Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [51]
The leak of Jessie’s confession created a sensation, but Rainey’s order sealing the affidavits prevented reporters from discovering how little the police had to back it up. The effect was that news outlets focused on the three defendants and on what Jessie had said about them. For days, a blizzard of news broadcasts and articles blanketed the area. Even someone who did not buy a paper could read headlines such as these, just in passing a newsstand:
ONE SUSPECT WAS“SCARY,”
TALKED OF WORSHIPING THE DEVIL
OUTBURST IN COURT BY VICTIM’S DAD REFLECTS
COMMUNITY’S SHOCK,RAGE
WORSHIP OF EVIL DEBATED AS MOTIVE IN KILLINGS
ARK.YOUTHS COULD FACE THE DEATH PENALTY
The articles that accompanied the headlines told a public hungry for information that Damien “carried a cat’s skull around with him at school and routinely dressed in black”; that Jason was said to be “shy and artistic” but “into that devil stuff”; and that Jessie was “tough” and “a bit troubled” but had been considered “kind to kids.” Gitchell maintained his position that he could not comment on the case.132
But Rainey’s order sealing the records did not sit well with newspaper editors on either side of the Mississippi River. The battle for information suddenly became part of the story. In response to the official clamp on information, theCommercial Appeal of Memphis filed a formal request for the records, citing Arkansas’s freedom of information law. The paper’s managing editor said that the records were needed “to help sort out facts alleged in the case from a growing supply of rumors.” The smallerWest Memphis Evening Times echoed the complaint.133
But editors’ cautions changed nothing, and shortly after Rainey sealed the records, a state judge affirmed the unusual order.134Like Rainey, the state judge said that the information contained in the records was “sensitive and inflammatory” and that “it would be prejudicial to the defendants to have those documents released to the public prior to the trial.” In fact, the records contained nothing more inflammatory than the statements of Jessie Misskelley, which had already been reported. But the public did not know that.135
Spiritual Warfare
But by and large, for most of the media, reporting on satanism beat skepticism, hands down. The West Memphis paper reported that Damien wore the number 666 and “a sign of the devil” inside his boots. It quoted two boys who claimed to have heard of ghosts in Jason’s house. It quoted an unnamed girl who claimed that she had seen Damien drink Jason and “Dominique’s” blood, and another who said Damien had once “threatened to cut a boy’s head off and put it on a doorstep.” It quoted a woman who lived in the Lakeshore area who’d noticed that “last year, there were some dogs that turned up missing out here,” adding that “the Echols boy always wore black.” In editions on three consecutive days, theJonesboro Sun, in northeast Arkansas’s largest city, quoted a local Baptist minister who said that Damien had made a pact with the devil and would be going to hell.136“I’ve never witnessed to anyone any harder,” the minister was quoted as saying. “He didn’t reject me. He rejected Christ.” An article inUSA Today began: “Michael Echols, who calls himself ‘Damien,’ once told a pastor he couldn’t go to heaven because he’s already committed—to going to hell.” TheUSA Today piece did, however, also quote a few of the suspects’ defenders. Joe Hutchison, Damien’s father, said, “I thought the law of this land was that the accused were considered innocent until someone proved them guilty.” A friend of the Misskelley family said that Jessie “wasn’t into Satanic worship, he was into