Few celebrities at the time did as much as Henry Rollins, however. every single person in my class was either . He said, J.B., youre going home, man, youre going home.. But they werent just voices in the growing choir calling for the West Memphis Threes releasethey were leading the movement. With a large population of fundamentalist Christians, the American South was particularly subject to occult paranoia. Unfortunately, for three teen outsiders, the West Memphis Police Department chose to focus on the cult angle to the detriment of their efforts to investigate the other two, more likely scenarios. The prosecutor would later say, There was a lack of physical evidence to tie anyone or anything to the crime scene, while the lead investigatorthe same one who told the press the case was an 11 out of 10would concede, Youve got a lot of circumstantial evidence is what youve got. Echols' disdain for authority, penchant for black clothes, and propensity to make shocking statements didn't help his plight. Now a judgewho coincidentally works part time in the courtroom where Misskelley was convictedStidham spends time speaking to law students about the judicial system. Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers were best friends. https://t.co/dXOtQkmjee. Evidence in West Memphis Three case missing or destroyed, Judge sets bond for 76-year-old woman accused of killing terminally ill husband, Woman accused of driving into home, killing former pro basketball player Galen Young granted diversion, DA Mulroy says he doubts any drag shows will violate Tennessees new drag bill, MPD finds alleged chop shop operating in plain sight, Congressman Cohen announces $1 million grant for Memphis YMCA, Red hot Memphis womens basketball ready to make a run in AAC Tournament. Echols, who prosecutors argued was the ringleader, was sentenced to death. Terry Hobbs says he is a church member, a father, and working man and in no way a killer. I think I introduced my dad to it because that was not his normal genre., Three Metallica songsOrion, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), and Call of Ktuluwould play throughout the documentary. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! (Police questioned Byers several times during the investigation, but never considered him a suspect.) Although Damein Echols had a teenager's typical disdain for authority, he nevertheless trusted that the system would work in his favor. In August 2011, Jason Baldwin was pulled from his prison cell under confusing circumstances once again. The consequences of that online campaign were ruinous: The person they targeted, a Mexican metal musician who worked under the name Morbid, was harassed into hiding. '", In 1999, a more mature Echols explained the comment. It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Terry Lee Hobbs of Auburndale, Florida, born in Winter Haven, Florida, who passed away on August 16, 2021, at the age of 56, leaving to mourn family and friends. As detailed by The Hollywood Reporter in 2011, Jackson and Walsh helped fund key investigations for the West Memphis Three's defense during the last seven years of their incarceration. The concept of citizen investigations intrigues Berlinger just as much as it did in the 1990s, though today hes often more concerned with the moral implications. One of those shows, Truth & Justice With Bob Ruff, became the basis for an Oxygen docuseries last year titled The Forgotten West Memphis Three, which took a closer look at the three victims and tried to shine new light on the evidence. Blood and urine samples from both men were collected and sent to the West Memphis Police Department. Obituaries can vary in the amount of information they contain, but many of them are genealogical goldmines, including information such as: names, dates, place of birth and death, marriage information, and family relationships. Timeline Of The West Memphis Three Victims, Motivations For Investigating The West Memphis Case. Much of Cecil Hotel focuses on the amateur investigators who turned coincidences into conspiracy theories, ultimately accusing an innocent person of her death. Reaching its apex in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Satanic Panic was a wave of paranoia rooted in the belief that Satanic cults intent on corrupting the souls of the young had infiltrated American society. The arrest, trial, and conviction of the three young men known as the West Memphis Three came under national scrutiny as details of the case became public. As part of the deal, they cannot file wrongful-conviction lawsuits, which both Berlinger and Baldwin say couldve cost the state tens of millions of dollars. In the years since the trial, John Mark Byers, adoptive father of Christopher Byers, and Pamela Hobbs, mother of Stevie Branch, became vocal supporters of the West Memphis Three. Eventually, they began traveling to Arkansasabout 35 trips in total, always on their own dime, Bakken and Sauls sayto collect case documents, which they scanned and uploaded to the site, also transcribing the documents so that the text could be searchable. In 1994, the FBI said there was scant evidence that violent satanic crimes had ever occurred in America outside of a few isolated incidents, but that was long after TV hosts like