Transcript
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In the early 90s, Satanic Panic wasn't just a buzzword.
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It was a full-blown societal meltdown.
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And in West Memphis, Arkansas, when three young boys were tragically murdered, that Panic
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found its target.
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Enter Damien Eccles, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Miss Kelly.
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The West Memphis III.
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They were teenagers who listened to heavy metal, wore black, and didn't quite fit in with
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the others.
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But does being weird make you guilty of murder.
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This case is a masterclass in what can go wrong when fear and bias overpower facts.
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There were coerce confessions, missing evidence, and rushed to pin the blame on three kids who
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might not have done it.
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Today, we're diving into the tangled mess of this investigation from the botched crime
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scene to the evidence that pointed elsewhere.
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Was justice served, or did the system get it all wrong?
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But before we hop into that story, if you like your true crime brief and bingeable,
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you have found the right podcast.
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I give you at least two episodes per week, so hit the follow button now.
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Welcome to 10 Minute Murder.
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The story of the West Memphis III isn't just the true crime case.
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It's a cautionary tale about how badly things can go when fear and bias overtake reason.
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What if three teenagers didn't brutally murder three young boys, but were instead convicted
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because they wore black?
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They liked Metallica, and they didn't fit into the small town mold in Arkansas, 1993.
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What if the real horror here isn't about satanic rituals, but an investigation so riddled
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with errors it could cause a case study on how not to do police work?
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Okay, let's set the stage.
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The early 1990s were prime time for the satanic panic.
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Dungeons and Dragons was supposed to be a gateway to hell.
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Heavy metal was corrupting America's youth, and your average misunderstood teenager sketching
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pentagrams in the margins of the notebook might as well be in Lucifer's intern.
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When the bodies of three young boys, Stevie Branch, Christopher Buyers, and Michael Moore
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were found in Robin Hood Hills, bound, and murdered under disturbing circumstances, it didn't
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take long for fingers to point towards satanic rituals, and who better to blame than Damien
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Eccles, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Muskelli.
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They were, after all, the weird kids in town.
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But here's the kicker.
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Weird isn't a crime.
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When you start peeling back the layers of the case, it doesn't look like justice.
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It looks like a train wreck.
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The confessions are riddled within consistencies, the physical evidence, basically nonexistent,
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and the entire prosecution leaned harder on the town's fear of the occult than on actual
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facts.
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So what if this story isn't about guilt at all?
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What if it's about fear, prejudice, and a desperate need for answers that led to three
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innocent kids being railroaded?
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That is the rabbit hole we're diving into today.
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The murders of Stevie, Christopher, and Michael were horrific.
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There's no question about that.
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But the tragedy deepens when you realize just how badly the investigation was bungled
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from the start.
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If crime scene management were graded, West Memphis would have earned an F minus.
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The boys were found in Robin Hood Hills bound with their own shoelaces.
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The scene was gruesome, but it was also chaotic.
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And so was the police response.
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Instead of preserving evidence, the area became an unintentional meeting greet for officers
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and volunteers.
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They stomped all over potential clues.
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Fingerprints, fibers, or anything else that might have pointed to the real killer either
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contaminated or outright destroyed.
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Then there's the physical evidence, or more accurately, the glaring lack of it.
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Despite extensive searches, there wasn't a single shred of DNA, fingerprint, or other direct
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evidence tying Damien Jesse or Jason to the crime scene.
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Zero.
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Nothing.
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The group allegedly staging an elaborate ritual murder, these teenagers must have been criminal
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geniuses at covering their tracks, except they weren't.
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They were just three ordinary kids, weird kids maybe, that had nothing to do with it.
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And here's the question no one wanted to ask at the time.
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What if the police were chasing the wrong lead?
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Over the years, alternative theories have pointed to other suspects.
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People with suspicious alibis, actual motives, and even connections to the victims.
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But in the frenzy of the investigation, those leads were ignored.
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Law enforcement had already set their sights on Damien, Jason, and Jesse, and they weren't
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about to let pesky facts get in the way.
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What's left is a tragedy compounded by a botched investigation.
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Not only were three boys brutally murdered, but the chance to solve the case was squandered
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by fear and incompetence.
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The crime itself is haunting, but so is the wasted opportunity for real justice.
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If this investigation was a movie, it would be one where you'd be shouting at your television
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for two hours.
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From the moment law enforcement set their eyes on Damien, this case stopped being about finding
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the truth and became a masterclass and confirmation bias.
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Damien wasn't just the suspect.
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He was tailor-made for the role.
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His love for heavy metal, black clothing, dark poetry, and the occult made him an easy
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target in a town gripped by Satanic panic.
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To the police, Damien wasn't a kid trying to navigate teenage angst.
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He was a walking advertisement for everything they feared.
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Once they had him in their sights, it was only a matter of time before Jason Baldwin,
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his best friend, and Jesse Miskelli, a kid whose bad luck landed him on the wrong place
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at the wrong time, were swept into the chaos by simple association.
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The lynch pin of the prosecution's case was Jesse Miskelli's confession, a confession
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that falls apart faster than a cheap umbrella in a storm.
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Jesse, who had an IQ of 72, likely didn't fully understand what was happening when interrogated
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for hours without a lawyer or a parent present.
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By the end of it, he'd given a statement riddled with inconsistencies, including wildly
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inaccurate timelines, timelines that couldn't possibly have happened.
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Did it align with the crime scene?
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Not even close, but it was just close enough for the police to declare victory.
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Then there was the so-called "evidence," a few fibers that might have matched items from
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the suspects home.
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Might is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
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This was the kind of evidence that could implicate half the town if he squinted hard enough.
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Meanwhile, glaringly suspicious leads, like Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the victims,
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were left to collect dust.
