Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

Robin Hood Hills Murders 227
This is the spot where the supposed Satanic cult would hold their ceremonies in West Memphis. (The Commercial Appeal)
it would be easy to convict Echols of the crimes,
despite the lack of hard evidence.
In sharp contrast to other members of the local,
highly conservative community, Echols was a fan of
heavy metal music bands—some of whom used
Satanic imagery in their music and on their album
covers. People also associated his first name
Damien with the Antichrist character in the Omen
movies. During a prison interview, he noted,
“People assumed that I was guilty and had made up
their minds beforehand, simply based on my taste
in clothes, music, etc. In a larger city, I would never
have even been noticed but I happened to be in a
small, conservative, traditional town where I was
looked at as a freak.” Echols and two of his teenage
acquaintances, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin,
were eventually convicted of the murders. The
primary evidence presented in the trial was
Misskelley’s confession—a confession he attempted
to withdraw, asserting that it was extracted under
duress. During the time between the murders and
the trials, the local papers featured numerous sensational
stories about Satanism. During the trial, testimony
was presented regarding items found in
Echols’s room, such as a funeral register on which
upside-down crosses, spells, and a pentagram had
been inscribed. They also found a book on witchcraft
and Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible. These items
solidified the connection between Echols and the
murders in the jury’s mind. The prosecution also
brought in an alleged expert in “occult killings.”
According to a review of the movie that was made
on the incident, “At the trial of Damien and Jason,
evidence of the Satanic orientation of the murders
is supplied by a state ‘expert occultist’ who turns out
to have his degrees from a mail-order university
that did not require any classes or schoolwork. For
the defense, a pathologist testifies that it would be
so difficult to carry out the precise mutilations on
one of the boys that he couldn’t do it himself—not
without the right scalpel, and certainly not in the
dark or in muddy water.” The case aroused tremendous
controversy. The film, “Paradise Lost, The
Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills,” was aired on