But weeks before finishing the cut for TIFF news broke that the West Memphis 3 would be freed. The 18 year journey for the filmmakers that has led to the sequel, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations and support from celebrities like Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp was to conclude with Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. Coerced confessions as well as questionable evidence and testimony made viewers uncertain if the three defendants - Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin - were guilty and the fight to free the West Memphis 3 was born. The film, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, gave the trail nationwide interest as Berlinger and Sinofsky revelaed a case that was hardly open and shut. In the mid ’90s filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky traveled to West Memphis, Arkansas for a documentary they were making for HBO on the gruesome murders of three boys and the trial of the three teens who were charged. We can all easily do this right now.In Directors, Interviews, TIFF, TIFF Featuresīruce Sinofsky, Documentary, HBO, Joe Berlinger, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Toronto International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival 2011 “On death row, I turned my cell into a monastery and used the time to learn, grow, and expand. “Don’t just worry the days away – seize them, and wring every ounce of opportunity out of them,” he wrote on his website. Baldwin co-founded the non-profit Proclaim Justice, which advocates for inmates who say they’ve been wrongfully convicted.Įchols recently spoke to the Wrongful Conviction podcast about what he learned about isolation while on death row, and how others can learn from his experience to better cope with coronavirus lockdown. His memoir, Life After Death, came out in 2012 and became a New York Times Best-Seller. Now living in New York City, Echols devotes his time to magick, a spiritual practice. The Independent gave it one of several positive reviews, noting at the time: “Director Berg lays out the film with clarity and persuasiveness, and brings it as close to a happy ending as the tragic squalor of the case will allow.” The trio spend almost two decades behind bars and, in Echols’s case, on death row, before being freed in 2011 as part of a deal with prosecutors.Įchols and Peter Jackson co-produced another documentary, titled West of Memphis, directed by Amy J Berg and released in 2012, the same year as Paradise Lost 3. Echols was sentenced to death Misskelley and Baldwin received life sentences. All were convicted, an outcome bolstered in part by Misskelley’s controversial confession, which he ultimately recanted. Rumours of a satanic crime spread around the community. What followed is an 18-year saga that would see the West Memphis Three, as Misskelley, Echols, and Baldwin became known, get convicted of the crime despite maintaining their innocence. One month later, three teenagers – Jessie Misskelley Jr, Damien Echols, and Jason Baldwin – were charged with murdering the three second-graders. Steve Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers were found the next day in a wooded area along the interstate highway, their bodies nude, bound, and apparently mutilated. On 5 May, 1993, three eight-year-old boys went missing in the city of West Memphis, Arkansas.
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