West Memphis 3 / Terry Hobbs 2022 Update - YouTube To authorities working in West Memphisa largely Southern Baptist communitysatanic activity seemed to be the most likely cause for the killings, in part because the boys bodies were bound and appeared to have been mutilated. The governor of the state of Arkansas who will one day pardon the West Memphis Three is probably in junior high right now, he says. Published by The Commercial Appeal from Jun. The bodies of Branch, Byers, and Moore were found in a drainage ditch in West Memphis May 6 . Show more Show more What's next for West. They were found nude and hogtied in a creek in a wooded area in West Memphis. I had a friend who was working on 20/20, and they had done a film about exorcism in one of the magazine pieces, Nevins says. Nevertheless, Echols made no incriminating statements. The final scene Berlinger and Sinofsky filmed may have been the piece that stuck with viewers the most: the image of Baldwin and Echols being led out of the courthouse in handcuffs and bulletproof vests, now property of the state. Inconsistencies in Terry Hobbs' alibi, as well as revelations about subsequent violent acts, have also led many to believe that he may be the actual killer. Terry Hobbs at Metropolitan Community College: Maple Woods Over two decades after the murders, what really happened to Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore on the evening of May 5, 1993, remains a mystery. Iwould journal something and put it in the box, said Hobbs. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie. They were released after prosecutors agreed to an Alford plea, in which the men maintained their innocence but pleaded guilty. They saw this movie and they felt like, I have to do something.. Classmates at Weaver Elementary School, the three were active in their Cub Scout troop and responsible enough to be trusted to roam their neighborhood without supervision. While thats cooled from the days of concerts in the shadows of the Arkansas Supreme Court building, the documentaries still live on HBO Max, where they pull in new viewers to this day. He knew that if he ever got out, hed want to do that in a more organized way. Terry Hobbs Net Worth. By going into the courtroom and sticking with the case for its entire duration, Berlinger and Sinofsky were able to capture what may have otherwise been lost to time or left out of transcripts. In her recantation, Hutcheson stated that when she asked Echols directly if he had killed "those three kids," he replied, "No. Sauls says that the former Black Flag frontman was one of the few big names who dug deep into the evidence, wanting to learn as many details as he could about the case. Pam Hobbs divorced Terry Hobbs in 2004 and has reversed her position on the West Memphis Three's guilt. Like Misskelley in the first trial, Baldwin received a life sentence. Terry Hobbs was born on November 25, 1969 in Columbus, Georgia, USA. Who Killed The Forgotten West Memphis Three? Although Griffis' testimony was dramatic, it showed only a tenuous grasp of occult knowledge much of it, including a reference to a cult called "Crytos," was simply made up. Searching obituaries is a great place to start your family tree research. Although blood scrapings were taken, the West Memphis police lost the evidence. As for Paradise Lost, it was the inciting incident in the two-decade chain of events that led to the release of the West Memphis Three. But its closing moments point to how the filmmakers felt: that a horrific tragedy had just been compounded by a monumental miscarriage of justice. They began attending appeal hearings and visiting Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley in prison. Terry Hobbs Obituary - Death Notice and Service Information 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. The state of Arkansas continues to attempt to prevent this testing from happening. Terry Roland Hobbs <p>Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021.</p> <p>Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs .Terry graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. Debates still occur regularly onlinethe West Memphis Three subreddit is fairly active for one on a 28-year-old caseand podcasts have looked at the crime from all angles. The reason for the credit gets less curious when hes asked about it: He was a huge Metallica fan. All three had been submerged face down in the mud, stripped naked, and bound with their shoelaces. A spiritual successor to Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line, and a forerunner of more recent documentaries like Making a Murderer, the film stands today as the most affecting examination of one of the most studied legal cases in U.S. historyone that put heavy metal lyrics and black T-shirts on trial and helped lay the groundwork for the current thinking around false confessions. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers were best friends. 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. I don't entirely think Hobbs did it, but I . Beyond the black-and-white print of the newspaper, there was a movement brewing. Peter Jackson, who would produce a separate documentary about the case titled West of Memphis in 2012, and his partner, Fran Walsh, funded an extensive private investigation and helped hire forensic experts to comb through evidence. It was so emotionally taxing to watch and go through it again, he says. By the end of Paradise Lost, you cant believe they were found guilty, Bakken 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. He died on April 4, 2019 in Panama City Beach, Florida, USA. Mojo had a different idea of what might get the man he affectionately called J.B. out of prison. In 2009, three witnesses filed affidavits claiming they saw Hobbs with the murdered boys the night they disappeared, contradicting Hobbs previous statements to police, according to CNN. But we stuck with it, and every so often something would happen, and little by little, people would come around., They spread word about the website through online discussion groups and by hanging flyers in the art houses that screened Paradise Lost, and by 2000, WM3.org was getting 4,000 to 8,000 hits a day. One person who has come up in the investigation is Terry Hobbs, although police have never named him a suspect or charged him in connection with the case. Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of Branch who was under suspicion but never charged, said he welcomes new DNA testing. There have also been several high-profile incidents of laypeople reinvestigating decades-old cold cases in more rigorous, journalistic ways and helping bring them to a resolution. Terry Hobbs (1969 - 2019) Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers (Nightmare Vacation II) (1988) [Rob Darrinco]: Stabbed and hanged (after gaging), off-screen by Pamela Springsteen in Walter Gotell's office; his body is shown afterwards when Carol Martin Vines discovers him. ", According to Devil's Knot, a week after the discovery of the bodies, Detective Don Bray interviewed Vicki Hutcheson, a truckstop employee. Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life without parole while Echols received the death penalty. For the next two hours and 29 minutes, the two inmates sat in near silence watching Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, the landmark documentary released on HBO 25 years ago this week that captured the trials of Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Damien Echols, the three teenagers convicted in 1994 of the crimes that ripped through the small, working-class community of West Memphis, Arkansas. The following day revealed the unthinkable, when the bloodied and bruised bodies of the three boys were found submerged in a muddy creek in a wooded area called Robin Hood Hills. Even without a smoking gun, the circumstantial evidence was enough for a conviction in a place like Crittenden County, Arkansas. Armchair detectives of today, I think a lot of them dabble in conspiracy theory, Berlinger says. Paradise Lost also led to a famous citizen-activist campaign championing the release of the three teens that caught on at the dawn of the Internet Age and would eventually pull in Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins, and a whos who of the rich and famous. As the 20th century turned to the 21st, the movement seemed to be picking up steam. Family and friends are welcome to leave their condolences on this memorial page and share them with the family. Hide Self (6 credits) 2012 48 Hours: Hard Evidence (TV Series) Self. However, within the first crucial hours after the bodies were discovered, mistakes were made at the crime scene that negatively impacted the investigation. Well, perhaps not nobody. When the pair got the call from Nevins, they mobilized immediately, landing in Arkansas shortly after the arrests. . Sheriff's deputies in Calhoun County say Terry Hobbs was reported missing on Saturday, April 20, 2019. Much of Cecil Hotel focuses on the amateur investigators who turned coincidences into conspiracy theories, ultimately accusing an innocent person of her death. 25, 2021. It was also revealed in 2012 that Hobbs nephew allegedly told his friends, My Uncle Terry murdered those three little boys," and that the killings were a Hobbs family secret, according to, I still believe in my heart that Jessie, Jason, and Damion Echols [sic] are responsible for what happened to our children, Hobbs told Memphis ABC affiliate. According to Dan Stidham, the attorney for Misskelley, that money became essential for the cash-strapped defense teams, who needed to pay for expert witnesses and other expenses. Now, evidence from the case of the West Memphis Three is either missing or destroyed. Stidham, who was just 30 years old and not long out of law school when the court appointed him to be Misskelleys attorney, went in thinking he would negotiate a deal for his client, who had told police that his acquaintances Baldwin and Echols committed the crimes and that he was present and played a role as an accessory. Spotting a small, black tennis shoe in the water, Jones radioed for help. I didnt want to stop with us being that close. The districts current prosecuting attorney, Keith Chrestman, did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but his predecessor Scott Ellington, whose office negotiated the deals, told The New York Times in 2011 that while new trials would have likely resulted in acquittals, We dont think that there is anybody else. The Moore family has been outspoken about the end result, vehemently protesting the 2012 Oscar nomination for the third Paradise Lost installment. Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of eight-year-old victim Stevie Branch, has been named in documents released in Marian, Arkansas by the attorneys for Pam Hobbs, Stevie's mother. Everybody Id come in contact with was hostile to the truth, Baldwin says. Terry Lee Hobbs (1964-2021) - Find a Grave Memorial "They said close to the crime scene because at one time I did walk near where they had found the kids with Terry Hobbs But I didn't wear hats back then, my hair could have blown around anywhere, Jacoby told Memphis NBC affiliate WMC-TV in 2013. New evidence points to new suspects in West Memphis 3 case - Action News 5 For Rollins, it was a moral imperative: Id find myself up at 3:30 a.m. thinking about Damien. 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. (At one point, Sauls says, it landed on Yahoos list of the top 100 websites.) And the seemingly endless stream of threats against them and the frequent clashes with Mark Byers did nothing to dissuade them. Im not the jury. And that makes him hopeful that exoneration is on the horizon. One of the prosecution's key pieces of evidence linking Jason Baldwin to the crime a survival knife with a serrated edge recovered from a lake behind his home has also come under scrutiny. Terry Hobbs's income source is mostly from being a successful Actor. Terry Hobbs, Todd Moore, and Dana Moore still maintain that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley murdered their sons. 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. They couldnt have been cooler, recalls Berlinger, who would go on to direct the 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster alongside Bruce Sinofsky. Terry Hobbs | Cinemorgue Wiki | Fandom 2012 West of Memphis (Documentary) Self - Steven Branch's Stepfather. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. On the evening of May 5, 1993, 8-year-olds Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore went missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. Sinofsky family connection aside, Berlinger says this was an important part of the film: The prosecutors had put heavy metal lyrics and Baldwins and Echolss Metallica fandom on trial as much as the teens themselves. At the request of West Memphis authorities, the two were picked up and questioned by Oceanside police. Baldwin remembers grabbing a Mountain Dew and a burrito and sitting down, still unaware of what he was about to watch. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! It'll be sort of like I'm the West Memphis boogeyman. The Paradise Lost cameras captured not only the defenses discussions, but the full testimony, in Misskelleys trial, of an expert on coerced confessions. Update: I was totally wrong. 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. Since the West Memphis Three were released, no one else has been charged in the murders of Stevie, Christopher and Michael. A later confession during the trial phase would prove equally problematic. Case Number &colon; 2:21-BK-21177. So much progress had been made in the fight for new trials, most notably a November 2010 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that ordered a hearing on new DNA analysis and other evidence not considered in 1994. Support came from unlikely corners: a classroom of kids who held a cookie sale that raised $30, local bands in Chicago who held a benefit show and sent $150. But inside, he was just another prisonerBaldwin didnt know who he could trust. I said, Im going to send some kids down there., Those kids turned out to be Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the young documentarians who had recently completed the acclaimed Brothers Keeper, a film chronicling a death and the resulting trial in a small upstate New York village. Theyve had several victories, including the case of Daniel Villegas, who was acquitted of capital murder in 2018 after a 25-year legal saga. Mojo, however, was considerably more fired up, believing the same thing many of Paradise Losts viewers did: that the movie showed an incredible miscarriage of justice, one that would surely be fixed. West Memphis is in the heart of the Bible Belt: just a two-hour drive from where, legend has it, the devil tuned Robert Johnsons guitar, in a state thats 46 percent evangelical Protestant. Now, I see they can. Hobbs denied seeing the boys that night and questioned why eyewitness evidence surfaced 16 years later. Replacing Burnett was Circuit Court Judge David Laser. Berlinger and Sinofsky, the latter of whom died in 2015 at age 58, were able to gain incredible and immediate access to seemingly everyone the case had touched: the families of the victims and the accused, the judge, the lead investigator, members of the community. Hobbs denied the accusation, saying that his family does have secrets, but none of them have to do with murder. Blood and urine samples from both men were collected and sent to the West Memphis Police Department. While Berlinger says that the work of people like Bakken and Sauls was more impressive than that of any celebrity, its undeniable that the famous and influential brought a megaphone and funding mechanism to this case that most never get. Their main worry was Damien, who was staring down the threat of lethal injection should the appeals fail. Hes since parlayed the popularity of the show into a booming podcast network and documentary deal with Oxygen. They didnt even think he would physically survive through December, Baldwin says. The prosecutor would later say, There was a lack of physical evidence to tie anyone or anything to the crime scene, while the lead investigatorthe same one who told the press the case was an 11 out of 10would concede, Youve got a lot of circumstantial evidence is what youve got. William Holford Griffiths. So the minute youre done, you just want to know more. The specter of the church looms over Paradise Lost, best represented by an early scene in which Mark Byers leads his congregation in prayer and song. Titled West of Memphis, the film, directed by Amy J. Berg, presents an overview of the West Memphis Three's 18 years in prison, the revelation of new evidence, and explores the possibility of an alternate suspect. Terry Hobbs says he is a church member, a father, and working man and in no way a killer. " Every crime, no matter what it is, gets blamed on Satanism.". When he was released in 2011, he met John Hardin, who worked with the West Memphis Three support group Arkansas Take Action, and the two bonded over a desire to do for others what had just been done for Baldwin. Under order of the Arkansas Supreme Court, there were to be new evidentiary hearings in the case. Now a judgewho coincidentally works part time in the courtroom where Misskelley was convictedStidham spends time speaking to law students about the judicial system. In November, Judge David Burnett, who had presided over the trial, was elected to the state senate. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. On August 19, 2011, all three accepted the deal and were immediately released from prison. A native of Winter Haven, born December 21, 1964, Terry . Quickly, however, he realized Berlinger and Sinofsky were taking a different approach. Misskelley, who had entered the West Memphis police station that morning with hopes of reward money he might use to purchase a new truck for his father found himself instead charged with murder and facing life plus 40 years in prison. And then there was the public pressure: In August 2010, Vedder and Maines headlined yet another benefit concert, this one in Little Rock. I don't know if the other 2 did, but even if they did polygraphs aren't admissible in court. The three teens were arrested after Misskelley said they committed the crime after 12 hours of interrogation. So when I saw this tiny little article in the Times, I wasnt about to free anybody that was guilty.