Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [58]
The jailers had reason for concern. Damien told Shettles he felt like “a walking razor blade.” He knew that, mentally and legally, his situation was dire. He knew he was perceived as “a devil worshiper or a nut case or something.” In his fitful journal he wrote, “I might lose my mind and I might lose my head.” Despair was taking its toll. He alternated between utter delusion and acute awareness. In a desperate letter to his family he wrote: “I need a doctor. I think I’m having a nervous breakdown, and I’m afraid to tell the people here. They wouldn’t care anyway. Don’t worry about me. I’m okay. Just tell Val Price [Damien’s lawyer] or Glori [Shettles] I need a doctor.Don’t forget!” At the bottom of the page, he pleaded again, “Don’t forget thedoctor!”
But no doctor ever came. Damien later wrote, “I am walking the borderline of insanity…. I don’t like it. I am helpless to stop it.” Later: “Help me. They have invaded and destroyed my world. It seemed harmless enough. Now it’s a contest: who can destroy me first? Them or myself.” Later still: “Mother Night, wrap your dark arms around me. Protect me. Lord of Chaos, guide me. Father Death, embrace me. I am the half man who dwells in both worlds. I walk in shadow and light and am cursed by both.”
Chapter Ten
Release of the Police Files
AS FURTHER PROOFof Damien’s unstable mental state, while he was contemplating his death, he was also planning his marriage. Domini was pregnant and was expecting to deliver the baby in the fall of 1993. If Damien was coming apart, as he feared, the parts were greatly at odds. His writings, which the private investigators did not see, verged on madness and despair. When Shettles and Lax visited, they saw a severely troubled teenager who they feared might be suicidal. But Damien’s letters to Domini and his family were, by contrast, almost sunny. He wrote to Domini, “I told my mom to buy you an engagement ring with my next check. Remind her. Tell your mom I said hi, and I may be out by Christmas.” Reflecting on Domini’s pregnancy, he wrote, “I hope I get out in time to see our baby be born!”
Whether he realized it or not, the wish was preposterous. The defendants’ trial dates had yet to be set, and the prosecutor had barely begun to release information about the case to the defense lawyers.153As none of the defendants had even finished high school (though Damien had obtained his GED), their understanding of the legal process gearing up around them was severely limited. Their lawyers had to explain that a defendant has a right, through the process of discovery, to know what evidence the prosecution intends to present against him. He also has a right to any evidence the prosecution might have that would point toward his innocence. Sitting in their cells, Damien, Jason, and Jessie could not imagine the scale of the job their lawyers faced.
Organizing the File
As a private investigator working for Damien, most of Lax’s time, from June to the end of 1993, was spent compiling information for the attorneys and trying to understand the police files that Fogleman was gradually releasing. Lax scrutinized Jessie’s confession and identified several parts he considered “questionable.” Jessie’s belief that the victims had skipped school, his report of rope ligatures, his confusion about the times, and his claim that the boys had been choked to death all suggested to Lax that Jessie had been clumsily making up answers based on misinformation and faulty assumptions. The investigator concluded that the entire statement appeared to be “a ‘leading type’ interview.” In letters to the attorneys, he pointed out a half dozen points at which,