Mumia Abu-Jamal, Damien Echols, and the Cult of the Murder Groupie
Almost immediately after the announcement that prosecutors would stop pursuing the death penalty for cop killer Wesley Cook (aka Mumia Abu-Jamal), the murderer’s fans announced a rally to demand his release. The guest list for the event includes anti-Semitic, truther rap “artist” Immortal Technique and professional Marxist revolutionary Dr. Cornel West.
The rally will demand freedom for a “political prisoner” who isn’t innocent. In fact, only the most dishonest supporters have ever claimed he didn’t execute police officer Daniel Faulkner – something even the killer himself has never claimed in court.
That’s because Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and longtime Marxist revolutionary, was caught red-handed.
On December 9th, 1981, Faulkner pulled over Abu-Jamal’s brother William Cook for a routine traffic stop. William assaulted Faulkner. As the officer attempted to arrest Cook, Abu-Jamal charged the pair and a firefight ensued. Shots hit both Faulkner and Abu-Jamal.
Investigators found the .38 used to shoot Faulkner next to Abu-Jamal (who also wore a shoulder holster designed to fit the gun). Ballistic analysis determined the weapon responsible for Faulkner’s death. Several eyewitnesses testified against Abu-Jamal, and two hospital workers who treated him testified that Jamal had confessed in the hospital with the words “I shot the motherf***er and I hope the motherf***er dies.”
William never testified to his brother’s innocence. And Abu-Jamal never testified in his own defense. Further, William has even told reporters he wants nothing to do with the Mumia circus. Very telling.
That the two people Mumia defenders would trust the most have refused to testify should take the wind out of the sails of any movement to free this man, regardless of feelings on the justice of the death penalty. That it does not proves the “Free Mumia” movement is not about justice or truth. It really isn’t even about politics even though the “activists” all tend to be radical leftists. This is about fandom: armchair revolutionaries and “class warriors” lionizing a man who did what they all dream of doing. Mumia Abu-Jamal lived the college Marxist fantasy of “fighting the man” to the death and he is now a rock star for anti-American movements. Like all rock stars his most devoted followers are his groupies.
Cornel West could be more accurately described as a professional idiot and full-time racist: the idea that West would go to bat for this man were he white is ludicrous and the same goes for the rest of his “support group.”
In their world, success is failure and failure success so Mumia occupies the perfect intellectual space for the race obsessed politically correct pedagogue. If the exact same thing happened to a white Wall St. banker with a black jury he would not only be a forgotten man to the Left but occupy a default position of invisibility. Mumia’s social status is its own form of innocence.
You gotta read Sam Francis’ writings on anarcho-tyranny if they are available someplace. Leftists are united in the goal of destroying normal society. They hate normal people with day-jobs, kids, and who go to church. Killers, criminals, wackos, and perverts are all allies in undermining existing society. The Left doesn’t want killers released because they’re innocent; they want them released because they’re guilty, and likely to kill some more square-johns if they can get back on the street. Of course, the enemy is mostly white people, because whites compose the dominant American culture. Blacko-American culture is completely separate and non-assimilated after only 250 years, But I’m sure the ‘melting-pot’ will work its magic any day now. Just like it will for the Mexicans.
Did you take off your white hood and robe to write that?
No, I did something a lot more difficult and which I recommend to you. I spent months researching Critical Pedagogy and also read hundred of articles in “black culture” websites and also scores of articles by Cornel West, Dr. Boyce Watkins at Syracuse U., Melissa Harris-Perry at Tulane, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, James Cone, Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker, Michael Eric Dyson, Roland Martin, Tavis Smiley, and many others too numerous to mention.
They are racists and swim in a culture of endemic racism while accusing others, namely white folks, of that same racism, though white culture has no corresponding contemporary mainstream literature that shows the least evidence of an interest in race. The black elite in America derives their racialist philosophies from the same intellectual space as Joseph Goebbels, who also claimed defensive reasons.
Either open your eyes and listen to me or start reading.
Hey, Bill, I think you’re a racist, too. And I read plenty of those same voices in grad school, where I had to present critical analyses of works by West, Wright, Giovanni, Walker and Tyson. I didn’t read them in the private protective cocoon of solitary white racism like you did. I had to bounce my analyses off some of the most esteemed social scientists in the country, not a bunch of your fellow internet white supremecists.
Nice try but I regard David Duke and Stormfront.org as equally depraved.
