Salon.com > Paradise Lost

“Life After Death”: Surviving death row

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Everyone knows that Damien Echols has a remarkable, chilling story to tell. As the most visible member of the West Memphis Three, he spent 18 years (half his life) on death row for a crime he did not commit. With two teenage friends, Echols was convicted in 1994 for the murders of three little boys in the Robin Hood Hills area of West Memphis, Ark. Their case gained national attention as the subject of the documentary film "Paradise Lost" by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. The film, the first of a series of three made for HBO, scrutinized the flimsiness of the evidence against the three young men and won them widespread support from the public and assorted celebrities. All three were released from prison last year in a complex plea agreement.

However, few people know, and many are about to discover, that Echols is a writer whose talent is commensurate with the task of telling this story. The fiercely personal aura of a purloined diary clings to his new memoir, "Life After Death," and the underwhelming response to an earlier, self-published version of his life story suggests that his editor, Sarah Hochman, played a significant role in whipping the book into shape. But the raw materials are there. Now, fortunately, Echols has the chance to see what he can do with them.

The West Memphis Three rewrite their own endings

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 22:10:00 +0000

It's been a movie 18 years in the making. In fact, it's now a pair of movies. Get ready for the West Memphis Three, times two.

In May 1993, the naked bodies of three young boys were found hog-tied in a ditch in the Arkansas woods. The crime appeared to have the additionally heinous elements of sexual abuse and ritual torment. And soon three older boys, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, teenagers who shared a troubled history of petty crime and a fondness for heavy metal and Stephen King, found themselves chief suspects in a triple murder. They were convicted, based largely on a confession coaxed from Misskelley, who is mentally handicapped. He later recanted, but was nonetheless sentenced to life plus 40 years for the crime. Baldwin got life as well. Echols was sentenced to death.

Yet the story didn't end with a trio of misfits going off to prison, or with a tidy sense of justice for a shattered community. In the ensuing years, the story of Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley has become an ongoing source of public outrage -- and an inspiration for filmmakers and musicians. In 1996, HBO Films and directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky released "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills," the haunting, exasperating tale of a nightmarish crime, Satanist hysteria, and three black-clad boys sent away forever. The movie was a sensation, and resparked criticism that the investigation and trial were wildly botched at best -- and at worst, deliberately unfair.

Will Ecuador’s Indians bankrupt Chevron?

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:19:00 +0000

Joe Berlinger is such a tireless talker -- a spinner of anecdotes and theories, and alternately an ardent defender and harsh critic of his own work -- that I should let him explain "Crude" in his own words. Briefly, though, this new documentary from the co-director of "Paradise Lost," "Brother's Keeper" and "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster" explores the epic-scale, endlessly complicated story of one of the largest lawsuits in history. It's the suit in which the indigenous inhabitants of Ecuador's Amazonian jungle are on the verge of winning a massive judgment from Chevron -- a court-appointed expert has suggested $27 billion -- for the poisoning of their homeland, previously among the most pristine and biodiverse rain forest regions on the planet.

The fight to free the West Memphis 3

Thu, 10 Aug 2000 17:19:00 +0000

Despite the shouts coming from fellow death row inmates, Damien Wayne Echols' voice sounds relaxed as I listen to him on a speakerphone in the Los Angeles home of one of his supporters. In a matter-of-fact tone, the "star" of the Emmy Award-winning 1996 HBO documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" and its recent sequel, "Paradise Lost 2: Revelations," describes his surroundings in the Tucker, Ark., maximum-security unit: "I'm in a 9-by-12-foot cell," explains Echols. "Kind of squatted down here in the doorway. The telephone is a pay phone on wheels they can push up to the door. The phone's sitting outside. I have the receiver inside. I have to reach out to dial the number."

A recorded voice interrupts the collect call to tell us there are two minutes left. Calls are cut off after 10 minutes, though Echols can call back as long as no other prisoners wish to use the phone. Echols continues without comment.

"In my room, there's a concrete slab in the back where you put one of those mats like kindergartners take naps on. That's where you sleep. There's a sink, a metal toilet and a little table bolted to the wall. You're allowed to have one blanket, an Army reject. Sometimes, you can see through them because they're so old.

American gothic

Mon, 18 Nov 1996 18:18:00 +0000

When documentary filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
decided to record the events surrounding the trial of two West Memphis, Arkansas, teenagers accused of mutilating and murdering three young boys, they were shocked at how little evidence there was against the defendants other than their taste for heavy metal music and black clothing. Over nine months of filming, they gained an unprecedented level of access to both the trial and the personal lives of virtually every person involved in the case. The result, "Paradise Lost," which originally aired on HBO and opened in theatres Friday,
paints an extremely disturbing portrait of small-town America and our current criminal justice system.

On a recent speaking tour, Berlinger spoke with Salon about emotional truth, the O.J. Simpson trial and how the experience of making "Brother's Keeper," the acclaimed 1992 documentary about an eccentric Munnsville, N.Y., man accused of murdering his brother, prepared him for what he describes as the "horribly dark, depressing experience" of making "Paradise Lost."

What was the biggest difference between making "Brother's Keeper" and "Paradise Lost"?