Geraldo, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Oprah had spread moral hysteria about musicians weaving supposedly anti-Christian and occult messages into their songs, and long after wrongful convictions were handed down in the infamous McMartin Preschool sexual assault trials. I had a friend who was working on 20/20, and they had done a film about exorcism in one of the magazine pieces, Nevins says. With the area secured, Detective Bryn Ridge volunteered to search the ditch. The causes most high-profile moment came in 2000, when Trey Parker said the slogan at the MTV Movie Awards while collecting an award for Best Musical Sequence. Funeral Home Services for Terry are being provi. It wasnt hard for him to imagine his teenage self ending up in Echolss situation. Terry Hobbs, Actor: Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers. Who Killed The Forgotten West Memphis Three? William Holford Griffiths. Thursday, August 19th 2021. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs .Terry graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. the only grade you receive is from quizzes, exams, and the final. He graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. All of them were convicted after Misskelley confessed to helping Echols and Baldwin with the murders, which he later recanted. But they were saying that he was about to die.. That there were three victims was a link to the biblical number of the beast. More than 2,500 people attended and the story dominated the local press for days. Wading into the murky water, Allen unknowingly dislodged the pale, grotesquely arched form of Micheal Moore. Essentially, it allows the accused to assert their innocence while pleading guilty, conceding that the prosecution has an overwhelming amount of evidence to procure a conviction. Berlinger also concedes Revelations had some ethical problems, chiefly because it raised the possibility that Mark Byers committed the killings. A graveside service will be conducted on Wednesday, March 17 at Cloverdale Memorial Park beginning at 11am. They couldnt have been cooler, recalls Berlinger, who would go on to direct the 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster alongside Bruce Sinofsky. But for every Your Own Backyard or Ill Be Gone in the Dark that has applied journalistic rigor to their research in the past two decades, theres an Up and Vanished, which has been at the center of ethical debates since the podcast debuted in 2016. The following day revealed the unthinkable, when the bloodied and bruised bodies of the three boys were found submerged in a muddy creek in a wooded area called Robin Hood Hills. All of those factors combined to create a tipping point, says Leveritt. That story line would make up the bulk of 2000s Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, a rare sequel for a documentary, especially before the streaming era proved that true crime series like Making a Murderer and The Staircase could maintain audience interest for years. Paradise Lost is a narration-free documentary filmed with a journalistic remove. The final scene Berlinger and Sinofsky filmed may have been the piece that stuck with viewers the most: the image of Baldwin and Echols being led out of the courthouse in handcuffs and bulletproof vests, now property of the state. Wherever it was screened, Berlinger says, it was followed by intense Q&As from audience members who couldnt believe what theyd just watched. Well theres been a lot of things that happened over the years. The idea, Berlinger says, was to tell a story of disaffected youthabout kids killing kids., There was no reason not to believe the press, Berlinger says. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. With the guards blessings, Mojo led Baldwin to Varners visitation room, where everything had been put away aside from two chairs set up in front of a cart holding a small TV and a VCR. Hobbs said he wrote the book so people, especially other victims of crime, could understand the tragedy he has gone through and how it impacted his life. Branded the, What has never been definitively answered, however, is who committed the 1993 murders, and , Due to marital problems stemming from Stevies death, the couple divorced in 2004, reported, The test results showed that no genetic material on the crime scene evidence was a match to Echols, Baldwin or Misskelley, reported the, The West Memphis Police Department interviewed Hobbs, who was dismissive of the findings, claiming the hair could have been picked up during a visit to his home since the victim "played with our little boy regularly," according to the, "They said close to the crime scene because at one time I did walk near where they had found the kids with Terry Hobbs But I didn't wear hats back then, my hair could have blown around anywhere, Jacoby told Memphis NBC affiliate, A year after the DNA results were released, Hobbs sued Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines for defamation, claiming she implied he was a murderer on the bands website and at a 2007 rally, according to, In 2009, three witnesses filed affidavits claiming they saw Hobbs with the murdered boys the night they disappeared, contradicting Hobbs previous statements to police, according to. The level of corruption in the American justice system is glaring and sickening.. The