The rest of your comment is nonsensical: good analysis is where you find it and not in “approved” locales. Your view is why racists you cozen are so little challenged.
How much approval from others do you need to see there is no White Congressional Caucus, no white culture websites reporting on white sports stars and how many white people died in a plane crash and with mainstream ads and celebrity participation? There is not one. You need a room full of social scientists over your shoulder to figure that out?
How many Associations of White Journalists, White Mayors, White Farmers, White Police Chiefs and on and on and on are there? Not one but black organizations with those exact names exist and guess what, it’s 2011 and not 1934. No doubt you DO see me as a racist and considering your upside down comments without a trace of real context, I’m not surprised.
Yes, Sandy and Dominica, in the finest tradition of Saul Alinsky, reply to incisive, accurate criticism with “…the outrageous charge which leaves the opponent sputtering in defenseless rage,” (paraphrased). Racism the all-purpose offense. Can’t prove he’s not can he?
You, the Cornell West’s of academe and the rest of the so-called intellectual elites of the myriad minority, gender, victim-of-sex-orientation “studies” programs are simply parasites contributing and making nothing of value as you gloat in your echo-chambers of self-congratulatory sanctimony.
Plus they’re stupid.
I have to confess that I’m confused why Echols is included in this fiasco, along with Mumia. No one but an idiot believes Mumia innocent; but it’s very questionable whether the West Memphis 3 committed the crimes for which they were convicted. Echols is probably an unstable character, or at least was when he was arrested and convicted for this crime, but in some ways that casts doubt on his guilt. John Douglas (the retired FBI profiler) gave it as his opinion that the 3 boys were killed by a single individual, a well-organized individual with a desire to punish them. He said he seriously doubted that the West Memphis 3, confused teenagers hopped up on drugs and alcohol, could have committed the crime. And of course when they did DNA tests, none of the 3 defendants were found to be connected with the crime scene, but there was DNA from someone other than the 3 victims. But of course these 3 guys must have done it…after all they’re delinquents, semi-impoverished and essentially worthless members of society, and even if they didn’t do this they probably did something else just as bad, or something…yeah right.
I don’t get it. Just because Mumia’s guilty, but has defenders who want him released, doesn’t mean that everyone else in prison with defenders is guilty too.
How reliable is profiling? While I grant that the case against the three accused is not exactly iron-clad, I believe profilers are little more than fortune tellers without the crystal ball. A case in point is the “loner, white” description The Authorities released to describe the DC sniper. Turns out it was two black men.
Echols was included here for a simple reason. Most people’s knowledge of the case began by them watching “Paradise Lost, a slanted film purported to be a documentary, and produced by Bruce Sinofsky and
Joe Berlinger.
If instead someone began by reading the trial testimonies, followed up by Damien Echols’ mental heath history, and Jessie Misskelley’s 4 confessions, plus his admittance of guilt to several of his friends, Echols admittance of guilt to a number of people, all available at callahan.8k.com, one gains an entirely different picture. Damien Echols in his deluded state of mind was proud of killing the 3 little boys. Also, not one of the 3 killers had a clean alibi that backed up their claims of innocence.
I was duped by that documentary, myself. Saw it when I was a teenager. I believed Damien Echols was innocent. Today was the first time I saw the full facts. Yikes.
He’s included because he’s a delusional, drug using psychotic who was witnessed stomping a dog to death, drinking blood, trying to gouge out a mans eyes who was dating his ex, forming a suicide pact with his girlfriend, cutting himself, cutting others, attacking his family etc. I link to his medical records – read them and then tell me why it’s appropriate to act as if he was railroaded for no reason.
friendly grizzly: <> It’s not 100% accurate, no; but experience does tend to let someone make educated guesses about who’s doing what to whom. You admit the case against the West Memphis 3 isn’t “ironclad”: isn’t that the definition of “reasonable doubt?”
OTG: <> Yeah, and the individuals in the courtroom were influenced by a sloppy police investigation that involved a contaminated crime scene, and “confessions” teased out of drug addicts who had no idea what day of the week it was. Neither of these things proves, conclusively, that the WM 3 are innocent or guilty, but I think the DNA evidence is pretty damning: again, none of the WM 3 were implicated in the killings by the DNA evidence, but there was a single unknown donor. Could that be the killer? No, of course not…
The instructions for this discussion note we should stay “on topic” – the topic being rightly-convicted cop killer coward Wesley Cook a/k/a Mumia.
