Their advocates believe the Alford pleas represent their own form of injustice, but correcting that is a less pressing issue than the early battlesthe men are free and have been able to mostly live their lives in the years since their release. On the evening of May 5, 1993, 8-year-olds Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore went missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. 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. Hes subdued when discussing the facts of the case, but he comes alive while recounting his work with the Jaycees while in prison, or buying Metallicas Black Album when it came out in 1991. It's affected a lot of lives, but for some reason it keeps being brought up," said Hobbs. "People probably think I'm in Satanism because what they don't understand they try to destroy or ridicule. Well theres been a lot of things that happened over the years. 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. Although the appeals were repeatedly denied, a new batch of DNA testing done in 2007 reignited the investigation. But the list of people who have looked at the facts of the case and come away believing Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley are innocent is long. Griffis also found the devil in nearly every number associated with the crime. But its closing moments point to how the filmmakers felt: that a horrific tragedy had just been compounded by a monumental miscarriage of justice. Titled West of Memphis, the film, directed by Amy J. Berg, presents an overview of the West Memphis Three's 18 years in prison, the revelation of new evidence, and explores the possibility of an alternate suspect. None of the initial trio behind WM3.orgnor their friend Lisa Fancher, who later became a key part of the efforthad ever considered themselves an activist to that point. He was just taking in the enormity of the defining event of his life to that point, which had been committed to film and was now playing for him inside the cavernous, auditorium-style visitation room. Evidence in West Memphis Three case missing or destroyed - Action News 5 Hobbs denied seeing the boys that night and questioned why eyewitness evidence surfaced 16 years later. Iwould journal something and put it in the box, said Hobbs. Yet, Judge David Burnett accepted Griffis as an expert. The specter of the church looms over Paradise Lost, best represented by an early scene in which Mark Byers leads his congregation in prayer and song. Baldwin remembers the dire circumstances laid out during the call. Im not the judge. They procured the domain WM3.org and made a website, updating it with whatever information they could track down. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs. Other details that have come to light include that many wounds on the slain children, originally attributed to human bites and/or a serrated blade, were the result of animals feeding on the bodies. At the time of the West Memphis Three trial, Griffis claimed to have given seminars to 38,000 police officers all over the globe. He died on April 4, 2019 in Panama City Beach, Florida, USA. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. Even without a smoking gun, the circumstantial evidence was enough for a conviction in a place like Crittenden County, Arkansas. I had a big box. Mojo, however, was considerably more fired up, believing the same thing many of Paradise Losts viewers did: that the movie showed an incredible miscarriage of justice, one that would surely be fixed. He began his career in the plumbing business at a very young age, workingfor his . The first being that boys were killed by someone they knew. Initially, Misskelley repeatedly denied having knowledge of the crime, aside from rumors that Damien Echols was involved. California exodus continues as population drops by 500,000 - Los A statement he made to the producers of Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills did little to help his public image. (WMC) - Its a case that has captured the nation and certainly the Mid-South. In 1996, HBO released the documentary film Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. 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. Mike Allen arrived on the scene. Terry Wayne Hobbs was born on May 21st, 1958. A spiritual successor to Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line, and a forerunner of more recent documentaries like Making a Murderer, the film stands today as the most affecting examination of one of the most studied legal cases in U.S. historyone that put heavy metal lyrics and black T-shirts on trial and helped lay the groundwork for the current thinking around false confessions. Baldwin is the co-founder of the legal advocacy organization Proclaim Justice. there are no assignments to cushion your grade, so either pass or fail. Luminol tests, which reveal the hidden presence of blood, were not performed at the scene until six days later. Their bikes were found by a pipe nearby. Jesse was gonna take it anyway. I wouldn't do something like that. He began his career in the. Theres no smoking gun. I didn't even comprehend that the situation could get this serious that it can go this far. As more people learned about the case from Paradise Lost and the work of people like Bakken and Sauls, the phrase Free the West Memphis Three caught on as a slogan for progressive musicians and actors in the 1990s, up there with Save the Rainforest and Free Tibet. Eddie Vedder became an early leading voice, soon followed by the likes of Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp, and Natalie Maines from the band then known as the Dixie Chicks. California Obituaries - Latest Obituaries in California - Echovita Terry Hobbs is absolutely terrible. It was almost like an out-of-body experience., When the credits rolled shortly after the unforgettable final scene, which shows a now-convicted Baldwin and Echols leaving the courtroom in handcuffs and entering a police cruiser as Metallica plays, Baldwin sat stunned. 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. Its affected a lot of lives, but for some reason it keeps being brought up, said Hobbs. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. Hobbs has never wavered in his conviction that justice was served the first time around. He had always maintained he didnt commit the crimes, and outside the Varner Units walls, a growing chorus of activists and legal observers were arguing that same thing on his behalf. Terry Hobbs - Biography - IMDb 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. According to Dan Stidham, the attorney for Misskelley, that money became essential for the cash-strapped defense teams, who needed to pay for expert witnesses and other expenses. Wading into the murky water, Allen unknowingly dislodged the pale, grotesquely arched form of Micheal Moore. Hobbs was Branch's stepfather. 