In 1996, HBO released the documentary film Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Terry Hobbs was born in 1958 and grew up in Northern Arkansas. Searching obituaries is a great place to start your family tree research. TSGT Terry Lee Hobbs, USAF, ret. Except this was 1996, and home internet was still in its infancy. And they used that visibility to help raise funds for the defense. At approximately 1:30 p.m., Steve Jones, a juvenile parole officer from Crittenden County, peered over the steep bank of a water-filled ditch in the woods near the Blue Beacon truck wash. After roughly 18 months of editing, Paradise Lost debuted at Sundance in January 1996 before heading out to other festivals. In August 2011, Jason Baldwin was pulled from his prison cell under confusing circumstances once again. Misskelley's coerced confession, as contradictory as it seemed to the evidence, was consistent in implicating Echols and Jason Baldwin. Berlinger says that after months of filming, the parents of one of the victims raised the issue of payment. After ending his first marriage, he wed Pamela Hicks Branch in 1986, when her son Stevie was almost 2 years old. The first film gave rise to a movement devoted to reopening the investigation in hopes of exonerating, and ultimately freeing, Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelley. The documentarians found me in one of the worst things a person could go through, Baldwin says. Filming the activists work seemed like the best place for Berlinger and Sinofsky to turn their attention; what better way to show the continued plight of the West Memphis Three than to show regular people dedicating their free time to fighting for them? They werent telling me I was lying, even if they may have been saying that in their minds. They formed the organization Proclaim Justice, a nonprofit that reinvestigates crimes with the hopes of freeing innocent people. Mojo had a different idea of what might get the man he affectionately called J.B. out of prison. It was clear that Paradise Lost was resonating. Berlinger and Sinofsky began to take notice. In May of that year, police discovered the bodies of Michael Moore, Stevie Branch, and Christopher Byers in the Robin Hood Hills, a small wooded area near the I-40/I-55 exchange. Echols is an author and mystic living New York with his wife, architect Lorri Davis. The great irony of the 18-year quest to free the West Memphis Three is that it didnt begin as a crusade. And without substantial physical evidence, police zeroed in on a pair of teens they knew well: Echols, a self-professed Wiccan who wore all black and read Stephen King, and his best friend Baldwin, who was considered an outsider because of his love of drawing and bands like Metallica. Now, he was being asked to consider something that he never dreamed he would: accepting a plea deal that would set the West Memphis Three free, but require them to give up their quest for exoneration. (At one point, Sauls says, it landed on Yahoos list of the top 100 websites.) A statement he made to the producers of Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills did little to help his public image. Evidence in West Memphis Three case missing or destroyed - Action News 5 doesn't know how to teach the material and you will end up teaching yourself everything. Like everyone else who was familiar with the case, they wanted to know who committed the crimes, but their main goal was advocacy, not using the opportunity to play investigators. Once there got to be this global pressure, and there was a big concert here with really big-name musicians within a mile of our Supreme Court building, things started suddenly to change, she says. I spoke with one of the jurors, years later after the trials and convictions, and he said he had no doubt that people could throw their lot in with the devil and be commanded to do things that they wouldnt have done otherwisethat they have basically made the deal with the devil, Leveritt says. Among those active in the cause were singer Eddie Vedder of the band Pearl Jam, the country music trio The Dixie Chicks, punk rock icon and poet Henry Rollins, and actor Johnny Depp. The Messed Up Truth About The West Memphis Three Murders, citing the discovery of her son's favorite pocket knife, One of the prosecution's key pieces of evidence linking Jason Baldwin, With their 2007 request for a new trial rejected, Baldwin is the co-founder of the legal advocacy organization Proclaim Justice. They were releasedfrom prison in 2011 on whats called an Alford plea, after new forensic evidence was presented as part of the case. My first thought is, I hope this dude isnt trying to pull me into some type of escape, Baldwin says nearly a quarter-century later. This family in-fighting led to him shooting his brother-in-law. The second postulated that they had been slain by one or more strangers. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. Its like ripping a Band-Aid off a wound. The state of Arkansas continues to attempt to prevent this testing from happening. The idea of killer teens in the Christian South, not any greater sense of purpose, was mainly what intrigued Sheila Nevins, then the head of HBOs documentary division, when she spotted a story about the case on the inside pages of The New York Times. A murderer was loose in West Memphis. Three teenage boys were arrested for the crimes Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr. and prosecutors argued they killed the boys as part of a Satanic ritual. Local 24 News EXCLUSIVE: Terry Hobbs on his new memoir on the West Memphis 3. So advocacy and diligence become tantamount, because most people in a similar situation to the one he was in dont have the benefit of filmmakers and musicians fighting on their behalf. Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021. Who Killed The Forgotten West Memphis Three? I just checked again and HE IS STILL MISSING. Their bikes were found by a pipe nearby. Although she was unable to recall the exact location or anyone who attended the alleged meeting, she claimed a drunken Echols confessed to the murders. . But on that early morning in 1997, Jason Baldwin wasnt concerned with Berlinger and Sinofskys craft, or legal precedent, or crusading celebrities. It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Terry Lee Hobbs of Auburndale, Florida, born in Winter Haven, Florida, who passed away on August 16, 2021, at the age of 56, leaving to mourn family and friends. Echols said in 2012, he will never give up his mission to exonerate himself. I think I introduced my dad to it because that was not his normal genre., Three Metallica songsOrion, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), and Call of Ktuluwould play throughout the documentary. Wherever it was screened, Berlinger says, it was followed by intense Q&As from audience members who couldnt believe what theyd just watched. In 1994, the FBI said there was scant evidence that violent satanic crimes had ever occurred in America outside of a few isolated incidents, but that was long after TV hosts like Geraldo, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Oprah had spread moral hysteria about musicians weaving supposedly anti-Christian and occult messages into their songs, and long after wrongful convictions were handed down in the infamous McMartin Preschool sexual assault trials. On the surface, 18-year-old Damien Echols, an intelligent, but psychologically troubled teen with interests in Wicca and extreme music, fit the profile. People in West Memphis are going to tell their kids stories. (WMC) - Not a single piece of evidence ever connected the West Memphis Three, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, to the 1993 murders of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore. Much of Cecil Hotel focuses on the amateur investigators who turned coincidences into conspiracy theories, ultimately accusing an innocent person of her death. But its closing moments point to how the filmmakers felt: that a horrific tragedy had just been compounded by a monumental miscarriage of justice. "Everyone has a story and this just happens to be mine," said Hobbs. Funeral Home Services for Terry are being provi. During the final year of the two-year span, from July 2021 to July 2022, California lost about 211,000 people, according to data from the state Department of Finance. So, how much is Terry Hobbs worth at the age of 50 years old? As more people learned about the case from Paradise Lost and the work of people like Bakken and Sauls, the phrase Free the West Memphis Three caught on as a slogan for progressive musicians and actors in the 1990s, up there with Save the Rainforest and Free Tibet. Eddie Vedder became an early leading voice, soon followed by the likes of Peter Jackson, Johnny Depp, and Natalie Maines from the band then known as the Dixie Chicks. A quarter-century later, what does the documentary tell us about citizen activism, the criminal justice system, and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s? Certain that, under what he felt were ridiculous circumstances, Echols' confidence and, on occasion, flippant attitude during the trial was often misinterpreted as evidence of his coldness toward the victims and their families. Update: I was totally wrong. You still dont really know what happened to these kids. As part of the deal, they cannot file wrongful-conviction lawsuits, which both Berlinger and Baldwin say couldve cost the state tens of millions of dollars. Echols is correct. Critics were effusive in their praise and stunned by the footageparticularly Roger Ebert, who wrote in a four-star review that at the end of the film I was unconvinced of their guilt. The film won Emmy and Peabody awards to go with more than a dozen other nominations. A native of Winter Haven, born December 21, 1964, Terry has been a lifelong resident of Auburndale. But for every Your Own Backyard or Ill Be Gone in the Dark that has applied journalistic rigor to their research in the past two decades, theres an Up and Vanished, which has been at the center of ethical debates since the podcast debuted in 2016. One of those shows, Truth & Justice With Bob Ruff, became the basis for an Oxygen docuseries last year titled The Forgotten West Memphis Three, which took a closer look at the three victims and tried to shine new light on the evidence.
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