Episode 22: Damien Locked In, Lawyer Locked Out

From Crooked Tree: A West Memphis 3 Podcast · 00:48:49

Show by Paul Day and Kristin Rich

May 10, 1993, was a long, chaotic day in West Memphis. While investigators fanned out across the community—questioning Jason Baldwin’s brand-new girlfriend Heather Cliett (and noting her brother’s ties to the Covenant of the Divine Light), a store clerk with a vague, nearly useless statement, and two young friends of the victims who offered contradictory or impossible stories about a maroon car and a mysterious fourth boy—Damien Echols remained locked inside the police department for roughly eight and a half hours.He underwent intense questioning, a polygraph, and a hospital rape kit. His mother retained attorney (and future state senator) Mike Everett. When Everett arrived and repeatedly demanded access to his client, the building was effectively locked down. Officers denied him entry multiple times even after acknowledging they knew he was there and represented Damien. Damien later testified he had asked for a lawyer several times; the officers denied it. At a subsequent Denno hearing, the court sided with the police.Meanwhile, the official cause-of-death reports finally arrived from the medical examiner: multiple injuries, manner of death homicide for Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore.This episode reconstructs the parallel timelines of that pivotal day—the scattered witness interviews that yielded almost nothing useful, the mounting pressure on Damien, and the extraordinary decision to keep his lawyer outside while the interrogation continued. The case against him was already hardening, even as the mystery of what truly happened to the three boys remained unsolved.

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