If I can give a quick plug – anyone interested in discussing the reasons many people (including me) are convinced that, in great contrast to Wesley Cook, the WM3 are innocent, jump on over to http://www.wm3blackboard.com – it’s a site run by the father of one of the victims (who loudly supports the WM3′s innocence).
Rob Taylor: <> So he is (or was, anyway) a delusional drug addict. That makes him a triple murderer who should be incarcerated for eternity, or executed? I don’t think so. None of them have alibis? You just told me Echols was a delusional drug addict. I doubt anyone with that description has an alibi for any day of the week, unless they’re in the drunk tank or rehab. Not to put too fine a point on it, people in this country often do less time for murder when they’re clearly *guilty*, let alone something questionable like this.
I have to say I’m a bit upset that at least some conservatives have taken this attitude with Echols and the other two guys. It brings to mind that case down in Texas so many years ago, where the high school student/psycho from the good family shot a guy, and the court sent his accomplice to prison, while letting the young man go essentially free. The accomplice, like Echols here, was a “disposable” member of society, so whether he actually killed anyone or not is irrelevant. He’s “trash” and he ought to be put away where he can’t hurt anyone. Come to think of it, it’s also similar to the left’s reaction to Paula Jones. Women of her class are *expected* to get on their knees and do their duty for the country, not protest and complain about sexual harassment. That’s reserved for women who attend Ivy League universities, not trailer trash from Arkansas.
Isn’t the guy innocent until proven guilty? And shouldn’t the proof include some actual…you know…EVIDENCE?
No evidence? Then why did the jury convict?
Rob – As said, this forum is about Mumia, not Damien, but to quickly answer your question “No evidence? Then why did the jury convict?”, please note that juror misconduct was cited by the State of Arkansas as the largest reason for the reversal of the convictions.
So…. that’s why. Jump on over to the WM3Blackboard if you’re interested in discussing it further and learning more about the WM3.
David Try clicking the “next” button at the bottom of page one and reading onto page two… Echols is indeed included in this piece. He’s even named in the title of the piece. Can’t get much more “on topic” than that.
Maybe you guys should get tattoos matching Echols and Jackson. Read his medical records – he should have been locked up just for the things he had done prior to the murders.
Because of his medical records? Really? The only point that matters is whether or not Echols killed three kids. Evidence actually pointed to the one boy’s stepfather I think it was, a man who molested the boy for years. But when you know the right people, why would anyone convict the father? No, easier to go after some kid who has family issues. I’ve read quite alot about the Echols case, and your comments are very out of line and barely in line with normal criminal court procedings.
The article is about crime groupies and people who are fans of these animals. If you really cared about Echols you’d want him in a hospital, on medication. In reality you admire Echols and his violent history which is why you excuse it so easily.
The irony of the fact that none of you read the complete article or the links to his records, the witness statements etc but then claim everyone else “doesn’t know” or is “misrepresenting” the facts is syrupy sweet. Thanks for proving my point.
Just so I get this straight, Rob Taylor, because Echols was not a nice guy you approve of or had the kind of background you liked, that makes him fair game to convict of murder with some very questionable evidence? So it’s okay to railroad people if they are unlikeable enough? Cool.
As for reading court transcripts, they aren’t the entire case. Outside evidence, motives and misconduct do account for alot more than people here and other places want to admit. I seem to recall one of the kids who made the confession was mentally handicapped. Court cases are supposed to be about fairness and truth, not about who you or the community would like to just get rid of.
Bloody hell. How misinformed are you.. This article is a load of crap in regards to WM2 lol
Both these cases remind me of the old Monty Python “Piranha Brothers” skit. I suspect they remind the writer of it, too, as he quotes it, perhaps inadvertently. (Speaking of a man who “did what they all dream of doing”.)
As Graham Chapman said, playing the psychiatrist commenting on Dinsdale’s habits (nailing people’s heads to floors, blowing up Luton Airport with a low-yield nuke, etc.),”Dinsdale was a loony, but he was a happy loony. Lucky b*****d”.
(BTW, the bit about the nuke was comic hyperbole, but the bit about nailing bits of people’s anatomies to the floor wasn’t. The Kray brothers, the career criminals who ruled the London underworld in the 1960s, didn’t do that- but their main competitors, Charles and Eddie Richardson, did. The “Piranha Brothers” skit was based on both lots of lowlifes.)
