Viable suspect: Damien Echols

[Compassionate Reader]

I just wonder what kind of letters I would write if I had been in Damien's situation at his age at the time. The early letters (prior to the murders) were possibly an attempt to get SSI checks, also possibly aided by a well-intentioned counselor. (Of course, since this would have been highly unethical behavior, no one will ever admit to it.) Anything said or written post-conviction or even during the trial could possibly be colored by his frustration and/or fear at the time. Again, I wonder how any teenager or adult would react if falsely accused/convicted of such horrific crimes. I'd like to think that I wouldn't be bitter, but I just don't know.

I say the above because I have been told during my teaching careers on numerous occasions and by different counselors that, occasionally, for well-intentioned purposes, mental health professionals have exaggerated and even sometimes falsified reports in order to make a patient eligible for SSI. Also, sometimes, the mental health professionals have coached the patient as to how to answer questions, etc. for the same purpose. I can't say that I approve of such actions, but I do understand the reasoning behind them. So, far be it from me to judge such people.

 

[reedus23]

All of those things are possible. On a more general note, I have always wondered if I could have found myself in the exact same predicament as the WM3. I got into fights as a teen. It also would not be surprising to find the following lyrics written in a notebook or somewhere:

He's the wolf screaming lonely in the night
Blood stain the stage
Tear in your eye
Tempted by his lie
Knife in your back
He's rage

Razor to the knife
Lonely is our lives
Heads spinnin' round and round
Seasons of wither
Stand and deliver
Strong and laugh and come on

Shout shout shout
Shout at the devil
Shout shout shout

I suppose I would have been as good of a suspect as many if I lived in West Memphis at the time. Tough discerning between adolescent acting out and something more serious IMHO.

 

[Compassionate Reader]

The fact that my son, who is one month younger than Damien and who wore those black heavy metal T-shirts to school every day, could have been in Damien's shoes (and, on a much-less critical level, was - being falsely accused of theft because he was seen in the area and had long hair and wore a black shirt even there was no description of the thief) is one of the reasons that I became interested in this case. It's really amazing what personal knowledge and experience can do for one's understanding!

BTW, do I recognize the Crue above?

 

[kyleb]

profoundly disturbing

Some obviously consider Echols' ravings perfectly understandable.

I have always wondered if I could have found myself in the exact same predicament as the WM3.

I wondered that about myself for awhile, when I'd only read a the Wikipedia article and various sources cited in it, watched West of Memphis, and googled around to find various other mainstream accounts. Then I came across the actual details of Echols' criminal and psychological history which proved I'd been flagrantly mislead.

What about your youth, did you ever do anything along the lines of:

• threaten to kill people, inlcuding cutting someone to peices and burry them in your girlfriend's front yard, murder and eat your father, slit your mother's throat?
  
• prompt your parrents ever express fear of what you might do to them and their other children?
  
• get aresseted for terroristic threatening, put on probation, and sent to a detention center for such offenses?
  
• set fire to your classroom?
  
• torture and multiate animals, including beating, disimboling, and stomping a Great Dane to death and then come back with battery acid to burn its hair and skin off?
  
• engaged in mutiple physical confrontations with peers, including one in which you attempted to gouge someone's eye out?
  
• assuallt people to drink their blood?
  
• profess a beleif that drinking blood gives you power, and that you communicate with demons through rituals?
  
• claim to be ihabited by the spirt of a murdered woman, and claim that state of possession makes you feel stronger and more powerful?

Unless your answer to most of those questions is yes, you were never in a position to be considered a potential suspect in such murders.

 

[Compassionate Reader]

In my dealings over the years with teenagers, I have had more than a few make many similar statements to those posted above as being made by Damien. I have also heard teens say things to each other in order to shock or gross out the other person. I understand the psyche of a person like Damien at eighteen, often saying shocking or disturbing things to adults just to see what reaction he will get.

What some people don't realize is that, when one lives in abject poverty, as Damien did, it is a form of amusement to say these types of things. I know that sounds bizarre to most of us, but it is the way things are for many in poverty - seeking entertainment wherever and however they can, so long as the actions are legal. Some in poverty do resort to crime, often robbery, in order to survive, but most simply rely on their own wits and imagination to provide them entertainment.

I have attended several seminars about poverty and how people living in poverty think and act, as most of my teaching experience was spent in "inner city" schools where poverty was the status quo. Although I can see how those not familiar with the effects and realities of poverty would be extremely disturbed by Damien's statements, my specialized knowledge and experience has taught me to realize that these types of statements are often a cry for help - a desperate attempt to get out of the poverty in which the person making the statements finds himself/herself. Damien apparently has a very active imagination and a high intelligence because he made many such statements throughout his youth.

