Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [40]
Detective Durham administered the polygraph exam. “It was just me and him,” Jessie later recalled.
Mike Allen, Gary Gitchell, and Bryn Ridge—they were in another room. Bill Durham asked me some questions and I answered ’em. He asked me did I know who killed ’em. I told him no. He asked me would I tell him the truth. I told him yes. He asked me did I ever do drugs. I told him no. He asked me three times, over and over, and then when I was through, he told me I was lying. I told him, “Okay, I have done drugs before.” He said, “I know you have because I’ve seen you sell them.” And that’s when I really got mad, because I told him, “I have never sold drugs. I’ve used them, but I ain’t never sold them.” That’s when he told me I was lying. He told me that my brain was telling him so.
Here is Durham’s account: Jessie was questioned briefly before the polygraph interview began. Durham wrote that in that pretest interview, Jessie “said that he has never participated in a Satanic ritual and has never observed one. He denied being involved in the murders and does not know who killed the three boys. He also said he does not suspect anyone.” During the polygraph test, Durham asked Jessie ten more questions. After the test, Durham wrote that Jessie had recorded “significant responses indicative of deception” on these five critical questions: “Have you everbeen in Robin Hood woods?” “Have you ever took part in devil worship?” “Have you ever attended a devil worship ceremony?” “Are you involved in the murder of those three boys?” And “Do you know who killed those three boys?” According to Ridge’s notes, Durham came out of the interview room and announced, “He’s lying his ass off.”
Jessie later said that Durham had insisted his polygraph machine could read people’s minds, and that it could tell if what was in their minds was different from what they said. “I didn’t know what was going on,” Jessie said. “Because how could my brain be telling him that I was sitting there lying? It got me confused. Then he stood up and he was talking. He kinda spit on me. I don’t know if it was on purpose or not, ’cause he was yelling when he did it. I drew back. I was going to hit him. Then Mike Allen came in and grabbed me.”
Jessie said the detectives moved him to another room while they talked to Durham. By now it was almost 12:30P.M .
Then Gitchell came and got me and took me to another room, and that’s when he started talking to me. The whole time, the same questions that they’d already asked me, they kept asking over and over again. When Gitchell asked me what the boys looked like, I told him all the stuff I’d heard. I kept telling Gary Gitchell I wanted to go home. He said I could go home in a minute, then he kept asking me the same questions, over and over again.
From that point, it just got rougher on down. They asked me, how did I know so much about the murder if I didn’t do it? I kept telling him I didn’t know who did it—I just knewof it—what my friend told me. But they kept hollering at me. Gary Gitchell and Bryn Ridge both. They kept saying they knew I had something to do with it, because other people done told ’em. After I told ’em what the boys were wearing, Gary Gitchell told me, was any of them tied up? That’s when I went along with him. I repeated what he told me. I said, yes, they was tied up. He asked, “What was they tied up with?” I told ’em a rope. He got mad. He told me, “God damn it, Jessie, don’t mess with me.” He said, “No. They was tied up with shoestrings.” I had to go all through the story again until I got it right. They hollered at me until I got it right. So whatever he was telling me, I started telling him back. But I figured something was wrong, ’cause if I’d a killed ’em, I’d a known how I done it.
The Circle
The interrogations so far were not tape-recorded, and neither was the one that followed. The only accounts