The fact that there are people who actively cheer for these dangerous, unstable individuals tells you a lot about the people doing the cheering. I’d think twice about turning my back on them.
clear ether
eon
These urban radical chic types are, apparently, only too happy to self identify themselves as the fools and rubes they are. They are the crazies, the silly walkers of our cultural landscape.
We, on the other hand, are the 47%. We constitute the largest armed body in the world. We aren’t inclined to wait for the police to investigate the crime after the fact (when seconds count, the police are only a quarter hour away…).
The crazies talk and posture, but they don’t appear to want to light that particular candle.
Who made the decision to commute Mumia’s sentence and why? Is this just another Holder fiasco or is there rational thinking behind it?
Didn’t Norman Lear and his liberal elite cronies manage to get a murderous thug who happened to write a book while in jail released? And didn’t this criminal murder someone else soon after his release?
There should be a law that makes left wing shmucks like Lear get life in prison in the same cell with their thug-du-jour who they help unleash on society to once again murder. The problem with the urban radical chic is that they never rub shoulders with these lowlifes and are ensconced in their fortified mansions, so they have no fear that the violent criminals they champion will ever step foot in their neighborhoods.
If the day ever comes that Khalid Sheik Muhammad gets his civilian trial in NYC, criminal-loving left wing shmucks will demand his release, even if the consequences are tens of thousands murdered in another terror attack.
That was Norman Mailer not Norman Lear.
The murderer was Jack Henry Abbott. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins named one of their children after him.
In America in the 1950′s and 60′s, whenever a Black man was charged with raping a white woman, communists would show up to defend him. They would smear the woman’s character, try to prove she was a whore and that she had been asking for it. Most, if not all, of the time they were unable to prove that the woman was complicit in her own rape. The radical left believes that no Black man is ever guilty of any crime he may commit, that Back men cannot exercise free will and are always compelled to act out through frustration, and that rape, robbery, assault and murder are justified political acts.
Well they probably gave up because 30,000 such rapes a year is a lot to show up for. Guess they were a victim of their own success.
Echols was inclluded in this because he is in fact guilty. Wm3 supporters love to point to Misskelley’s “coerced” confession as to why the wm3 were convicted. Did you know that Misskelley actually confessed 5 times? Including post conviction? How do you explain that? How do you explain a Necklace pendant found at Echols house that had blood consistent with Baldwin and victim Stevie Branch? Or the microscopic fibers found at the scene matching items taken from Echols/Baldwin’s house? Funny how these facts seem to be conveniently left out of the Paradise Lost “documentaries” or any media reportings on this case. Is it just coincidence that Misskelley gave facts in his socalled bible confession, to his own lawyer with no law enforcement present, that only a person with first hand knowledge could know? Was he just guessing correctly? Misskelley recently said in the disgusting GQ article that the cops justkept asking him who killed the boys until he just said he did it. Ok, but what about the following 4 documented confessions, what was happening then? Who was coercing Jesse when he was already serving a life sentence? Anyone? The mis-information in the WM3 case is staggering, millions of dollars, celebrity ignorance, and most of all the putrid Paradise Lost propaganda bs turned a tragedy about 3 tortured, beaten, sexually mutilated kids into a crusade to free 3 child murdering bastards. In the end they succeeded, and the graves of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore continue to Be spit on to this day.
Blood consistent, huh? Have they done DNA tests on it? Back in the day, they couldn’t do them, and often got convictions based on assertions like this. Decades later, someone would test the blood, and it would turn out that it was the same *type* but not from the same *person*, which meant that the evidence presented in the first trial was now bogus…but of course the conviction stands. You’ve pointed out that there *was* some physical evidence, but it’s all suggestive, not conclusive. As for the confession, if you think a drug-addled teenager is going to act intelligently when interrogated by the cops for hours on end, you’re not very bright. Of course he told them what they wanted to hear. This is one of the reasons that nowadays confessions like this are dealt with *very* carefully, and the cops spend a lot of time looking for corroborating evidence.
I keep coming back to the DNA tests, which were done years later. They didn’t implicate any of the accused, but there was another donor. If you’re so devoted to the idea of evidence that tends to implicate these guys, why do you *ignore* something that pretty clearly exonerates them, and points the finger at someone else, someone the cops apparently never arrested?
