Steve Branch, Michael Moore & Christopher Byers

Case background and investigation

On May 5, 1993, three eight-year-old boys, Steve Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers, went out to play in West Memphis, Arkansas, and did not return home. The following day, searchers found their bodies in a drainage ditch in a wooded area known as Robin Hood Hills. The children had been stripped, beaten, and bound with their own shoelaces. The brutality of the crime, committed against three second-grade Cub Scouts, shocked the community and drew intense local pressure to find those responsible.

In June 1993, police arrested three local teenagers: Jessie Misskelley Jr., Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols. The case against them rested heavily on a statement Misskelley gave to police on June 3, 1993, after roughly twelve hours of questioning, of which only a portion was recorded. Misskelley, who was reported to have an IQ of about 72, confessed and implicated Echols and Baldwin, but he recanted soon afterward, and defense attorneys argued the statement was coerced and inconsistent with known facts about the crime. Prosecutors advanced a theory that the killings were part of a satanic ritual, a claim critics later cited as an example of the era's so-called 'satanic panic.'

The three were tried in early 1994. Misskelley was convicted in February 1994 of one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life plus 40 years. In March 1994, Echols and Baldwin were convicted of first-degree murder; Echols was sentenced to death and Baldwin to life imprisonment. All three maintained their innocence throughout. The convictions became the subject of the 'Paradise Lost' documentary trilogy by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, and later the film 'West of Memphis,' which drew celebrity support from figures including Peter Jackson, Eddie Vedder, Johnny Depp, and Natalie Maines, and helped fund new legal and forensic work.

Forensic testing reported in 2007 found that DNA recovered from the crime scene did not match any of the three convicted men. Defense filings pointed to other material, including a hair reported to be consistent with Terry Hobbs, stepfather of victim Steve Branch, though Hobbs has denied involvement and has never been charged. Authorities have not accepted these claims as establishing another perpetrator, and no one else has been charged in the case. Observers have cautioned that such forensic results are contested and do not, by themselves, resolve who committed the murders.

In November 2010, the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered a hearing on new evidence. On August 19, 2011, under a legal arrangement known as an Alford plea, Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley pleaded guilty to reduced charges while continuing to assert their innocence; an Alford plea allows a defendant to concede that prosecutors have evidence sufficient for conviction without admitting the acts. Judge David Laser sentenced them to time served, about 18 years, and they were released the same day, with the state maintaining that the convictions stand. Because no other suspect has been prosecuted and the men continue to deny guilt, many regard the case as effectively unresolved. As of 2024, Echols was still seeking additional DNA testing of remaining evidence under Arkansas law.