As I said before, I believe that at least some of these statements were made in an attempt to exaggerate his condition so he would be eligible for SSI. The teachers used to call this the student's "crazy check." We could always tell when the family needed more money because a normally calm and respectful student would "act out" in class until they were reported to the authorities. This "report" is what Mama needed in order to get another check. Sad, but true.

Now, I'm sure some here will question my statements. That's fine. However, as I've said repeatedly, I have witnessed these things personally and no one can refute my personal experiences, anecdotal though they may be. They were real, and they accurately depict the realities of teenagers living in poverty. That was Damien's problem - that and possibly a bit of bipolar disorder, which was improperly treated, exacerbating it. That is my explanation of the infamous "Exhibit 500" and all its various stories, conversations, reports, etc.

 

[Venom]

Bringing this over from the Common Ground thread ...

I don't know how to quote Pensfan's post about DE's mental health evaluations. Curious as to what Pensfan makes of it? To me, I sense a little crazy going on. But it seems that the crazy was just turned off like a switch and poof normal now. Interesting.

 

[Compassionate Reader]

I don't know how to quote Pensfan's post about DE's mental health evaluations. Curious as to what Pensfan makes of it? To me, I sense a little crazy going on. But it seems that the crazy was just turned off like a switch and poof normal now. Interesting.

Yes, it is, isn't it?

 

[reedus23]

BTW, do I recognize the Crue above?

:rockon: Yes you do. And yes, I heard the word satanist and devil worshiping thrown around from time to time because of listening to them, which couldn't be further from the truth. Went to a Catholic high school, attended mass regularly and performed service projects in the inner city. A Crue fan? Yes. A satanist or devil worshiper? No.

 

[Hez]

:rockon: Yes you do. And yes, I heard the word satanist and devil worshiping thrown around from time to time because of listening to them, which couldn't be further from the truth. Went to a Catholic high school, attended mass regularly and performed service projects in the inner city. A Crue fan? Yes. A satanist or devil worshiper? No.

I think it was Tommy Lee who said, when they were accused of satanism, "It's Shout at the Devil. Not Shout with the Devil." :rockon:

 

[reedus23]

Some obviously consider Echols' ravings perfectly understandable.


I wondered that about myself for awhile, when I'd only read a the Wikipedia article and various sources cited in it, watched West of Memphis, and googled around to find various other mainstream accounts. Then I came across the actual details of Echols' criminal and psychological history which proved I'd been flagrantly mislead.

What about your youth, did you ever do anything along the lines of:

• threaten to kill people, inlcuding cutting someone to peices and burry them in your girlfriend's front yard, murder and eat your father, slit your mother's throat?
  
• prompt your parrents ever express fear of what you might do to them and their other children?
  
• get aresseted for terroristic threatening, put on probation, and sent to a detention center for such offenses?
  
• set fire to your classroom?
  
• torture and multiate animals, including beating, disimboling, and stomping a Great Dane to death and then come back with battery acid to burn its hair and skin off?
  
• engaged in mutiple physical confrontations with peers, including one in which you attempted to gouge someone's eye out?
  
• assuallt people to drink their blood?
  
• profess a beleif that drinking blood gives you power, and that you communicate with demons through rituals?
  
• claim to be ihabited by the spirt of a murdered woman, and claim that state of possession makes you feel stronger and more powerful?

Unless your answer to most of those questions is yes, you were never in a position to be considered a potential suspect in such murders.

I think I'll just do what Jessie should have done and just not answer those. :floorlaugh: Seriously though, there were enough things that could have been spun in a way to make things sound much worse than they were.

 

[reedus23]

In my dealings over the years with teenagers, I have had more than a few make many similar statements to those posted above as being made by Damien. I have also heard teens say things to each other in order to shock or gross out the other person. I understand the psyche of a person like Damien at eighteen, often saying shocking or disturbing things to adults just to see what reaction he will get.

What some people don't realize is that, when one lives in abject poverty, as Damien did, it is a form of amusement to say these types of things. I know that sounds bizarre to most of us, but it is the way things are for many in poverty - seeking entertainment wherever and however they can, so long as the actions are legal. Some in poverty do resort to crime, often robbery, in order to survive, but most simply rely on their own wits and imagination to provide them entertainment.

