Episode 8: "I thought we were sort of Friends" #WM3

Episode 8 of "The Case Against" tackles another persistent falsity about the West Memphis 3 case: Belying the claim that Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin were barely acquainted with Jessie Misskelley are their own words and the words of their friends and acquaintances.  They knew each other and frequented the same teenage hangouts.    https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-West-Memphis-Killers/dp/B071K8VNBM/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1549233637&sr=1-4     https://www.amazon.com/Where-Monsters-Go-Against-Memphis-ebook/dp/B06XVNXCJV/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1549233533&sr=8-5&keywords=blood+on+black       https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Black-Against-Memphis-Killers-ebook/dp/B06XVT2976/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549233533&sr=8-1&keywords=blood+on+black https://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-West-Memphis-Killers-ebook/dp/B07C7C4DCH/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1549233533&sr=8-2&keywords=blood+on+black   https://www.facebook.com/WestMemphis3Killers/   "I THOUGHT WE WERE SORT OF FRIENDS"     Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin were best friends, blood brothers, two boys from the trailer parks who had formed an inseparable bond. In May of 1993, Echols was a high school dropout who received Social Security Disability checks due to various mental illnesses. He stayed some of the time at his parents’ home at Broadway Trailer Park in West Memphis and some of the time at his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend’s home in Lakeshore Estates, a trailer park between West Memphis and Marion, Ark. Jason’s trailer was just down the street from where Domini Teer and her mother lived. Echols’ parents had recently remarried after years of separation. His mother, who had lifelong troubles with mental illness, had divorced his stepfather the previous year over allegations of sexual abuse of Echols’ younger sister, Michelle. The sprawling, trash-strewn trailer parks were near where Interstate 55 came from the north to join east-west Interstate 40 for a brief stretch through West Memphis. While Baldwin, a skinny 16-year-old, lived in Lakeshore and attended Marion High School, much of his social life revolved around the video galleries, bowling alley and skating rink across the interstate in West Memphis. Baldwin lived with two younger brothers and a mentally ill mother who had recently separated from his habitually drunken stepfather. His mother’s new boyfriend, a chronic felon, had moved in a few weeks ago. Echols told of ficers handling a juvenile offense in May 1992 that he and Baldwin were heavily involved in “gray magic.” One of their mutual friends, Jessie Misskelley Jr., 17, a school dropout and another trailer park teenager, was regarded as a bully and a troublemaker. Misskelley had been in repeated trouble for attacking younger children. He eventually would admit that he had been involved in satanic rituals with Echols and Baldwin. One of the WM3 myths is that Misskelley was a distant acquaintance of the other two. Misskelley and Baldwin had been off and on as close friends for years, and Misskelley and Echols often spent time together. In a letter to girlfriend Heather Cliett written from the detention center, Baldwin, showing a sense of betrayal, wrote: “What gets me is why Jessie would make up such a lie as that, because I thought we were sort of friends except for the night at the skating rink when he tried to steal my necklace, and that made me pretty mad, but not as mad as all of this is making me.” Mara Leveritt’s book “Dark Spell: Surviving the Sentence” tells of Baldwin’s first encounter with Misskelley on his first day in sixth grade at Marion Elementary School. According to the book, Misskelley attacked Baldwin without provocation during recess, “hollering like he meant to kill him.” In eighth and ninth grades, the two boys lived on the same street in Lakeshore. They “got to be pretty good friends.” Around that time, Echols’ grandmother moved to Lakeshore and Echols began hanging out, mowing lawns and using the money to fund his interest i