Why hasn’t the “Innocence Project” taken up his banner, if the evidence was so slim?
False confessionsa are fairly common in criminal cases, even by completely unrelated parties. I’m not sure there’s ever been any explanation. It’s very easy to suggest things to someone with a low IQ, and in this case the confessions were very suspect. It also turns out there were other leads ignored in the pursuit of Echols.
Most people lead dull, boring, anonymous lives. One thing they can do about it is read nonsense about celebrities, whose first names appear on the covers of supermarket tabloids. People who feel that sense of anonymity more keenly but also feel a childlike obliviousness to the consequences of their actions might do something infamous like try to assassinate a President. This is why most Presidential assassins have been contemptible losers like Lee Harvey Oswald, Sara Jane Moore, John Hinckley, Squeaky Fromme, Sirhan Sirhan and Arthur Bremer. If you can’t be famous, try to associate with the famous. If you can’t do that, which John Hinckley failed to, then do something infamous. If you can’t even do that, then associate with the infamous. With luck, you can even marry somebody on Death Row.
Yikes!! There is so much human fecal matter out there, and then there are the actual criminals/murderers/rapists defended by the POS. . . . . . All the more reason to get a CWP and carry at all times. . . .protect your family, the police can’t.
The more I see and hear about the Hellywood types, the less I am inclined to spend any money on their public offerings. . . .
I knew I didn’t care for Jackson’s bastardization of Tolkein’s classic work, and now I have yet another reason to dislike him.. . .
Rob Crawford,
To answer your question, The Innocence Project didn’t take up the West Memphis case because the West Memphis case had its own funding, and The Innocence Project wanted to use its funds on other cases of injustice which had not received the notoriety of the West Memphis case.
But Eon, the Krays loved their ol’ mam.
Many people are quite sick.
After it became undeniable Mumia was in fact guilty, the groupies started the “blame the victim” meme. As soon as Damien Echols pled guilty and left the courthouse, a Rolling Stone contributor and WM3 groupie admitted their guilt and said he was glad they were released. There is little doubt that if Manson or Ramirez were released, they would be ravaged.
This trend will not abate, I’m afraid.
I’m not seeing it in the article here, but this came up in a saved Google search / scan for “Damien Echols” or “The West Memphis Three.”
Please, folks – don’t confuse or merge Mumbo Jumbo with the WM3. There’s one huge difference between them – Mumbo Jumbo is as guilty as the day is long. Damien Echols and the WM3 are innocent (as per DNA, evidence, etc).
While I despise what Mumbo Jumbo did to Daniel Faulkner, I REALLY hate his ongoing and disappointingly successful efforts to hijack the resources and attention of well meaning people who are concerned about the very real problem of wrongful convictions. When one looks at the facts and says “oh, Wesley Cook is guilty – he did apparently ambush and kill a cop… maybe the other folks claiming innocence are also full of it”, well — that has a real-world negative effect on those of us working for justice.
Think…. and please don’t lump this cowardly killer in with the WM3.
Thanks.
Was Damien Echols brave when he tried to gouge out some kids eyes? Or when he tried to form a suicide pact with a 15-year-old girl?
Anybody who reviews the evidence and documentation in the West Memphis 3 case with a critical mind knows that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley are not guilty of the crimes for which they were wrongly accused and imprisoned for 18 years. There is a small but rabid group of zealots who distort, exaggerate, and outright lie to try to convince others of the West Memphis 3′s guilt, because reliance on the facts of the case show that the WM3 are absolutely innocent. Nobody ever “witnessed” Damien Echols killing a dog; there is absolutely not one bit of credible evidence that shows that the dog existed. Jessie Misskelley’s coerced “confessions” have so many inaccuracies that any belief in their credibility would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic(and I see that the number of times this supposedly happened has once again increased – now it’s 5 times? Sterling84, you’d better check with the head of your Propaganda Dissemination committee – I thought your standard party line was only 3 times). The blood found on the necklace matched only by type, which does narrow the possible perpetrators down to, oh, several million people. Likewise, the thread evidence points to – somebody who shopped at Wal-Mart. That’s as conclusive as it gets. And as for Damien Echols’ psychiatric report, anybody who’s ever worked with teenagers in the mental health system – as I have – will tell you that teens who are hospitalized for mental health issues love to make up outlandish stories to give the middle finger to doctors, nurses, and therapists that they see as being the authority figures who institutionalized them. If Echols’ psych records are indicative of his guilt, then 97% of the teens I worked with are all triple murderers as well. And actually, all three of the WM3 had solid alibis for the time in question. The only thing the WM3 were guilty of were being disposable teens in a small bible belt town overcome with Satanic Panic.