I have attended several seminars about poverty and how people living in poverty think and act, as most of my teaching experience was spent in "inner city" schools where poverty was the status quo. Although I can see how those not familiar with the effects and realities of poverty would be extremely disturbed by Damien's statements, my specialized knowledge and experience has taught me to realize that these types of statements are often a cry for help - a desperate attempt to get out of the poverty in which the person making the statements finds himself/herself. Damien apparently has a very active imagination and a high intelligence because he made many such statements throughout his youth.

As I said before, I believe that at least some of these statements were made in an attempt to exaggerate his condition so he would be eligible for SSI. The teachers used to call this the student's "crazy check." We could always tell when the family needed more money because a normally calm and respectful student would "act out" in class until they were reported to the authorities. This "report" is what Mama needed in order to get another check. Sad, but true.

Now, I'm sure some here will question my statements. That's fine. However, as I've said repeatedly, I have witnessed these things personally and no one can refute my personal experiences, anecdotal though they may be. They were real, and they accurately depict the realities of teenagers living in poverty. That was Damien's problem - that and possibly a bit of bipolar disorder, which was improperly treated, exacerbating it. That is my explanation of the infamous "Exhibit 500" and all its various stories, conversations, reports, etc.

So true about the shock value. I knew a kid in high school who would say things that were shocking, but that's the only reason he'd say it, for the shock value, not because he intended to follow through with any of it. It was a way of getting people to leave him alone because if people thought he was half nuts, they wouldn't bother him, so he fed into it to let them believe it. It's much like when I'm on the phone yelling at someone on the other side of the phone. One would think I'm pissed to hear me but walk into my office and you would see I had a smile on my face and was probably typing on websleuths as I was yelling. It was for effect and to get a message across.

 

[Compassionate Reader]

I forgot to say not one of the threats that I heard students make was ever carried out in my 25 years of teaching. I think that's an important point. Sometimes it was similar to writing a scathing letter and then tearing it up. It was catharsis of a kind.

 

[Hez]

Some obviously consider Echols' ravings perfectly understandable.



What about your youth, did you ever do anything along the lines of:

• torture and multiate animals, including beating, disimboling, and stomping a Great Dane to death and then come back with battery acid to burn its hair and skin off?
  

Snipped for brevity. I was always under the impression that this was an unsubstantiated rumour. Do you have actual proof that Damien actually did this? I would think he would have at least been arrested and charged with animal cruelty, if it was true.

 

[Compassionate Reader]

Snipped for brevity. I was always under the impression that this was an unsubstantiated rumour. Do you have actual proof that Damien actually did this? I would think he would have at least been arrested and charged with animal cruelty, if it was true.

IIRC, it was one of Jason's cousins who made the claim. As you pointed out, if it had "legs," they would have added "animal cruelty" to Damien's charges or done something to address it. Great Danes are expensive! IMO, the story was an attempt on Jason's cousin's part at his fifteen minutes.

 

[Hez]

IIRC, it was one of Jason's cousins who made the claim. As you pointed out, if it had "legs," they would have added "animal cruelty" to Damien's charges or done something to address it. Great Danes are expensive! IMO, the story was an attempt on Jason's cousin's part at his fifteen minutes.

Thank you, that's what I thought. Another unsubstantiated rumour. If there was an even remote possiblity of it being true, the prosecution would have shouted it from the rooftops during their case, but they didn't. That speaks volumes.

 

[kyleb]

In my dealings over the years with teenagers, I have had more than a few make many similar statements to those posted above as being made by Damien.

Most of what I listed weren't statements, but actions.

But it seems that the crazy was just turned off like a switch and poof normal now. Interesting.

It's not that surprising, as psychopaths are often far better at hiding their crazy for Echols' was. Arguably the most notable example is:

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman"]Harold Shipman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

Beyond that, see [ame="http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7494860&postcount=58"]Pensfan's post[/ame]. Also, worth noting is how Echols himself glosses over his criminal and psychological history:

Did you have multiple psychiatric illnesses?

ECHOLS: I don't think so. I think at the time I probably suffered from what most teenagers suffer from, you know, just teenage angst, maybe depression, maybe sometimes even severe depression.

But I don't -- I think it is harder to judge something like that when you are going back in hindsight than it is whenever you are actually, you know, there at the time. You know, this would have been someone who didn't know me at the time of the trial. This would have been looking back in hindsight and trying to put everything together.
...

KING: While you were in prison, awaiting trial, you wrote a number of letters containing things a lot of people would consider disturbing. Among them, you wrote to Gloria Shettles, an investigator for your defense team.

