Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three

By Mara Leveritt

Book Overview

*A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON AND COLIN FIRTH*

The West Memphis Three. Accused, convicted...and set free. Do you know their story?

In 2011, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in American legal history was set right when Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley were released after eighteen years in prison. Award-winning journalist Mara Leveritt's The Devil's Knot remains the most comprehensive, insightful reporting ever done on the investigation, trials, and convictions of three teenage boys who became known as the West Memphis Three.

For weeks in 1993, after the murders of three eight-year-old boys, police in West Memphis, Arkansas seemed stymied. Then suddenly, detectives charged three teenagers--alleged members of a satanic cult--with the killings. Despite the witch-hunt atmosphere of the trials, and a case which included stunning investigative blunders, a confession riddled with errors, and an absence of physical evidence linking any of the accused to the crime, the teenagers were convicted. Jurors sentenced Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley to life in prison and Damien Echols, the accused ringleader, to death. The guilty verdicts were popular in their home state--even upheld on appeal--and all three remained in prison until their unprecedented release in August 2011.

With close-up views of its key participants, this award-winning account unravels the many tangled knots of this endlessly shocking case, one which will shape the American legal landscape for years to come.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743417607
• ISBN13: 9780743417600
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Very well executed!

Very well executed and put together. Between all the interviews, information, and nonsense that went on the author really gave a great perspective of the events that unfolded. A true story of the brutal murders of 3 little boys and persecution of 3 young men, who just so happened to be very different by societies standards back in 1990’s.

Maybe we'll know soon

DNA testing may soon tell us if any of these three were involved in the crime. You can find out sooner by reading this book. That the police can lie about a polygraph result to badger a retarded kid into confessing and then the defense is not allowed to show at trial that the kid actually passed that polygraph? Something very wrong about that.

Profoundly Disturbing

I suppose there are hundreds of cases such as this hidden away in American history justice files - sensational crimes, creating mass hysteria, law enforcement officials desperate to catch a break and solve terribly violent murders. What is most profoundly disturbing about "Devil's Knot - The True Story of the West Memphis Three," a well-researched and eye-opening account by Mara Leveritt, is there is no comfortable resolution to this case. If the three teenagers who were convicted in the slayings of three eight-year-old boys in 1993 are truly guilty - as the juries found them - then it is a sad testament to the ever-decreasing humanity existing within the interstate wasteland of faceless trailer parks, strip malls and fast food dives. However, if these three anti-social teens were railroaded simply because they were counterculture, adorned in black listening to Metallica and Black Sabbath while perusing Anne Rice, then this morbid tale is an example of a modern-day witch-hunt akin to the Salem Witch Trails hundreds of years ago. Has justice been served in West Memphis, Arkansas - a small, faceless Southern town near the banks of the Mississippi River? Someone murdered those three innocent boys in or near the woods outside of town. But is that someone truly behind bars? When reading "Devil's Knot," it is abundantly clear these law enforcement officials had little experience dealing with a violent case such as this. The crime scene was contaminated, officers didn't follow leads, interviews were not recorded, evidence was lost, witnesses were threatened, body conditions leaked to the press. Most disturbing of all, there seemed to be an inability by these desperate officials to believe a God-fearing resident of their community - one of them - could ever murder three boys in this brutal a fashion."It had to be someone who is not one of us. Someone who does not believe in God."When terrible crimes like this happen in our society, there is always an instinctive reaction to find a boogey man - some kind of monster not one of us. Damien Echols, goth and counterculture, with a creepy (though creative) presence fueled by depression and smalltown restraint, made the perfect boogey man for a wounded community trying to understand and cope. It is clear when reading "Devil's Knot" that Damien fueled much of this talk, and relished his role as eventual goth martyr. It is also clear mentally handicapped Jessie Misskelley, Jr. was intimidated and taken advantage of during his 11-hour ordeal when he eventually implicated himself, Damien and Jason Baldwin in the murders. The confession itself is so unconvincing as to be surreal. And the scant evidence - some of which was discovered or found months after the murders, was never scientifically related or matched to a single wound on the victims' bodies. But drop the name of Satan or Cult into a hysterically uneducated, conservatively religious town needing, if not wanting, to lynch someone for these murders, and all be

Excellent and much-needed

I'm fascinated by the West Memphis Three case, but the advocacy nature of so much of the available information (the documentaries, the wm3.org website) has always left me with the feeling I'm not getting the whole story. The main figures in the West Memphis and Arkansas justice system have long said that the movies and website skirt the true facts, and if those facts were known people would understand that the guilty parties are in prison. Leveritt wisely took this assertion as the premise of her book--she decided to put it to the test. She has done a brilliant, dispassionate job of it. My understanding of this case had deepened tenfold by the time I finished reading the book (as well as its exhaustive end notes). Every opportunity is given to advocates of the boys' guilt to bring to light those missing "true facts." It is utterly horrifying to see how this process actually casts more doubt on the case that the prosecutors and police created. The horror is compounded by the obvious fact that Leveritt is not presenting a slanted version of the story. She goes above and beyond to find those crucial "true facts" that will establish guilt. But it seems they don't exist. The documentaries, website materials and other information about this case (I've been semi-obsessed with it since 1996) have always left vague, nagging doubts in my mind. This book erased them.