If there were even the slightest chance that the WM3 were guilty, would the state of Arkansas agree to release them from prison? No. Of course not. They especially would have never released Damien Echols from Death Row. And to believe otherwise involves some of the most deceptive, intellectually bankrupt analyses of the facts of the case imaginable.
Did I distort his psych record or just link to it and discuss what’s in it?
I link to a witness affidavit where someone saw Echols kill a dog, and his psych records discuss him ADMITTING to these things.
The WM3 are free
I addressed Damien’s psychiatric records in my post above, and I state WHY I don’t give it any merit. Can you tell me WHY you believe it? Why is it that you Guilt Groupies insist that the only time in Damien’s life that he ever told the truth was in those psych records? Why do you insist that the only time in Jessie’s life that he ever told the truth was in those ludicrously inaccurate coerced “confessions?”
And where are your links? You keep saying you’ve linked to “facts” but I don’t see any links. I’m guessing I know damned well what you’ve linked to, but I want to see it before I respond, because you and the rest of you Guilt Groupies will lie, exaggerate, and deceive every chance that you have.
Why do you think his history of violent behavior is irrelevant?
I ALREADY ANSWERED THAT QUESTION IN MY ORIGINAL POST. I’ve worked with hundreds of teens in inpatient psychiatric settings. Most all of them say the sorts of things that Damien said in his record. THEY SAY IT FOR SHOCK VALUE. They think “okay, you think I’m crazy? I’ll give you crazy.” By your standards, maybe 97% of the teens I worked with over the years must be triple murderers.
Oookay… only Rob asked why you believe his violent behavior is irrelevant, not why you believe what he said is irrelevant.
So, why do you think his history of violent behavior is irrelevant?
David Perry Davis, by your argument, what “DNA, evidence, etc.” exists against Mumia?
Fact is, the supporters of Mumia and the WM3 are ok with looking the other way when it comes to evidence. They should both be lumped together because Mumia and Damien are both manipulative, lying psychopaths who committed cowardly murders.
Here are a few of the countless pieces of evidence you’ve ignored:
Like a broken record, you and your counterparts claim there is no evidence in the case. Yet there is overwhelming evidence when you consider it all. Starting with Echols admitting to lying on the stand at his own trial. His lies continue to this day. From having to “learn to use a fork again”, to “being almost blind”, to “losing his ability to walk due to prison shackles” he claims were applied day and night during his prison stay.
Supporters say the murders happened elsewhere (caused by turtles or dogs) and that the kids were found at a dumping site. Yet, luminal testing at the time showed an enormous amount of blood on the bank leading to the water where the bodies were found.
Only weeks before the murders, Jessie Misskelley beat a 14 year old girl much in the same way he describes beating one of the boys? Misskelley also told his lawyer that he threw a bottle of Evan Williams at the scene of the crime. His lawyer and a police detective located the bottle.
They had motive, they had no alibis, and even their own families at the time confirmed they did it. Read the newspaper articles from the time.
May be you should ask yourself why Damien and crew need to lie so much? Why are you facilitating these lies? And why are you so quick to believe every cockamamie story when the only plausible killers are the 3 who threatened the crime, committed the crime and then admitted to it afterward?
Supporters say that Stevie, Chris, and Michael were killed by turtles or dogs? LMAO! That may be the best lie I’ve heard come out of a Guilt Groupie’s mouth so far. Forensic experts have stated that wounds on the genitalia were likely caused by turtles. NOBODY EVER SAID TURTLES KILLED THOSE BOYS! And you people are the ones who obsess over dogs. Dead dogs. The imaginary dead dog that was never reported as missing, even though it was a very expensive breed. The imaginary dog that the fame-and-glory-seeking Joe Bartoush claims Damien killed, although he never mentioned it to anybody until the trial, when he could milk the story for his moment in the spotlight.
I have to thank you, though. We claim that turtles really killed those boys. That’s provided me with an aftrnoon’s worth of laughter.
Some people are easily amused; like crazy people for example.
What about shiny things? Have you seen any of those this afternoon and did night come without you even noticing? You can pass an entire day with something shiny.