And you wrote: "Everyone will pay because everyone is too stupid to open their eyes. This is the final time and I am the new messiah. My body is changing but that medicine is making it happen a lot more slowly than normal. I am outgrowing my skin. I am eating packs of sugar and Kool-Aid to give my body extra energy it needs to make its change. Soon people will be able to know I am the Christ. I always knew I was different from other children."

How do you explain that?

ECHOLS: I don't know. I mean, like I said, that was 15 years ago. That could have been -- I'm not sure what that was. What I was talking about could have been a short story. I really don't know. You know, I write constantly, non-stop. I actually consider myself a writer. I have had several things published.

And some of it is hard to keep track of after all of these years. Even now I come across things that I read that aren't familiar to me. I will recognize my hand writing, but have no idea what it was, what context it was in, any of that.

KING: Ever thought about suicide?

ECHOLS: Yes. Back in the -- I don't anymore, not since Lorri. But back whenever this first started happening, 15 years ago, yes, I did. This was an extremely hard thing to go through. And sometimes that seemed like a very inviting option back then.

It's a shame that Larry King didn't think to mention the many the Disability Report where he listed himself as having been suicidal along with "homicidal" and "sociopathic" just a few months before the murders, or the many other documents which prove Echols was lying about his psychological history.

I think I'll just do what Jessie should have done and just not answer those. :floorlaugh: Seriously though, there were enough things that could have been spun in a way to make things sound much worse than they were.

Please be serious and familiarize yourself with the evidence rather than waving your hands at it, and feet for that matter. The discussion of the murders of three young boys is no place to be cracking jokes.

I was always under the impression that this was an unsubstantiated rumour.

Not just rumor, Joe Bartoush said he witnessed it, and signed a statement to that effect:

On 10-27-92 I was at Lakeshore Trailer Park with Damien Echols when he killed a Black Great Dane. The dog was already sick and he hit the dog in the back of the head. He pulled the intestines out of the dog and started stomping the dog until blood came out of his mouth. He was going to come back later with battery acid so that he could burn the hair and skin off of the dog’s head. He had two cat skulls, a dog skull and a rat skull that I already knew about. He kept these skulls in his bedroom at Jack Echols house in Lakeshore. He was trying to make the eyeballs of the dog he killed pop out when he was stomping. Damien had a camouflage survival knife to cut the guts out of the dog with.

Furthermore, Heather Cliett, who was Baldwin’s girlfriend back then, reported witnessing Echols confess to such acts.

IMO, the story was an attempt on Jason's cousin's part at his fifteen minutes.

Of course that's your opinion, it seems you're convinced that pretty much anyone who presented even the most tangentially related evidence against Echols is lying, eh?

 

[Mrs G Norris]

Pensfan put up a post a couple of months ago about a pin-rolling tremor he noticed in Damien during recent interviews, this is associated with anti-psychotic medication, do it is possible he has been on psyche meds during prison and afterwards, so he might not have snapped out of anything.

Off to see if I can find it.

 

[reedus23]

Please be serious and familiarize yourself with the evidence rather than waving your hands at it, and feet for that matter. The discussion of the murders of three young boys is no place to be cracking jokes.

Please don't tell me how to act or post. My post had little to do with the murder of the 3 young boys and more to do with attempting to politely tell you I am not going to answer those questions and discuss my life experiences with you. Maybe I should have been more crass and told you that your sleuthing of other members by asking them information about their lives violates TOS. Next time I will take your requests much more serious.

 

[Cappuccino]

Pensfan put up a post a couple of months ago about a pin-rolling tremor he noticed in Damien during recent interviews, this is associated with anti-psychotic medication, do it is possible he has been on psyche meds during prison and afterwards, so he might not have snapped out of anything.

Off to see if I can find it.

I remember that, it was a terrible post. We're supposed to believe that a psychiatric nurse can diagnose tardive whateveritscalled from a You Tube clip, but seven board certified forensic pathologists who examined autopsy reports, photographs, tissue samples and bench notes and independently conclude that wounds were caused by animal predation, are all to be dismissed because they weren't physically present at the autopsy.

 

[Hez]

Not just rumor, Joe Bartoush said he witnessed it, and signed a statement to that effect:



Furthermore, Heather Cliett, who was Baldwin’s girlfriend back then, reported witnessing Echols confess to such acts.


No, Joe Bartoush said he witnessed it, and signed a statement to that effect:



Furthermore, Heather Cliett, who was Jason Baldwin’s girlfriend at the time, reported witnessing Echols confess to such acts.

I would be more apt to believe these people, if they reported it when it actually happened, instead of many months later, after the WM3 were arrested. So, it still an unsubstantiated rumour in my books.