My view has done a complete 180

[Compassionate Reader]

You do realize that many teenagers exhibit these narcissistic characteristics and outgrow them, right?

 

[Wishbone]

Ok. I will agree that these two actions by Damien Echols were defense mechanisms.

They were defense mechanisms called narcissism. Bragging about killing the children was from narcissism and writing on a government form that he could kill people (he wrote he was homicidal twice before he killed the three children) was another example of his narcissism.

I don’t know Damien Echols and don’t expect to ever meet him, but I do have an opinion of him based on videos and statements. That’s not a perfect way to form an opinion but everyone else on this thread is in the same boat. I’m amazed at the wholeness he projects and also how articulate he is. How he ever managed either of those traits is nothing short of miraculous. I would hesitate to call him pathologically narcissistic because I’ve not seen him behaving in that manner. If anything, he displays healthy self-esteem with the ability to pick himself up after experiencing overwhelming obstacles.

 

[Pensfan]

You do realize that many teenagers exhibit these narcissistic characteristics and outgrow them, right?

First: Damien was a young adult when the children were murdered. He was 18.5 years old.

Second: Only a very disturbed individual would brag about killing three children and write he was homicidal (twice) on a government form. This is extremely abnormal.

 

[Compassionate Reader]

First: Damien was a young adult when the children were murdered. He was 18.5 years old.

Second: Only a very disturbed individual would brag about killing three children and write he was homicidal (twice) on a government form. This is extremely abnormal.

Damien was eightteen when the murders occurred. That makes him a teenager. As a teenager, he often said (and wrote) things just for the shock value. Anyone who has worked closely with teenagers has probably noticed this. I know I have. This is not abnormal at all. Fortunately, as teenagers mature, they outgrow this penchant to shock others. It seems to me that Damien has.

 

[krimekat]

First: Damien was a young adult when the children were murdered. He was 18.5 years old.

Second: Only a very disturbed individual would brag about killing three children and write he was homicidal (twice) on a government form. This is extremely abnormal.

Nope, 18.5 years old is not an adult for some males, especially the way Damien was not being raised. All three of those innocent "boys" were living a hard life prior to this travesty, and they had to "mature" in prison (death row in one case). I do hope the true murderer is exposed through DNA testing. Can't wait for December.

 

[Compassionate Reader]

Nope, 18.5 years old is not an adult for some males, especially the way Damien was not being raised. All three of those innocent "boys" were living a hard life prior to this travesty, and they had to "mature" in prison (death row in one case). I do hope the true murderer is exposed through DNA testing. Can't wait for December.

I really don't have any "insider" information, but I'm hoping that we will find out things before December. Since there will no longer be an evidentiary hearing, there's no reason to delay releasing all the information. My guess is that the defense team is waiting until all the testing is completed and they can present everything at once instead of releasing it piecemeal.

Also, I've heard (rumor only, no proof of this) that they only have 60 days to present evidence. That would mean that everything would have to come out by mid-October. I guess we'll have to be patient a little longer. At least the guys are free and able to more fully assist in their exoneration!

 

[BD1]

I'm on the fence re: the guilt or innocence of the WM3 personally, but watching DE interviews, I have a hard time believing a dx of schizophrenia. If we are to believe that he has been completely unmedicated this whole time in prison (that is known, right?) he looks/acts/speaks nothing like any unmedicated schizophrenic I have ever seen. Does he you, pensfan?

 

[askfornina]

I'm on the fence re: the guilt or innocence of the WM3 personally, but watching DE interviews, I have a hard time believing a dx of schizophrenia. If we are to believe that he has been completely unmedicated this whole time in prison (that is known, right?) he looks/acts/speaks nothing like any unmedicated schizophrenic I have ever seen. Does he you, pensfan?

i am on the fence on whether or not they could be actually guilty on a personal level but from what i have seen so far i could not, by any means, convict in court. i would say i am 10% for them being guilty personally. i still have to read more. i do agree about the schizophrenic aspect though. i have been reading the spirited debate back and forth about Damien's mental health on this forum, and i am VERY interested in what Pensfan has to say about Damien's mental health now. I understand s/he would not have medical reports to base an opinion on, but i am curious to see an opinion based on the recent interviews.

as a side note, how many interviews with Damien are there? I have only seen 3-5.

 

[askfornina]

i am on the fence on whether or not they could be actually guilty on a personal level but from what i have seen so far i could not, by any means, convict in court. i would say i am 10% for them being guilty personally. i still have to read more. i do agree about the schizophrenic aspect though. i have been reading the spirited debate back and forth about Damien's mental health on this forum, and i am VERY interested in what Pensfan has to say about Damien's mental health now. I understand s/he would not have medical reports to base an opinion on, but i am curious to see an opinion based on the recent interviews.

as a side note, how many interviews with Damien are there? I have only seen 3-5.

just to clarify something, i agree that i do not see Damien as being schizophrenic. i realized my post was worded in a way that made it seem like i thought he was. whoops

 

[SunD]

Ok so I've really become interested in this case but have to admit I've only seen Paradise Lost and the 48 hours that played recently. So obviously I think the 3 are innocent but people online seem to have really strong opinions that they are guilty.

