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Damien told Shettles that his family had moved frequently when he was young.148Though he was unaware of it at first, Damien said, his family had been desperately poor, living at times in shacks with dirt floors and no indoor plumbing. He said he’d grown used to being picked on at school, and that once he’d made it to high school, he’d begun carrying a dog’s skull he’d found because kids tended not to bother him when he did. He discovered that being ridiculed for being strange—something he could choose for himself—was better than being ridiculed for things he could not control.

It seemed to her that Damien had had a hard time making sense of his life, and that he’d turned to religion for help. When the Protestant influences of his childhood failed to satisfy or comfort him, he’d turned to Catholicism, and then to more earth-based, pagan beliefs.149As Damien grew more comfortable with Shettles, the investigator tried to explore the behaviors that had attracted Driver’s attention. Shettles noted:

Michael reports his wardrobe of black clothing originated as a result of Deanna telling him that she thought he “looked good” in black clothing. He stated he began purchasing black pieces of clothing to please her and before long, all of his articles of clothing were black. He states he regrets the day he began wearing his trench coat, which he wore every day; however, he thought at the time that it looked “cool”…Michael briefly described a period of time, apparently while he was still in school, that he described as his “vampire look.” He stated during this period of time he put white powder on his skin and wore very dark, small glasses and gave the appearance he was a vampire. He stated schoolmates would ask him if he drank blood and he stated he did drink blood, but only of those persons he knew…Michael also stated that, as time grew, he was earning more and more of the reputation by schoolmates, teachers, and persons in the community as being a devil worshiper. He stated that right before he was sent to Charter Hospital by the juvenile authorities he was brought in and asked by Jerry Driver and Steve Jones if he could read a Latin inscription that was on a gold ring that Michael described as a wedding band that was in a glass pyramid. He stated he could not read Latin and had no idea what the inscription was. He was asked by these men if he could remove the ring by “willing” it or through some ritual, and he told them he could not.

Damien told Shettles that he, Jason, and Domini had been “harassed” by police for almost a year and a half before the murders.150After one of Lax’s visits with Damien, the private investigator wrote:

Before his arrest, Steve Jones, his probation officer, came by and asked why Echols had not been around. Echols responded he had not been around because his probation was over. He stated Jones acted very suspicious during this visit. Jones gave Echols some information regarding the murders. He told Echols someone urinated in the mouth of one of the boys. Then, when the West Memphis Police Department asked him what he knew about the murder and he stated someone had urinated into one of the victim’s mouth, they denied Steve Jones knew this and stated that only someone at the murder scene would be aware of this information.

Ron Lax found the story peculiar. The prosecutor’s office had just begun to provide documents from the police investigation to the defense attorneys, through the legal process known as discovery. To Lax’s and the lawyers’ frustration, the flow of records throughout the summer amounted to only a trickle. But at least the trickle had included copies of the autopsy reports, which the West Memphis police had finally received after the arrests. Lax scoured the reports, but they contained no mention of urine having been found in the stomachs of any of the bodies.151Since Lax and the lawyers had so far been provided with but a fraction of the police department’s file,