Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [53]
It was a messy, sad account, offered by a child who had been interviewed repeatedly by police and whose mother, with police approval, had appointed herself an unofficial investigator.140But Bray recognized the potential importance of what young Aaron was saying. So far, police had only Jessie’s account of the murders. A second eyewitness account, even if it contradicted the first and was growing more fantastic by the day, might be invaluable, especially since it named the three teenagers who were in custody.
Gitchell apparently agreed, because on June 9, two days after the details of Jessie’s confession were reported by the media, the West Memphis chief inspector questioned Aaron again. Aaron repeated that he’d witnessed Damien, Jason, and Jessie murder his three friends. And now, Aaron added one more important detail: he told Inspector Gitchell that he’d seen all three of the victims tied up with rope.
Part Two
The Trials
Chapter Nine
The Defendants
ALMOST AS SOON AS HE HEARDabout the arrests, Ron Lax, a Memphis private investigator, decided to get involved in the case. A meticulous dresser, a self-described “anal-retentive” organizer, a collector of French antiques and books on art, Lax was not a stereotypical private eye. He headed his own investigations company, Inquisitor, Inc., with offices in Memphis and Nashville. Most of Inquisitor’s work focused on insurance and financial fraud. But in the past five years, Lax had widened the scope of his work. Defense lawyers had sought his help on cases where clients faced charges of capital murder. Lax had agreed, though he considered the death penalty an appropriate punishment for persons found guilty of some kinds of murder.141Lax’s investigative work helped get some defendants acquitted. His experiences also convinced him that bad police work often resulted in charges against innocent people. By the time of the sensational West Memphis murders, Lax had moved from a position supporting the death penalty to one of opposition. He believed that people who committed terrible crimes should be locked up for life. But he no longer considered the legal process reliable enough to warrant the imposition of such an irrevocable sentence. By 1993, Inquisitor had grown big enough that Lax was able to assign himself a few singularly but personally important investigations of capital murder cases every year. Now, with news of the West Memphis arrests, he asked his assistant, Glori Shettles, to drive across the river and inform the court-appointed defense lawyers that if they wanted him, he was willing to help.
There had never been any question about the boys hiring their own defense. Jessie was the only one who even had a job, and that was intermittent work as a roofer. All lived with their families in rented mobile homes. Though Jason’s mother had told Ridge in desperation that she would “have to hire a lawyer,” there was no way she could have afforded to pay for even a few hours of legal advice, let alone the kind of help needed to mount a legal defense against death.
At a hearing on June 7, 1993, a state judge appointed a pair of lawyers to represent each of the three defendants. The judge appointed Val Price of Jonesboro, chief public defender for Craighead County, and Scott Davidson, also of Jonesboro, to represent Damien. He appointed Paul Ford and George Robin Wadley, both of Jonesboro, to represent Jason. And he appointed Dan Stidham and Greg Crow, law partners from Paragould, to represent Jessie. Most were in their mid-thirties. Stidham was twenty-seven. None had much experience representing clients charged with capital murder.
Jason
Jason, stunned by his arrest, hardly knew where he was, much less where his case was headed. He’d later recall that on the night of his arrest,