Murder Groupie is a great phrase.
Speaks volumes in 2 words.
So does “koo koo”, and they both seem to apply.
“Che lived the dream of every angry, young rich kid who fancies himself a Marxist.”
And commensurate with how he lived, he was shot down in the jungle like a dog. Were they capable of learning, they would find that instructive.
Sandy, it is difficult to pin down exactly how many times Misskelley confessed and it was documented, if you want to get detailed about it, here ya go.
1. Initial confession 6/3/93
2. Police car confessio. 2/4/94
3. Stidham confession 2/8/94
4. Stidham bible confession 2/17/94
So the fact Misskelley gave details about the murders only a participant could give means nothing to you? By the way, your comment about distortion, exaggeration, and outright lying by people who believe they are guilty is comical. The entire wm3 movement is based on complete bullshit, which you have apparently, like countless other sheep, gladly shoveled down your throat and re- gurgitated for the masses to hear. Hey, how is Damien’s promised search for the “real killers” coming along? he must think they are currently in New Zealand on the set of the Hobbit.
Sterling84: You can say it as often as you want, but it won’t make it true. There was NOTHING in Jessie’s confession that wasn’t already being talked about in West Memphis about the murders. Furthermore, I seriously doubt you have ever listened to Jessie’s confession while reading the transcript. If you had heard it, you would see that Jessie is being coached. He picks out the wrong victim; the police correct him. He gives them the wrong timeline; they express exasperation with it being “wrong” and correct him again. They claim they had no clue that Jessie had a low IQ, yet ask him condescending questions to see if he even knows what a penis IS. You think that saying “He confessed four times” makes his confessions valid. It doesn’t. All it does is prove that after four attempts, Jessie STILL couldn’t get the story right — and ultimately took life plus 40 rather than lie on the stand against two people that he knew were no more guilty of the murders than he himself was.
This epithet “racist” has no value now as it’s tossed about and pasted as a “sign” on just about anyone who sneers at anyone else.
Far, far too much space is devoted (as right here) to the literal trash represented by these sick deranged folks mentioned in this article who revel in being “against” everything, just for the sake of “stickin’ it too someone”, anyone, they choose at random. They happen to be “black”, but that’s their problem, we the rest of western civilization, should not permit ourselves to waste time on those folks.
They should be contained, isolated, after convicted in due process, and left to themselves……quarantined from the rest of us so we can go on with our lives unmolested.
Wow. I have never been this disappointed in an article on PJ Media. This is the most slanted, fact-omitting piece of self-righteous tripe that I’ve ever read.
Where to even *begin* correcting all the inaccuracies here? Or rather, where to begin including the facts you deliberately excluded?
You don’t mention that exhaustive DNA testing was done, and not one iota of DNA links Damien, Jason or Jessie to the discovery site. You don’t mention that there is DNA that actually links one of the stepfathers and this stepfather’s friend to the discovery site. You don’t mention that Jessie, Jason and Damien have alibis for that night, whereas the stepfather in question has huge blocks of time for which is whereabouts are unaccounted.
You fail to mention that a bloody, muddy black man staggered into the Bojangles restaurant (literally in the vicinity of where the murders occurred) on the night of the murders, but the policewoman assigned to investigate drove into the drive-in lane and never bothered to get out of her car to collect the blood the man left behind; the *restaurant owner* kept bloody paper towels. The West Memphis PD then lost the black man’s blood AND sunglasses, thus losing perhaps the most crucial piece of evidence in the case.
You fail to mention that most of the “ghost stories” told about Damien Echols are pure, unadulterated garbage. You fail to mention that Jessie Misskelley’s confessions are riddled with problems: he gets the timeline wrong twice before the WMPD “prompt” him to get the timeline right; he says the boys were sodomized and orally raped but there is no evidence of this at all; he says several times that he left the scene, but the WMPD continue to push him for more details, which Jessie pretty much makes up. His subsequent “confessions” aren’t any better. You don’t mention that Jessie refused to testify against Damien and Jason, despite being offered a lesser sentence if he did.
You fail to mention that the WMPD were offered help from the Arkansas State Police to investigate the murders, but declined because the WMPD was under investigation at the time for drug offenses.