second is by looking at it as an act of passion and perseverance. Even though they said they didnt murder the three boys, they are technically convicted killers. It was also revealed in 2012 that Hobbs nephew allegedly told his friends, My Uncle Terry murdered those three little boys," and that the killings were a Hobbs family secret, according to, I still believe in my heart that Jessie, Jason, and Damion Echols [sic] are responsible for what happened to our children, Hobbs told Memphis ABC affiliate. "People probably think I'm in Satanism because what they don't understand they try to destroy or ridicule. On the evening of May 5, 1993, 8-year-olds Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore went missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. As reported by the Arkansas Times, examination of the shoe laces used to bind Michael Moore contained hair "not inconsistent" with that of Stevie Branch's stepfather, Terry Hobbs. There have also been several high-profile incidents of laypeople reinvestigating decades-old cold cases in more rigorous, journalistic ways and helping bring them to a resolution. At the request of West Memphis authorities, the two were picked up and questioned by Oceanside police. To authorities working in West Memphisa largely Southern Baptist communitysatanic activity seemed to be the most likely cause for the killings, in part because the boys bodies were bound and appeared to have been mutilated. Some believe the West Memphis Three are guilty to this day, and others, including some victims family members, point to their innocence and maintain the real perpetrator is still at large. I still believe in my heart that Jessie, Jason, and Damion Echols [sic] are responsible for what happened to our children, Hobbs told Memphis ABC affiliate WATN in June 2019. Beyond the black-and-white print of the newspaper, there was a movement brewing. Baldwin remembers grabbing a Mountain Dew and a burrito and sitting down, still unaware of what he was about to watch. Misskelley, who reportedly had an IQ of 72, changed his story several times, and only a small part of his statements was recorded. Defense attorneys also pointed out that Griffis' doctorate was obtained through a notorious diploma mill and had been awarded with Griffis having never attended a single class. He says his dad and Berlinger werent seeking notorietydocumentaries certainly werent a means to get rich or famous in those days. None of the three believed that, but Echolss healthand the possibility that even if he survived, he would still be on death row should the fight for retrials failmade it an imperative. A later confession during the trial phase would prove equally problematic. (Shortly after Villegass acquittal, Baldwin had something of a full-circle moment with his client: He took him to a Metallica show in El Paso, Texas, where they hung out backstage on the invitation of Lars Ulrich.). Its like ripping a Band-Aid off a wound. He said Boxful of Nightmares is his memoirs unedited. - The West Memphis 3: Free (2012) . What has never been definitively answered, however, is who committed the 1993 murders, and The Forgotten West Memphis Three, premiering Saturday, March 28 at 8/7c on Oxygen, reexamines the case and key theories. Three teenage boys were arrested for the crimes Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr. and prosecutors argued they killed the boys as part of a Satanic ritual. Terry Hobbs is absolutely terrible. No charges have been brought against Jacoby, and he has never been named a suspect by the West Memphis Police Department. She has since expressed her belief that her ex-husband was involved in the murders, citing the discovery of her son's favorite pocket knife in Terry Hobbs' belongings. So the minute youre done, you just want to know more. But we stuck with it, and every so often something would happen, and little by little, people would come around., They spread word about the website through online discussion groups and by hanging flyers in the art houses that screened Paradise Lost, and by 2000, WM3.org was getting 4,000 to 8,000 hits a day. One of the keys to understanding the West Memphis Three murders is the phenomenon known as the Satanic Panic. Terry L. Hobbs, 63, of Caldwell, HOBBS, Terry L., passed on March 7,2021 at the age of 63. West Memphis is pretty much like a second Salem," Echols stated in the 1996 documentary Paradise Lost: The Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Feigning a romantic interest in Echols, she asked Misskelley to arrange a meeting. Hobbs said, I still believe in my heart that Jessie, Jason, and Damion Echols are responsible for what happened to our children., He added, You look at what happened and then you wonder, what if this did not happen, where would our boys be today? Baldwin, the youngest member of the trio that had come to be known as the West Memphis Three, was serving a life sentence after being convicted on charges connected to the 1993 killings of three 8-year-old boys. He responded proudly, 11.. 