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. Mojo had a different idea of what might get the man he affectionately called J.B. out of prison. Terry Hobbs, Actor: Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers. They werent telling me I was lying, even if they may have been saying that in their minds. 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. 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. On Aug. 11, 2011, the West Memphis Three entered the courtroom for the final time. With a large population of fundamentalist Christians, the American South was particularly subject to occult paranoia. Inconsistencies in Terry Hobbs' alibi, as well as revelations about subsequent violent acts, have also led many to believe that he may be the actual killer. The level of corruption in the American justice system is glaring and sickening.. With the area secured, Detective Bryn Ridge volunteered to search the ditch. Nobody was saying, This is an outrageous case that needs to be looked into.. 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. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. We made a promise early on that we would never pretend to be law enforcement or detectives, Sauls says. They were releasedfrom prison in 2011 on whats called an Alford plea, after new forensic evidence was presented as part of the case. The governor of the state of Arkansas who will one day pardon the West Memphis Three is probably in junior high right now, he says. It'll be sort of like I'm the West Memphis boogeyman. On the surface, 18-year-old Damien Echols, an intelligent, but psychologically troubled teen with interests in Wicca and extreme music, fit the profile. Show more Show more What's next for West. The community's worst fears were confirmed. In West Memphis, Hobbs worked as an ice cream delivery man and Hicks worked at a restaurant. In a last ditch effort, they entered an Alford Plea, a complex and seldom used legal maneuver that would see them plead guilty while still asserting their innocence. They saw this movie and they felt like, I have to do something.. But it wasnt in the ways its directors had hoped. The evolution of how the teens were perceivedon behalf of both the filmmakers and even part of the defense teamis captured on camera early as Stidham and his colleagues began to consider whether Misskelleys confession had been coerced. Over the years there has been lots of speculation and finger pointing as to who was responsible. Knowing that the police were already focusing on Damien Echols, Hutcheson asked her neighbor, Jessie Misskelley Jr., about the brooding teen and his occult connection. Certain that, under what he felt were ridiculous circumstances, Echols' confidence and, on occasion, flippant attitude during the trial was often misinterpreted as evidence of his coldness toward the victims and their families. La Verne, California. He graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. They were found nude and hogtied in a creek in a wooded area in West Memphis. After new DNA evidence was discovered, the West Memphis Three were released from prison in August 2011 by agreeing to an Alford plea, which allowed him to proclaim their innocence while admitting the prosecution had enough evidence to convict him. To date, no DNA evidence from the crime scene can be linked to Damien Echols, Baldwin, or Jessie Misskelley. He just didnt know it would take another 14 years to happen. William Holford Griffiths. Case Details. "Everyone has a story and this just happens to be mine," said Hobbs. Echols is correct. They even hired experts to examine the case, including a forensic criminal profiler who discovered what appeared to be bite marks on one of the victims that didnt match any of the convicted. Due to marital problems stemming from Stevies death, the couple divorced in 2004, reported CNN. Terry Hobbs's income source is mostly from being a successful Actor. 21, 2021 at 1:51 PM PDT CALHOUN COUNTY, Fla.. Baldwins attorneys even avoided putting him on the witness stand or mounting much of a defense, believing the burden was on the state. But they werent just voices in the growing choir calling for the West Memphis Threes releasethey were leading the movement. They began attending appeal hearings and visiting Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley in prison. We are sad to announce that on September 11, 2021 we had to say goodbye to Terry Hobbs of Sweetwater, Texas. West Memphis is in the heart of the Bible Belt: just a two-hour drive from where, legend has it, the devil tuned Robert Johnsons guitar, in a state thats 46 percent evangelical Protestant. Hold for Elkhart County. In June 1996, Paradise Lost debuted on HBO, bringing the story of the West Memphis Three to TV sets and showing the power of the camera in the courtroom. Explore. Its headlined by not only the films directors, but also Sheila Nevins, its executive producer and winner of 32 individual Emmy awards, more than any other person in history. As for Paradise Lost, it was the inciting incident in the two-decade chain of events that led to the release of the West Memphis Three. She says she is too because they believe they are hearing different stories. 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.. We have estimated Terry Hobbs's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. Berlinger says that after months of filming, the parents of one of the victims raised the issue of payment. At that time, I was a little naive that what you read in the paper must have some truth to it, and all the press reports coming out of Arkansas were saying that this was like a slam dunk, an open-and-shut case with a confession that was printed in the newspaper.. Misskelley, who reportedly had an IQ of 72, changed his story several times, and only a small part of his statements was recorded. At approximately 1:30 p.m., Steve Jones, a juvenile parole officer from Crittenden County, peered over the steep bank of a water-filled ditch in the woods near the Blue Beacon truck wash. 