• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 620 0

he said, the officers seemed to provide Jessie with answers. Moreover, Lax observed, “The statement does not appear to follow any logical progression.” Lax noted that though Jessie said Damien had “bruised” one of the boys “real bad,” he found it “difficult to conceive of this incident lasting long enough for bruises to become visible to Misskelley.” Lax wondered “if the police allowed him to look at the crime scene photographs, or the autopsy photographs.” Elsewhere he noted that Jessie “first stated Michael Moore began running toward the service road, which would be north of the ditch; however later, on the same page, he stated Moore ran toward the houses (this would be south).” Lax pointed out that “Misskelley sounds real confused regarding when he was present and when he was not.” Finally, noting that “Misskelley said he returned to the crime scene two or three days after the bodies were found,” Lax wrote, “I find this very difficult to believe since the area should have been sealed off and was probably being guarded, or at least closely watched, during this time.”

Three or four times a month, throughout the summer and into the fall, the lawyers received batches of records from Fogleman. But there was no continuity to the material, no organization that would have given them a sense of how the investigation had proceeded. Lax spent much of his time sorting through hundreds of names on hundreds of reports, trying to determine the significance—if any—of each. He summarized every document that was received, though he admitted to uncertainty about what many of them meant.154

As records naming Vicki Hutcheson began to filter in, Lax asked Damien about “the girl Misskelley tried to fix him up with.” Lax wrote that Damien “stated he stayed at the trailer for an hour to an hour and a half and the girl named Vicki made a couple of passes at him but nothing occurred.” Lax set out to locate Hutcheson. Neighbors told him that she’d moved, and directed him to an area south of Marion, where he found her living “on a street that has no sign, in a house that has no number.” There was a Pontiac “jacked up in the drive,” a pickup parked in the drive, and another in the yard. After noting the license numbers of each, Lax knocked on the door. When Hutcheson appeared, she “became very nervous and upset,” he later wrote in his notes. She then “informed me she did not want to talk to me and did not want to become involved. I explained she was already involved.” Eventually Hutcheson gave Lax her version of events, which Lax described as “fuzzy.” He wrote, “I then quizzed Vicki as to why she would have been with Misskelley and Damien after her son identified them as being involved in the murders and her answer was never clear. She attempted to avoid that question but finally ended up saying, ‘I would try to get anything from them I could to help the police.’”

Lax would later recall, “We were interviewing everybody we could find, and nobody had detrimental information, with the exception of Vicki and Aaron. We kept wondering what the police had that we still hadn’t seen.”155

“Evil People”

For much of the public, the matter was not so complex: three teenagers who worshiped Satan had sacrificed three younger boys.156Religion permeated the case. Damien told Shettles that due to publicity about the case, Baptist ministers came to the jail to preach to him at least twice a week.157Now, Lax and Shettles learned, that publicity was about to widen. Damien and Domini’s baby was due at the end of September. In mid-August Pam Echols called Lax to report that a production company from New York, Creative Thinking International, had called seeking permission to film a baby shower that was being planned for Domini. The company’s owners, filmmakers Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger, had promised to contribute a high chair, and Domini’s mother, who was hosting the party, had agreed to let them come. Pam reported that Sinofsky and Berlinger said they’d contacted Damien’s lawyers, who’d given their permission.158

Piecing Together the Police Investigation