You fail to mention that the “expert” who testified that this was an ‘occult killing’ got his diploma from a diploma mill, took NO classes and used ridiculous “testimony” that should have been laughed out of the courtroom. You fail to mention that, among the ‘evidence’ that the West Memphis Three committed these murders were the music they listened to, the t-shirts they wore and the fact that they were “different” from other teens.
You fail to mention that the jury foreman in Damien and Jason’s trial told the jury about Jessie’s “confession” even though this was NOT entered as evidence and was never meant to be considered. You don’t mention that Judge Burnett dozed off during the trial, sat on every subsequent appeal to suppress the admission of new evidence and, when the jury was deliberating in the original trial, told the jury to hurry up with their guilty verdict — as if it was a foregone conclusion.
You fail to mention that in a murder as horrific and brutal as this, the first suspects are always the parents of the children involved, and yet the WMPD did not question the parents or canvass the neighbourhood or request DNA samples from the parents, thus why it took millions of dollars and a dozen years before the DNA found at the discovery site could be matched to the DNA of one of the stepfathers — DNA collected by a private investigator, *not* the WMPD.
You fail to mention that many WM3 supporters (myself included) believe absolutely in the guilt of murderers whose involvement has been proved with science and logic. We are not death groupies. I have followed the WM3 since 1998 *not* because I’m gullible but because the terror-filled, grief-stricken community of West Memphis *was*. How sad that there are still people with even the most passing familiarity of the WM3 case who still act like it’s 1692 and innuendo, ghost stories and heresay are considered valid pieces of evidence to lead innocents to the gallows.
I’m black and this article is inarticulate surface racist, discriminatory fluff. If you want to answer a better question how bout how statistically white police departments create doubt, when they are run by corrupt, small minded, morally handicapped individuals and how that effects cases. The problem is not these men you speak of. But the people who targeted them for arrest. Without that doubt these men wouldn’t have support. WM3 are innocent. PERIOD. Mumia very well could be and he could be guilty. If there had not been so many gaping holes, paid informants, embellished testimony perhaps we can see the truth. Since we can not why even mention him in an article? This author needs to do his homework.
I am an activist for the wrongfully convicted, and I do my homework on the cases i speak about. I don’t believe this author did anything more than a surface examination.
There are statistics for creating doubt? I should go outside more.
I love how people who think the WM3 are thought of as poor and crazy themselves. Or that they must not have read up on the case. First, I have a college education and I am not poor, I don’tcome from a bad family. Second,I am not crazy I am perfectly fine and sane. Third, I have read every bit of information on this case, what I have found the many who believe him guilty is this, most of the stuff the police had was based on stories and rumors. The Damien beat a dog story was just that andd it was never proven. His dad and Damien found a dead dog and took the skull, was that so normal no but it doesn’t make him a killer. As for the boy he was going to gouge the eyes out of, well he did say that but did he do it? How many of us have had thoughts of hurting someone? Agian was this totally nomal? No! But does it make him a killer? Again no! As for the admitting to killing the boys, I believe it was later proven that during the time he was suppose to have said this in front of the girl he was already in jail. The biggest thing that leads me to htink they may be innocent is the fact that new DNA evidence points to someone else. I am not going to start pointing fingers and yelling guilty like everyone else. All I am saying is how is that three teenagers in the middle of the woods in the dark kill and leave no evidnece? It would make sense if they had driven and killed them somewhere else and dropped them off, but its common knowledge that they didn’t drive. How many experts does it take, experts that the prosecusion approved of to prove they are innocent? Why after they made the deal did the DA’s assistant himself say if they had gotten a new trial they would have most likely would have been found not guilty? Don’t believe me look it up. Oh, and as for Damien’s mental health history the hospital said he was not dangerous. Oh, and most of those times he was sent there by Jerry Driver who didn’t like Damien from the start. I read the article that was given to the court and what I read was a bunch of hearsay by Jerry Driver, who some how had knowledge of things he never witnessed. Goodness seems to be a lot of cult and witch experts in West Memphis! Too bad they believe any old story that comes their way. I love how people say that anyone who believes the WM3 are guilty ignores evidence and such but they ignore the only real prove. the new DNA evidence that has ever been collected in this case.
Misskelley correctly identified which boy had been cut on his face (Branch), which boy had been cut on his groin (Byers) and which boy had not been cut at all (Moore). There were widespread rumors that one victim was sexually mutilated, but the breakdown of each victim’s injuries had not been made public.
For the supporters and fanboys…can you explain this one please?