25, 2021. So with less urgency surrounding full exoneration and no documentary cameras rolling, the question 25 years later becomes: Who is paying close enough attention to the case to pick up the fight? However, under pressure, leading questions, and scare tactics, Misskelley wove a contradictory story that first placed him at the crime scene as an eyewitness to the murders and then as an active participant. But most notably, his initial timeline of events didnt match what was known about the crimes, and every time he offered a detail that diverged from the accepted chronology, the interrogating officers seemed to steer him back in the direction of the official version. After hours of questioning, a frustrated Morgan blurted out that he had been hospitalized for drug and alcohol abuse and might have committed the murders. I dont know if they were questioning it, but they werent mistreating me and telling me that what I was telling them wasnt true., While Berlinger admits that he and Sinofsky may have tilted pro-prosecution in the early days of filming, that quickly changed after witnessing how the cases came together and spending time with the three teens during pretrial jailhouse interviewsparticularly Baldwin, who Berlinger describes as sweet and studious.. Another hair found near the crime scene on a tree stump was found to be consistent with the DNA of Hobbs friend, David Jacoby, according to court documents obtained by Oxygen.com. Then youd try to find it, and it didnt exist, because when we went out to discussion groups, no one knew about the case yet., After learning that the teens were still in prison, Bakken, Sauls, and Pashley decided to make full use of the budding technological revolution. Terry Roland Hobbs <p>Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021.</p> <p>Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs .Terry graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. I had a big box. I didnt want to stop with us being that close. Iwould journal something and put it in the box, said Hobbs. Hobbs says his book is 25 years in the making, adding it is called Boxful of Nightmares for a reason. A hair found on one of the ligatures to bind the boys, however, was found to be consistent with the DNA of Hobbs, according to court documents obtained by Oxygen.com. He began his career in the plumbing business at a very young age, workingfor his . In fact, for the better part of 1993, it was nearly impossible to find anyone who believed they were innocent. We made a promise early on that we would never pretend to be law enforcement or detectives, Sauls says. Quickly, however, he realized Berlinger and Sinofsky were taking a different approach. The pair abruptly fled to Oceanside, Calif., four days after the murders. So much progress had been made in the fight for new trials, most notably a November 2010 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that ordered a hearing on new DNA analysis and other evidence not considered in 1994. I spoke with one of the jurors, years later after the trials and convictions, and he said he had no doubt that people could throw their lot in with the devil and be commanded to do things that they wouldnt have done otherwisethat they have basically made the deal with the devil, Leveritt says. And the seemingly endless stream of threats against them and the frequent clashes with Mark Byers did nothing to dissuade them. Sinofsky family connection aside, Berlinger says this was an important part of the film: The prosecutors had put heavy metal lyrics and Baldwins and Echolss Metallica fandom on trial as much as the teens themselves. Maines won the lawsuit; police have never named Hobbs a suspect or charged him in connection with the killings.). One person who has come up in the investigation is Terry Hobbs, although police have never named him a suspect or charged him in connection with the case. The state of Arkansas continues to attempt to prevent this testing from happening. People have come out of the woodwork and said this and this and people have done things and a lot of them are wrong, said Hobbs. As the movement to free the West Memphis Three gained traction, a number of celebrities joined the cause, bringing the case under more scrutiny. What a story it is. Spotting a small, black tennis shoe in the water, Jones radioed for help. Best selling books such as Lawrence Pazder's Michelle Remembers and disgraced evangelical comedian Mike Warnke's The Satan Seller fueled the madness with tales of ritual abuse and human sacrifice. We were finally winning, he says. This article was updated after publication to add more context about the honorariums paid to the families of the victims and the West Memphis Three and also to correct the time frame in which Berlinger and Sinofsky informed HBO about the changing scope of the documentary. Terry Hobbs was born in 1958 and grew up in Northern Arkansas. Creator Payne Lindsey, a filmmaker with no previous experience investigating crimes, had no connection to the victim before he discovered her while Googling cold cases in hopes of finding his own version of runaway successes like Serial and Making a Murderer. In 1996, HBO released the documentary film Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Its affected a lot of lives, but for some reason it keeps being brought up, said Hobbs. But none of that support has been able to fully exonerate the trio, something theyre still fighting for. If the state of Arkansas has a deep and abiding belief that the West Memphis Three are child murderers and did these terrible