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 . Unaware of what was to come, Allen explained that he just wanted to ask him some questions. Well, perhaps not nobody. Events. Im not the jury. Terry Hobbs says he is a church member, a father, and working man and in no way a killer. October 14, 2017: #26 on the JazzWeek chart! Spotting a small, black tennis shoe in the water, Jones radioed for help. Mojo jumped up, Baldwin recalls. The second is by looking at it as an act of passion and perseverance. By the end of Paradise Lost, you cant believe they were found guilty, Bakken says. Berlinger says that he counts Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line as one of his greatest influences, not just for the innovations Morris brought to the documentary genre, but also because it helped free Randall Dale Adams from a sentence for the murder of a Texas police officer that he did not commit. I never foresaw that they would in turn save us.. The three have always maintained their innocence. On the evening of May 5, 1993, three 8-year-old boys disappeared from the streets of West Memphis, Ark. 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 what was happening behind the sce 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 what was happening behind the scenes. While thats cooled from the days of concerts in the shadows of the Arkansas Supreme Court building, the documentaries still live on HBO Max, where they pull in new viewers to this day. Getting that kind of creative validation was exciting, but we were also extremely frustrated that it didnt move from the entertainment page of the newspaper to the editorial page, Berlinger says. Thursday, August 19th 2021. But they were saying that he was about to die.. Covered in wounds, all three showed signs of having been beaten. He was 56. In fact, for the better part of 1993, it was nearly impossible to find anyone who believed they were innocent. And yet Hobbs was not interviewed at all in the months after the crimes. As the first in a trilogy of Paradise Lost films about the case, the 1996 movie was a stunning example of cinma vrit, as directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky embedded themselves with the prosecution, the defense, and the families of both the slain and the accused to put human faces on a heart-wrenching tragedy, as well as highlight the overblown worries of satanic rituals and murderous cults that proliferated throughout the 1980s and 90s. West Memphis 3 / Terry Hobbs 2022 Update - YouTube They saw the same thing you did. Terry Hobbs Obituary (1957 - 2021) | Caldwell, Idaho - Echovita 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. Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelly and Jason Baldwin were originally convicted of the killings and released from prison in 2011 after making a deal with prosecutors. Paso Robles, California. I kind of enjoy it because now even after I die, people are going to remember me forever. In the joint trial of Baldwin and Echols, which took place separately from Misskelleys, Berlinger and Sinofsky filmed the surreal moments that juries were actually present for: a rundown of the books Echols checked out of the library, a parade of band T-shirts worn by the pair, a copy of a Blue Oyster Cult record found in Damiens girlfriends house that became evidence because of the word cult and song titles like Dont Fear the Reaper. What the cameras couldnt capture, however, was the introduction of physical evidencethe prosecution didnt offer much of that aside from a knife that was never directly linked to the crimes and fabric threads deemed microscopically similar to items found in Baldwins and Echolss homes, an assertion that has been questioned in the years since the trials. The bodies of Branch, Byers, and Moore were found in a drainage ditch in West Memphis May 6 . Echols is an author and mystic living New York with his wife, architect Lorri Davis. Over two decades after the murders, what really happened to Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore on the evening of May 5, 1993, remains a mystery. Now, he was being asked to consider something that he never dreamed he would: accepting a plea deal that would set the West Memphis Three free, but require them to give up their quest for exoneration. Pam Hobbs divorced Terry Hobbs in 2004 and has reversed her position on the West Memphis Three's guilt. The next day, their bodies were found in a nearby canal. The sheer mountain moving amount of money it cost to prove the obvious innocence of Jessie, Jason, and Damien still staggers me. Its like ripping a Band-Aid off a wound. That the slain boys were each 8 years-old was important because eight was a "witch's number." After ending his first marriage, he wed Pamela Hicks Branch in 1986, when her son Stevie was almost 2 years old. I don't entirely think Hobbs did it, but I . That included Mojo, who came calling around 2 a.m. that day trying to coax him out of his cell. 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. But I had to. They were naked and hog-tied with their own shoelaces, and showed signs of blunt force trauma and mutilation, the latter of which may have been the work of wild animals, reported the, Three teenage boys were arrested for the crimes , Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life without parole while Echols received the death penalty. Although she was unable to recall the exact location or anyone who attended the alleged meeting, she claimed a drunken Echols confessed to the murders. McCaughey says her sister is very upset. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie. As rumors of a Satanic sacrifice swept the community, the minds of many in West Memphis were already made up. Theyve had several victories, including the case of Daniel Villegas, who was acquitted of capital murder in 2018 after a 25-year legal saga. It was clear that Paradise Lost was resonating. 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. He was an actor, known for Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988), Fast Food (1989) and In the Heat of the Night (1988). This is a story of justice delayed and justice denied. One of the prosecution's key pieces of evidence linking Jason Baldwin to the crime a survival knife with a serrated edge recovered from a lake behind his home has also come under scrutiny. 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. Terry Hobbs - IMDb They were released after prosecutors agreed to an Alford plea, in which the men maintained their innocence but pleaded guilty. Two questions plagued the conservative, middle-class community: Why would anyone commit such a heinous act, and, more importantly, who? Terry L. Hobbs, 63, of Caldwell, HOBBS, Terry L., passed on March 7,2021 at the age of 63. New access to evidence thought destroyed in 1993 'West Memphis Three case