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Merged Remember the West Memphis 3?

The clothing wasn't cut off. The children's clothes were found, none of it was cut.

You're right, the method of tying them was odd - its the same way carcasses are tied in a slaughter house, leading some to theorize that they were tied that way so they could be carried to the dump site.
 
Strawberry said:
I don't believe it was a sexually motivated crime. There was no evidence of sexual trauma on any of the children, and water wouldn't wash away that type of physical evidence if it had been there. I think its more likely that the children were either made to strip in order to keep control over them, or stripped after death to make the crime look like something it wasn't.

However, I do agree with you that the crime is unlikely to ever be solved, especially as the authorities are in deep denial about the mess they made of it.
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I know plenty of sexual homicides where the "sex" is not that obvious. I mentioned Jerry Hobbs above... the murder of his daughter and her playmate was such a case, which is one reason the cops thought Hobbs did it in a fit of rage. But, despite a lack of rape trauma, the killer did ejaculate on the body of one of the victims. The DNA was unidentified, and Hobbs languished in jail for years while the Lake County, IL prosecutor tried to figure out how to make a case against him despite the pesky DNA. Finally a DNA match popped up in a database, because the perp reoffended and was caught. He had been a neighbor of the little girls at the time they were murdered. The cops reluctantly let Hobbs go.

If those bodies had been tossed in a stream or pond, the DNA would not have been recovered, and Hobbs would have been convicted.

I'm not saying the WM3 case was a sexual homicide. I don't know. I would say it cannot be ruled out, and it looks like a sexual homicide.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
I know plenty of sexual homicides where the "sex" is not that obvious. I mentioned Jerry Hobbs above... the murder of his daughter and her playmate was such a case, which is one reason the cops thought Hobbs did it in a fit of rage. But, despite a lack of rape trauma, the killer did ejaculate on the body of one of the victims. The DNA was unidentified, and Hobbs languished in jail for years while the Lake County, IL prosecutor tried to figure out how to make a case against him despite the pesky DNA. Finally a DNA match popped up in a database, because the perp reoffended and was caught. He had been a neighbor of the little girls at the time they were murdered. The cops reluctantly let Hobbs go.

If those bodies had been tossed in a stream or pond, the DNA would not have been recovered, and Hobbs would have been convicted.

I'm not saying the WM3 case was a sexual homicide. I don't know. I would say it cannot be ruled out, and it looks like a sexual homicide.
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I would say that rape trauma is more likely in any attack on boys than on girls, because the rape is more likely to be anal. I would also say that water doesn't necessarily remove all evidence of semen, and yet there was none found here.

Really, the only thing that makes this look like a sexual homicide is the fact that they were naked, which might well be the reason why their clothes were removed.

I doubt we'll ever know for sure though.
 
Strawberry said:
I would say that rape trauma is more likely in any attack on boys than on girls, because the rape is more likely to be anal. I would also say that water doesn't necessarily remove all evidence of semen, and yet there was none found here.

Really, the only thing that makes this look like a sexual homicide is the fact that they were naked, which might well be the reason why their clothes were removed.

I doubt we'll ever know for sure though.
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In the case I mentioned above, neither girl was raped, either vaginally or anally. It appears the killer masturbated at the crime scene, which is fairly common with sexual homicides.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
In the case I mentioned above, neither girl was raped, either vaginally or anally. It appears the killer masturbated at the crime scene, which is fairly common with sexual homicides.
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Okay, well it is possible that the same happened here, but I was reading "sexually motivated homicide" to mean rape and murder. I'm not splitting hairs either, the allegation that the boys were raped was part of Jessie's confession, so the fact that there's no evidence for it is a fairly important detail.
 
If you look at Miskelly's "confession" it really seems more like a botched witness statement where he thought if he told them what they wanted to hear, that he saw them do it, they'd let him go home. The cops of course were lying to him and tricked him into implicating himself along with the others. But he thought he would simply say he was a spectator and not be in trouble for anything.