crimes, then shame on them for letting them out after 18 and a half years because a bunch of celebrities are whining about it, Berlinger says. The great irony of the 18-year quest to free the West Memphis Three is that it didnt begin as a crusade. For the next two hours and 29 minutes, the two inmates sat in near silence watching Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, the landmark documentary released on HBO 25 years ago this week that captured the trials of Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Damien Echols, the three teenagers convicted in 1994 of the crimes that ripped through the small, working-class community of West Memphis, Arkansas. It just needed a catalyst. The only possible culprits were 18-year-old Damien Echols, a poor teen with an interest in the occult and a record of mental illness, his friend Jason Baldwin, a quiet kid whose talent for art tended toward dark subjects, and Jessie Misskelley, a 17-year-old misfit with an IQ of 73. The boys were so mutilated, investigators thought the murders were part of some kind of Satanic ritual. Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of eight-year-old victim Stevie Branch, has been named in documents released in Marian, Arkansas by the attorneys for Pam Hobbs, Stevie's mother. During Misskelley's trial, Hutcheson testified that she had attended an "an occult Satanic meeting" she referred to as an "esbat." That November, he says, HBO agreed to give an honorariumroughly $5,000to the families on both sides. The knife was thrown into the lake by Baldwin's mother a year before the murders. They began attending appeal hearings and visiting Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley in prison. Echols said in 2012, he will never give up his mission to exonerate himself. The obituary was featured in Idaho Press Tribune on March 13, 2021. Now, I see they can. To send flowers or plant a tree in memory of Terry Hobbs, visit the Tribute Store. Terry. Among those active in the cause were singer Eddie Vedder of the band Pearl Jam, the country music trio The Dixie Chicks, punk rock icon and poet Henry Rollins, and actor Johnny Depp. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. In February, Netflix released Berlingers Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, a docuseries that looked at the 2013 death of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who died while vacationing in Los Angeles. The second postulated that they had been slain by one or more strangers. Investigators never found any evidence that tied him, Jason Baldwin, or Jessie Misskelley to the murders of the boys, Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers. The next day, their bodies were found in a nearby canal. Its no surprise the juries found the prosecutions narrative compelling, Leveritt says: For them, the image of killer satanists headbanging to Metallica was more than plausible. West Memphis 3 / Terry Hobbs 2022 Update New Scott 94.5K subscribers Subscribe 241 Share 20K views 8 months ago https://www.crimeonline.com/2022/05/. I'm not stupid." Initially, Misskelley repeatedly denied having knowledge of the crime, aside from rumors that Damien Echols was involved. The three teens were arrested after Misskelley said they committed the crime after 12 hours of interrogation. But they never had any physical evidence that connected us to this crime, Echols said in 2012. As recounted in Mara Leveritt's book, Devil's Knot, a thorough search of Robin Hood Hills directed by Chief Inspector Gary W. Gitchell of the West Memphis Police Department commenced early on the morning of May 6, 1993. 2012 West of Memphis (Documentary) Self - Steven Branch's Stepfather. I don't know if the other 2 did, but even if they did polygraphs aren't admissible in court. Making his way through the muck on his hands and knees, Ridge soon discovered clothing twisted around sticks and thrust into the ditch's bottom. In 2004, Vicki Hutcheson recanted her trial testimony, stating that she had lied on the stand. The idea of killer teens in the Christian South, not any greater sense of purpose, was mainly what intrigued Sheila Nevins, then the head of HBOs documentary division, when she spotted a story about the case on the inside pages of The New York Times. View Source Suggest Edits Memorial Photos Flowers Created by: Legend Added: 11 Aug 2021 Find a Grave Memorial ID: 230642037 They formed the organization Proclaim Justice, a nonprofit that reinvestigates crimes with the hopes of freeing innocent people. He says that while he was in the supermax prison in Varner, he would write letters trying to drum up support for not just himself, but also for other inmates he believed were wrongfully convicted. They werent telling me I was lying, even if they may have been saying that in their minds. But its closing moments point to how the filmmakers felt: that a horrific tragedy had just been compounded by a monumental miscarriage of justice. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie. Lying in the open air in near 80-degree temperatures accelerated the decomposition of the bodies. MEMPHIS, Tenn. (localmemphis.com) - More than 25 years after the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, a new book gives a first-person account of .
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