s Polygraph Exam
But the elder Misskelley did not sign a form agreeing to let Little Jessie waive his constitutional rights. According to police records, Jessie was read his rights twice within the next hour: once at 11A.M ., by detectives Ridge and Allen, and again at eleven-thirty, by Bill Durham, the department’s polygraph expert.113Each time, Jessie was advised that he had the right to remain silent, the right to have a lawyer appointed, and the right, if he decided to answer