Honestly, I thought that first Paradise Lost was pretty neutral. If I didn't know anything about the case I'm not so sure I would have come away thinking the 3 were innocent. I'm sure reasonable minds can disagree on that.

I had a question though about the stepdad without the teeth. Near the end of the movie, the documentary says that records show that he was lying about his explanation for getting rid of his teeth. I was wondering if there was any follow up for that. The second movie really did try to make it seem like that step dad was the guy who did it, but now it seems that a lot of people don't think he did...... This is a very confusing case!

 

[Compassionate Reader]

Ok so I've really become interested in this case but have to admit I've only seen Paradise Lost and the 48 hours that played recently. So obviously I think the 3 are innocent but people online seem to have really strong opinions that they are guilty.

Honestly, I thought that first Paradise Lost was pretty neutral. If I didn't know anything about the case I'm not so sure I would have come away thinking the 3 were innocent. I'm sure reasonable minds can disagree on that.

I had a question though about the stepdad without the teeth. Near the end of the movie, the documentary says that records show that he was lying about his explanation for getting rid of his teeth. I was wondering if there was any follow up for that. The second movie really did try to make it seem like that step dad was the guy who did it, but now it seems that a lot of people don't think he did...... This is a very confusing case!

JMB has said that it was the medication he was taking for a brain tumor that caused the loss of his teeth. He did provide impressions of his false teeth which didn't match the "bite mark" on Stevie, and he didn't have his teeth removed between the murders and the trial although that seemed to be the implication in the documentary. Additionally, experts have now said that it wasn't a human bite mark at all, but more probably an animal bite mark. So, that kind of makes the whole thing about lost teeth a moot point.

As a side note, Terry H also lost many of his teeth at around the same time. His partial dentures were found some time later in a locked box that contained some other interesting items. IIRC, it contained a penny necklace that also could have been Stevie's and some other unusual items (that I don't recall off hand) for a grown man to save. Also found in Terry's possession was a collection of knives, including one that has been identified as Stevie's by his mother.

 

[Pensfan]

i am on the fence on whether or not they could be actually guilty on a personal level but from what i have seen so far i could not, by any means, convict in court. i would say i am 10% for them being guilty personally. i still have to read more. i do agree about the schizophrenic aspect though. i have been reading the spirited debate back and forth about Damien's mental health on this forum, and i am VERY interested in what Pensfan has to say about Damien's mental health now. I understand s/he would not have medical reports to base an opinion on, but i am curious to see an opinion based on the recent interviews.

as a side note, how many interviews with Damien are there? I have only seen 3-5.

I watched the interview on 48 hours from Saturday and what I saw from this very brief interview was that Damien appears to have a blunted affect, his fingers were frequently over his mouth while he was speaking, he blinked excessively, and he frequently broke eye contact with Erin Moriarty while answering her questions. Also, he was less animated than his other interviews which were held in prison.

There is not enough information to determine if his blunted affect is a negative symptom of his disorder, a side effect of a benzodiazepine, his new Buddist persona, or from something else. At the time of the interview, he was able to reiterate insight about his case, but one cannot tell whether this was actual insight or rehearsed statements. If you have heard Damien's other interviews or read his narcissistic book, you can easily recognize the precise statements that he used in many interviews. They are word for word the same. He did speak extremely briefly, about 20 words, on a topic outside of his case which was his interest in art/writing, but this was a known interview question and was likely also rehearsed. Useful information can’t be obtained from it.

Little can be determined about his mental health from this very short interview. Read about schizophrenia. Individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia are not always psychotic. Younger schizophrenics will have times of remission, but the disorder is not curable. It is treatable with better outcomes occurring when treatment starts at a younger age when the symptoms begin to appear.

 

[Compassionate Reader]

i am on the fence on whether or not they could be actually guilty on a personal level but from what i have seen so far i could not, by any means, convict in court. i would say i am 10% for them being guilty personally. i still have to read more. i do agree about the schizophrenic aspect though. i have been reading the spirited debate back and forth about Damien's mental health on this forum, and i am VERY interested in what Pensfan has to say about Damien's mental health now. I understand s/he would not have medical reports to base an opinion on, but i am curious to see an opinion based on the recent interviews.

as a side note, how many interviews with Damien are there? I have only seen 3-5.