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Years later, DNA evidence linked Hobbs to the crime scene, raising more questions than
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answers.
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Back in 1993, those details didn't fit the perfectly packaged theory the police were
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building, so they were conveniently ignored.
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What's left is an investigation that feels more like a bad game of "connect the dots" than
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a genuine pursuit of justice.
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Instead of piecing together what actually happened, law enforcement doubled down on a narrative
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that painted three innocent teenagers as monsters, and ignored clues that might have led them
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to the real killer.
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The investigation into the West Memphis 3 wasn't about solving a crime.
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It was about finding someone to blame.
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Once police zeroed in on Damien, facts and logic were bulldozed to fit the narrative, dragging
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three teenagers down with them.
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The 1996 documentary Paradise Lost pulled back the curtain on this disaster, showing the
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world a case fueled by fear, not justice.
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Viewers couldn't help but ask, was the real crime the murders or the convictions?
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One, celebrities started to step in.
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Eddie Vetter threw Pearl Jam's weight behind the fight.
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Johnny Depp became a vocal advocate, and Natalie Mainz didn't hold back in calling the case
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what it was.
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A travesty.
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Public perception then shifted very quickly.
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What began as a simple "boys and black" or "gilty" narrative crumbled under scrutiny.
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By the early 2000s, the case had become a national conversation about justice, bias, and
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how quickly fear can overshadow truth.
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It started as a local tragedy turned into a cultural reckoning, and the realization that everything
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about this case was probably wrong.
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Enter DNA evidence, the gold standard of truth in modern criminal cases.
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For Damien, Jason and Jesse, it became the ultimate "Get Out of Jail Card" one strand
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of hair at a time.
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Here's what some DNA evidence revealed.
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None of it matched the three boys.
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Not a single hair, fiber, or speck of blood from the crime scene could be linked to the
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three young men who had spent years behind bars.
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You'd think this would have been the showstopper, right?
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But wait, there's more.
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DNA from another individual did turn up, and it wasn't just from a random passerby.
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It matched Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the victims.
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Cue the collective gasp.
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This bombshell revelation sent shockwaves through the case.
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People who'd clung to the guilt suddenly had to reconsider.
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Were the wrong people sitting in prison this entire time.
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The new evidence didn't just poke holes in the prosecution's narrative.
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It blew it to pieces, and exposed gaps and inconsistencies that had been papered over in
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the original trial.
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Ignored in favor of a tidy story fueled by fear in public hysteria.
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But here's the frustrating part.
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The legal system doesn't exactly move at the speed of outrage.
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Returning convictions isn't as simple as saying, oops, ar-bad.
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Legal roadblocks spring up like weeds, dragging the appeals process out for years.
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While public support for the West Memphis III surged, the courts remained frustratingly
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slow and resistant to change.
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Even in the face of damning new evidence, the system crawled along at its usual glacial
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pace.
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For Damian, Jason, and Jesse, DNA evidence, the supposed great equalizer, became yet another
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hurdle in the case that had been stacked against them from the beginning.
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By 2011, after 18 long years in prison, public opinion had shifted so dramatically that the
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convictions of the West Memphis III were hanging on by a threat.
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Enter the Alfred Ply, a legal loophole that allows defendants to plead guilty while also
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maintaining their innocence.
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In other words, fine, we'll let you go, but we're not admitting we got this wrong.
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The Alfred Ply allowed them to walk freely immediately, even though it didn't erase the
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guilty verdicts.
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Sure, they wanted full exoneration, but when the choices between staying in prison or going
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home that day, the decision is pretty simple.
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After nearly two decades behind bars for a crime they swore they didn't commit, the
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Alfred Ply was their only real chance at freedom.
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The reactions to their release were mixed.
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On one side, there was relief.
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They were finally free to rebuild their lives.
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On the other, the Alfred Ply left a bitter aftertaste.
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It wasn't the full exoneration their supporters had been fighting for, and it let the state maintain
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its narrative of guilt.
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Even worse, it effectively shut down any chance of further investigation into who really
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killed Stevie Christopher and Michael.
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For those who had been following the case for years, the Alfred Ply was bitter sweet.
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It was a win, but it wasn't justice.
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Instead of bringing clarity, it left the case in a great area where the West Memphis
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three were free, but the real killer or killers might still be out there.
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It felt like the story was missing its final chapter, one that might never be written.
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That is 10 Minute Murder for today.
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Brief and bingeable true crime.
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I'm Joe.
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I'm Joe.
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Thank you for taking the time to listen.
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And as I mentioned in the other West Memphis three episodes that I did that is right next
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to this one, this isn't necessarily how I feel about the case.
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This is a perspective coming from innocence.
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And the other episode, if you haven't listened to that one, that one comes from the perspective
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of guilt because like I mentioned in that one, I don't have a clue if they're guiltier
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innocence.
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None of us really do know for sure whether they're guiltier.
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They know for sure whether they are guiltier innocent, but we don't.
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So I wanted to cover the case, but I also didn't want to slant one way or the other so I decided
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to slant both ways.
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It's a case that I've kept track of for literal decades, and I couldn't keep ignoring this
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case.
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I wanted to do the story, but I didn't know what perspective to do it from.
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So I decided to do it from both perspectives.
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I hope you enjoyed it.
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And if you enjoy the podcast, if you're an OG listener that doesn't miss an episode,
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please share this podcast with your friends and family.
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Let them know about 10 Minute Murder.
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For more information on everything we do here, you can go to 10minutemerder.com or send me
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an email, joe@10minutemerder.com.
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And that's going to do it.
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That is your episode.
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Thank you so much for listening to 10 Minute Murder.
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[MUSIC]
