Episode 16: "I'll get you. I'm gonna kill you. You're gonna die." Ep. 16 of the Case Against

  From "Blood on Black"   "I'LL GET YOU, I'M GONNA KILL YOU. YOU'RE GONNA DIE."   Echols was notorious around West Memphis and Marion for walking everywhere, often in a black trenchcoat. He testified that he walked around areas of West Memphis frequently, and was in the area where his victims lived “probably an average of two or three times a week” over “probably at least two years.” Echols would testify that he often had to walk through the neighborhood of the victims to make his way between Lakeshore and his parents’ trailer on South Broadway. Despite having lived in the neighboring Mayfair Apartments, he testified that he had never been in Robin Hood. That claim had no credibility, since the pipe over 10 Mile Bayou offered one of the few pedes- trian shortcuts between the Echols/Hutchison trailer and Lakeshore — a route Echols testified he regularly used. When he moved to Salem, Mass., briefly, after his release from prison, the Lurker in Black quickly gained notoriety as the convicted child killer who was constantly walking around the town. Now apparently based in New York City’s Harlem, he is just one amid a vast throng of black-clad hipsters trudging around the big city. Echols has described this lifelong pattern of obsessive walking in interviews. He told Justin M. Norton of www.metalsucks.net that “When I first got out, I would go and walk and walk for hours, just looking in shop windows and feeling the wind and the rain. I would be exhausted to the core and want to go lay down, but as soon as I’d get back in, I would want to go right back out.” Echols in his 2012 memoir, “Life After Death,” described, without a lot of specifics, his dissatisfaction in his relationship in 1993 with Domini and how he sought out his old girlfriend: “I thought of Deanna frequently, wondering what had happened. Through sheer coincidence (I use that word but don’t believe there’s any such thing) I found out Deanna’s family had started attending church. The possibility of seeing her again plagued me. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I constantly wondered what would happen, how she would react, what I would see in her eyes, and I had a plethora of questions I needed answers to. I couldn’t understand how she had so thoroughly and completely severed our connection. I needed an explanation ... “Sunday morning found me preparing to descend into the hellish realm of fundamentalism. ... I knew I didn’t belong there but I had to do it or I would get no rest. .... “Scanning the rows, I saw Deanna sitting in the dead center of the room with her family. ... I couldn’t breathe. She looked at me ... and looked away. I didn’t even see a flicker of recognition. What did that mean? “I had been expecting something — anything — but her eyes passed over me as if I were not even there. ... “When it was over, I walked outside and stood on the sidewalk. I was trying to figure out what this meant as I watched her family get in their car and drive away.” Echols did not give a date for this attempted encounter, but the stalking incident closed a chapter in the book that then opened on news of the May 5 killings. After his arrest, reports surfaced about Echols, or someone closely resembling him, observing children in an obsessive and secretive manner. Some reports predated the killings. On March 1, 1993, Jennifer Ball, who lived at Lakeshore, reported to police that she had been threatened by Michael “Beshears” (Beshires), 14, on several occasions. On March 1, she said, someone had threatened to kill her by shouting through her window. The police report de- scribed “Suspect B,” who was not Beshires, as a slim white male about 18 dressed in a black T-shirt, black jeans and a black jacket. Jennifer saw him make the threats, then enter the fenced-in backyard. On June 10, she gave police this hand-written statement: “The first contact I had with Damien Echols was when he was at my window (March 1 93). I had heard about him and heard that he was into devil wo