Why would Echols and Baldwin involve Miskelly in such a scenario even if this ridiculous story was true? He wasn't best buddies with them or anything the way Echols and Baldwin were with each other and known to be an idiot. Even though the whole Satanic Sacrifice thing is an urban legend the yokel cops took seriously, I doubt someone actually imitating it would start off with 3 kids at the same time as that would be much more difficult to control, like a farmer trying to handle 3 chickens at once. Baldwin also comes across as too sane to believe in such a loony concept as "human sacrifice." This whole case is simply the product of quacks infesting the local law enforcement department.
 
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Nightowl2548 said:
If you look at Miskelly's "confession" it really seems more like a botched witness statement where he thought if he told them what they wanted to hear, that he saw them do it, they'd let him go home. The cops of course were lying to him and tricked him into implicating himself along with the others. But he thought he would simply say he was a spectator and not be in trouble for anything.

Why would Echols and Baldwin involve Miskelly in such a scenario even if this ridiculous story was true? He wasn't best buddies with them or anything the way Echols and Baldwin were with each other and known to be an idiot. Even though the whole Satanic Sacrifice thing is an urban legend the yokel cops took seriously, I doubt someone actually imitating it would start off with 3 kids at the same time as that would be much more difficult to control, like a farmer trying to handle 3 chickens at once. Baldwin also comes across as too sane to believe in such a loony concept as "human sacrifice." This whole case is simply the product of quacks infesting the local law enforcement department.
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You are right, in addition if this actually occurred I would expect Echol's girlfriend would be involved yet Miskelly does not even mention her.
 
One interesting element of Misskelleys confession is how he learns the boys were tied with shoelaces *before* he says in his confession that they were tied up with rope. Hard to know exactly what this means, he did say at one point he added wrong details delibertly to try and fool the cops, but what exactly he meant by that is unclear. For someone painted as so dumb and gullible, he sure seems to make some quite sophisticated lies, like adding the detail about Damien licking the blood.

As an outsider, the whole narrative about small town backward hick cops looks over-egged to me. I don't understand how back in 1993, any police department in America wouldn't have regarded Echols as a major suspect. He lied about where he was and was spotted by people who knew him near the crime scene around the time of the murders. What are the cops meant to do?

Prejudice cuts both ways in this case http://theunredacted.com/the-west-memphis-three-a-deal-with-the-devil/
 
Soily said:
One interesting element of Misskelleys confession is how he learns the boys were tied with shoelaces *before* he says in his confession that they were tied up with rope. Hard to know exactly what this means, he did say at one point he added wrong details delibertly to try and fool the cops, but what exactly he meant by that is unclear. For someone painted as so dumb and gullible, he sure seems to make some quite sophisticated lies, like adding the detail about Damien licking the blood.

As an outsider, the whole narrative about small town backward hick cops looks over-egged to me. I don't understand how back in 1993, any police department in America wouldn't have regarded Echols as a major suspect. He lied about where he was and was spotted by people who knew him near the crime scene around the time of the murders. What are the cops meant to do?

Prejudice cuts both ways in this case http://theunredacted.com/the-west-memphis-three-a-deal-with-the-devil/
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Brendan Dassey and Teina Pora are the perfect case studies to compare with.
Low IQ 17 year olds witness and describe terrible crimes of rape and murder, except ....
 
For the kids not to be screaming for help, and the place is not that far from houses from what I understand, it almost has to be a person who is seen as having authority over them. . . .ie: Parent or guardian.

In addition, according to Jim Clemente, hiding a body is usually the results of the perpetrator knowing the victims and worried that they could be traced back to the victim.

Misskelley was almost certainly primed before the recorded part of the interrogation with certain key details. Going back to Jim Clemente, according to him the Federal Government cannot use a confession without solid corroborating evidence. We have nothing like that here.

I would also argue that in seventeen years of incarceration and life afterwards, there is no evidence of the kind of personality out of any of the three people convicted.

Edit: There is a lot useful with the book "Devil's Knot" where Mara Leveritt goes through the trials and shows what they really had for evidence. She is my go to source far more than the books.
 
