With panic in the air and the impoverished boys possessing only meager defense funds, and more importantly, with a dubiously acquired confession one of the boys later recanted, their convictions were a fait accompli. Instead prosecutors focused on circumstantial evidence the fact that the teenagers were loners and outcasts, wore black, listened to heavy metal music, and one of them, the genuinely oddest and most disaffected of the bunch, Damien Echols, admitted an interest in the Wiccan religion.īecause one of the boys’ bodies was missing the penis, fear gripped the local community and the murders quickly transformed into Satanic ritual slayings. Forensics uncovered nothing that could link the boys, and even more troubling – there was no blood found at the crime scene, suggesting the children were murdered elsewhere and their bodies dumped in the local Robin Hood woods.
“ Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” chronicled the original trial, one that presented no physical evidence that tied the three teens to the murder. and Jason Baldwin - with an affection for heavy metal were arrested and eventually convicted of the murders. If you’re unfamiliar with the case, it essentially breaks down like this: three young boys were brutally tied up and murdered, and amid wild tales of Satanism, occult rituals and other hysterical voodoo, three young loners - – Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr.
#Paradise lost documentary trial#
Everyone from Eddie Vedder to Johnny Depp to the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the hurried and dubious trial - one that often times resembled a frenzied witch-hunt - and more recently it was revealed that Peter Jackson was partly funding their legal defense (this isn’t mentioned in the film Vedder and Depp both contributed undisclosed sums as well). Considering one of the convicted, the supposed ringleader Damien Echols, faced the death penalty, the urgency of the campaign only grew with each subsequent film and created a cause celebre. Throughout the nearly twenty years since their what-seemed-like-very-suspect convictions, they’ve been fighting their verdicts and sentences with a large grassroots campaign that was launched after the first penetrating “Paradise Lost” documentary aired on HBO.
#Paradise lost documentary plus#
New Movies: Release Calendar for February 24, Plus Where to Watch the Latest Films Oscars 2023: Best Original Screenplay Predictions Even Oscar Nominated Doc Filmmakers Need a Second Job (and Other Things We Learned at Joe Berlinger's Master Class)Įxclusive: Jason Baldwin Of The West Memphis Three Evaluates His Public Perception In Clip From 'Paradise Lost'
0 kommentar(er)
