Episode 20: The Tacit Confession

From Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast · 00:57:10

Show by Paul Day and Kristin Rich

On May 10, 1993—the day that never ends—Damien Echols leaves a grueling interrogation with Detectives Ridge and Sudbury and walks straight into a polygraph with Detective Bill Durham. What follows is a tense, unrecorded session of pretest questions, ten carefully crafted polygraph queries, and a high-pressure post-test interview that would haunt the West Memphis Three case for decades.Damien denies every relevant question about the murders. Durham scores every answer as deception. Pressure mounts. Damien claims he asked for an attorney three times; Durham insists he never did. Then comes the moment that gives this episode its name: after nearly an hour of confrontation, Damien reportedly stops denying involvement—an “admission through absence of denial,” later called a tacit confession. He mentions the electric chair. He asks to speak to his mother. And the exact wording of what he said next remains bitterly disputed.Pam Hutchinson is brought in. The prosecutor hovers nearby. Biological samples are collected. Anonymous tips flood the department—one claiming credit for the killings, another pointing a finger at Damien and a close friend. By the time the sun sets, an 18-year-old has gone from person of interest to prime suspect, and the machinery of the investigation has locked into place.Join Kristin and Paul as they break down the polygraph results, courtroom testimony, conflicting accounts, and the chilling sequence of events that turned May 10 into a point of no return…and the day isn’t over yet.

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