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I am bumping this thread because the pending release of Brendan Dassey should be seen as a reprise of the case against Jessie Miskelly. We can learn by studying patterns. Sorry for being a little pedantic.

http://callahan.8k.com/wm3/jmfeb.html

I will also post this link to the MoaM thread
 
I wasn't here for the original discussion on the WM3. When I first saw the Paradise Lost documentary on HBO I was outraged. The more research I did, the more this one documentary became the reason I stopped watching them and lost faith in impartial truth telling documentaries for some time. I do believe they deserved a new trial but I am not completely convinced that they are not guilty. As for Brendan Dassey, I am still doing research on this, not sure how much stock to put in to another slanted documentary.
 
kali1137 said:
I wasn't here for the original discussion on the WM3. When I first saw the Paradise Lost documentary on HBO I was outraged. The more research I did, the more this one documentary became the reason I stopped watching them and lost faith in impartial truth telling documentaries for some time. I do believe they deserved a new trial but I am not completely convinced that they are not guilty. As for Brendan Dassey, I am still doing research on this, not sure how much stock to put in to another slanted documentary.
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Let me guess "West Memphis Truth?"

A better source is to check out the Callahan archive. Whenever there is a contentious claim, I tend to go there for the original documentation with the case. Usually I find it is a better for the various not guilty arguments than guilt.
 
The Callahan archives is what I used to look at evidence and facts. Everyone has an opinion that is based on fact but also emotion. I try to investigate without other emotional influences.
 
kali1137 said:
The Callahan archives is what I used to look at evidence and facts. Everyone has an opinion that is based on fact but also emotion. I try to investigate without other emotional influences.
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Based on that, all of the evidence you have is a forced confession by Misskelley, a dislike of Echols by the state, and some claims that Echols or Baldwin said something to somebody - many of whom later recanted. In effect, you have no real evidence.

We know that coerced confessions are real, we know that jailhouse snitches are unreliable, we know that rumors can become facts really easily, and we know that FBI considers the whole satanist panic to have been BS.

Is it remotely possible that they did it. . . .Sure but no more likely than anybody else who lived in the area. You probably should have looked closer to home for the real suspects however - who that is, I don't know.
 
I did my research. I looked at the evidence quite some time ago and had my suspicions about Miskelly and Echols. The only one I fully believe to be completely innocent and only guilty by association is Jason Baldwin. I am not going to argue about why I think what I do as that would require me to go back and refresh my memory of all the facts. It means nothing at this point because what is done is done. I do however believe that Hobbs is hiding a lot and should be looked at hard. The most haunting part is that 3 little boys lost their lives and the killer or killers are walking around in the world. To me, the 3 lives lost is the true tragedy.
 
kali1137 said:
I did my research. I looked at the evidence quite some time ago and had my suspicions about Miskelly and Echols. The only one I fully believe to be completely innocent and only guilty by association is Jason Baldwin. I am not going to argue about why I think what I do as that would require me to go back and refresh my memory of all the facts. It means nothing at this point because what is done is done. I do however believe that Hobbs is hiding a lot and should be looked at hard. The most haunting part is that 3 little boys lost their lives and the killer or killers are walking around in the world. To me, the 3 lives lost is the true tragedy.
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Trouble right there is that Miskelly and Echols were not really friends.

My thing is that two wrongs do not make a right. If the states goal is to prosecuted somebody, anybody, as long as they can get a conviction then our system is completely broken.
 
I never stated they were friends. Only that Baldwin was friends with Echols and I believe that to be the only reason he got drug into it at all.
 
kali1137 said:
I never stated they were friends. Only that Baldwin was friends with Echols and I believe that to be the only reason he got drug into it at all.
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There is probably not a crime out there with significant evidence of innocence where there are some people who consider the defendant to still be guilty.

What you effectively wrote previously is that you are suspicious of Miskelly and Echols. I have read that before but I have never seen anybody present any evidence that is not garbage. You said that you did your research yet you come with nothing. That seems to be the pattern with people who think they are guilty and/or have suspicions.
 
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