Damien, because he was on Death Row, was the most interviewed of the three. Are you talking about post-release interviews? If so, I'd say that 3 - 5 sounds about right. During his incarceration, he was interviewed quite a few times. There was the original 48 Hours; there was an episode of Aphrodite Jone's show, True Crime; there was a CNN show which I believe was called Murder in West Memphis; there was an interview with Larry King and there were various interviews with Memphis television stations. I'm sure I've missed some, but if you go to youtube and search for Damien Echols, you'll probably find most of them. They are also on the Blackboard in the WM3 Video forum. Here's a link:

http://www.wm3blackboard.com/forum/index.php?board=5.0

The link to the videos from rugs no longer works, but I believe all of the others on the page to. Happy watching!

 

[SunD]

JMB has said that it was the medication he was taking for a brain tumor that caused the loss of his teeth. He did provide impressions of his false teeth which didn't match the "bite mark" on Stevie, and he didn't have his teeth removed between the murders and the trial although that seemed to be the implication in the documentary. Additionally, experts have now said that it wasn't a human bite mark at all, but more probably an animal bite mark. So, that kind of makes the whole thing about lost teeth a moot point.

As a side note, Terry H also lost many of his teeth at around the same time. His partial dentures were found some time later in a locked box that contained some other interesting items. IIRC, it contained a penny necklace that also could have been Stevie's and some other unusual items (that I don't recall off hand) for a grown man to save. Also found in Terry's possession was a collection of knives, including one that has been identified as Stevie's by his mother.

Thanks Compassionate Reader. That's pretty interesting about the teeth. I'm pretty bad with names. Is Terry Hobbs one of the step fathers too? Do some people think he did it?

I went on some site yesterday that I can't remember, but it was basically a site that thought the 3 were guilty. It said in the intro that you've probably seen Paradise Lost and think they're innocent. haha. That is me basically. I read some of the site, but the basic premise was pretty weak. It read like, "you may think this and this, but did you know they are guilty"?

I'm curious for those that think they did it, is there any actual physical evidence that people think connect them to the crime? The movies don't do a good job of explaining why the police thought they did at first, or how they were first arrested. It seems like there was no physical evidence.

 

[Pensfan]

If you couldn’t see what I held in my hands, but I told you it was a furry object with four legs, a tail, and made “meow” noises, you would know it was a cat even without many items of physical evidence. Here are only a few of the clues that show Damien, Jason, and Jessie killed the little boys:

All three teens confessed to someone. One teen with previous remorseful behavior confessed multiple times even as his attorney begged him not to confess. Because there were three victims, there was very likely more than one killer (removes possibility of the angry relative killing all three). It was an impulsive event perpetrated with locally found weapons (fists, stick, stream water and a pocket knife). There was a poor attempt to hide the body= impulsive event and no way to dispose of the bodies farther from the crime scene (none of the boys had cars). One boy experienced bizarre mutilation and the scene had sexual overtones (the boys were found naked)=sadist psychopath and not an angry relative. The degloving of the one child’s penis and scrotal area which were never found was similar to Jeffrey Dahmer’s and Ed Geins’s actions=sadistic schizophrenic psychopath and not an angry relative. The killer took two pairs of the boys’ underwear =psychopath's trophy and not the behavior of an angry relative. The bite mark near, but not quite on the neck area=psychopathic teenage vampyre crap or schizophrenic cannibalism. One teen documented that he was homicidal (twice). All teens had very poor alibis. Teens had familiarity with crime scene because Damien used to live close. Although Jessie was drunk, he knew way too many details to not have been at the scene when it happened. Jason and Damien talked about killing a bum under the underpass just to see how it would feel=homicidal planning. Jason had his brother hide his ice pick after the murders (he knew he was going to be implicated). Jessie gave away his bloody shoes even though he was very poor and shoes would have been valuable to him. Jessie had very remorseful behavior after the murders and this occurred before he was arrested. Damien's handwritten letters and psych evaluations show that he was very psychotic and full of anger. Damien wrote many time that "everyone had to pay." Damien bragged to others that he killed the children.....................

 

[SunD]

If you couldn’t see what I held in my hands, but I told you it was a furry object with four legs, a tail, and made “meow” noises, you would know it was a cat even without physical evidence. Here are only a few of the clues that show Damien, Jason, and Jessie killed the little boys:

All three teens confessed to someone. One teen with previous remorseful behavior confessed multiple times even as his attorney begged him not to confess. Because there were three victims, there was very likely more than one killer (removes possibility of the angry relative killing all three). It was an impulsive event perpetrated with locally found weapons (fists, stick, stream water and a pocket knife). There was a poor attempt to hide the body= impulsive event and no way to dispose of the bodies farther from the crime scene (none of the boys had cars). One boy experienced bizarre mutilation and the scene had sexual overtones (the boys were naked)=sadist psychopath and not an angry relative. The degloving of the one child’s penis and scrotal area which were never found was similar to Jeffrey Dahmer’s and Ed Geins’s actions=sadistic schizophrenic psychopath and not an angry relative. The killer took two pairs of the boys’ underwear =psychopath's trophy and not the behavior of an angry relative. The bite mark near, but not quite on the neck area=psychopathic teenage vampyre crap or schizophrenic cannibalism. One teen documented that he was homicidal (twice). All teens had very poor alibis. Teens had familiarity with crime scene because Damien used to live close. Although Jessie was drunk, he knew way too many details to not have been at the scene when it happened. Jason and Damien talked about killing a bum under the underpass just to see how it would feel=homicidal planning. Jason had his brother hide his ice pick after the murders (he knew he was going to be implicated). Jessie gave away his bloody shoes even though he was very poor and shoes would have been valuable to him. Jessie had very remorseful behavior after the murders and this occurred before he was arrested. One teen bragged to others that he killed the children.....................

Thanks. I remember some of this from the movie. I have a hard time taking any confession or anything Jessie says with much credibility being that he is mentally handicapped.

I understand your point to mean that circumstantial evidence places them at the scene. Is there literally no physical evidence that puts them there? It seems like you are tacitly conceding this as well. I'm not saying there can't be a circumstantial case, but it is interesting, if true, that there is no physical evidence linking them there.

Also you say that, for instance that all three teens confessed to someone. But that isn't necessarily a given. I remember from the movie they had part of the testimony of the one prisoner that said Jessie confessed to him. Jessie didn't say it happened, so at the very least it's contested. And quite frankly, I found the prisoners testimony to be somewhat dubious, but obviously that is my subjective opinion.

Anyways, I'm seriously asking, not to be argumentative. Do people who think they're guilty actually concede there is no actual physical evidence linking them to the crime?

Also, as far as alibis, that is another interesting point you bring up. They really don't seem to talk about that at all in Paradise Lost. Didn't they just say they were at home or something?

 

[SunD]

If you couldn’t see what I held in my hands, but I told you it was a furry object with four legs, a tail, and made “meow” noises, you would know it was a cat even without many items of physical evidence. Here are only a few of the clues that show Damien, Jason, and Jessie killed the little boys:

All three teens confessed to someone. One teen with previous remorseful behavior confessed multiple times even as his attorney begged him not to confess. Because there were three victims, there was very likely more than one killer (removes possibility of the angry relative killing all three). It was an impulsive event perpetrated with locally found weapons (fists, stick, stream water and a pocket knife). There was a poor attempt to hide the body= impulsive event and no way to dispose of the bodies farther from the crime scene (none of the boys had cars). One boy experienced bizarre mutilation and the scene had sexual overtones (the boys were found naked)=sadist psychopath and not an angry relative. The degloving of the one child’s penis and scrotal area which were never found was similar to Jeffrey Dahmer’s and Ed Geins’s actions=sadistic schizophrenic psychopath and not an angry relative. The killer took two pairs of the boys’ underwear =psychopath's trophy and not the behavior of an angry relative. The bite mark near, but not quite on the neck area=psychopathic teenage vampyre crap or schizophrenic cannibalism. One teen documented that he was homicidal (twice). All teens had very poor alibis. Teens had familiarity with crime scene because Damien used to live close. Although Jessie was drunk, he knew way too many details to not have been at the scene when it happened. Jason and Damien talked about killing a bum under the underpass just to see how it would feel=homicidal planning. Jason had his brother hide his ice pick after the murders (he knew he was going to be implicated). Jessie gave away his bloody shoes even though he was very poor and shoes would have been valuable to him. Jessie had very remorseful behavior after the murders and this occurred before he was arrested. Damien's handwritten letters and psych evaluations show that he was very psychotic and full of anger. Damien wrote many time that "everyone had to pay." Damien bragged to others that he killed the children.....................

By the way. I just read on some blog that Damien killed and mutilated a dog?! http://crime-spree.blogspot.com/2005/04/why-i-think-west-memphis-3-are-guilty.html

 

[Pensfan]

They submerged the boys bodies in a slow moving stream in an attempt to hide them. Physical evidence can be washed away when bodies are placed in water.

 

[Pensfan]

By the way. I just read on some blog that Damien killed and mutilated a dog?! http://crime-spree.blogspot.com/2005/04/why-i-think-west-memphis-3-are-guilty.html

Keep reading. You will find that he shared quite a few characteristics in common with Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer.

 

[SunD]

They submerged the boys bodies in a slow moving stream in an attempt to hide them. Physical evidence can be washed away when bodies are placed in water.

Thanks, I understand what you are getting at. I would still like to know: Is there any physical evidence linking them or not? It doesn't mean you can't have a strong case, but I'd just like to know. So far I've found nothing.