THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL
OFFICIALS FIND SIGNS OF CULT ACTIVITY
CRITTENDEN SITES REVEAL SATANIC GRAFFITI, CARCASSES
Date: Monday, June 7, 1993
Section: Metro
Page: B1
Illustration: photo
Source: By Marc Perrusquia and Bartholomew Sullivan
The Commercial Appeal
Dateline:
Memo: Different version, Tenn B1
Edition: Final
Authorities began seeing a marked increase in satanic-related graffiti and reports of animal sacrifice about a year ago, a Crittenden County official said Sunday.
Jerry Driver, chief juvenile officer for Crittenden County, said he's visited at least five sites in the county where he's found graffiti and animal carcasses.
Driver's comments came the day The Commercial Appeal obtained a copy of a statement given police by one of the teenagers charged with killing three West Memphis boys. In that statement, Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr. said he was a member of a cult whose members had sexual orgies and mutilated, killed and ate animals.
Misskelley, 17, along with Michael Wayne Echols, 18, and Charles Jason Baldwin, 16, is charged with three counts of capital murder in the deaths of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis.
Echols's mother Sunday said the talk of Satanism in the case is hurting her son's right to a fair trial.
Pamela Hutchison took issue Sunday with press and television reports that she said portrayed her son as involved in devil worship.
People who know Echols have said he claimed to worship the devil and that he carried around a cat's skull and called himself Damien, as in the popular Omen movies.
But Hutchison said her son took the name from a book about Father Damien, a Belgian missionary priest who worked with lepers on Molokai in the Hawaiian islands in the 19th Century.
Echols was not involved in Satanism, Hutchison said. She said she believes her son is innocent.
Authorities, though, have noted an increase in activity that seems to be related to Satanism. Sunday at one of the sites where the activity has taken place - known to locals as "Stonehenge" after the ancient Druidic monoliths near Cambridge in England - there were the remains of a dead gray cat with tan feet and a plastic bag containing a part of a rattlesnake.
The site, which is an abandoned concrete cotton gin, is covered with spray- painted graffiti, including backward swastikas, pentagrams, tridents and references to Lucifer. Besides broken bottles and spent shotgun shells, Stonehenge contained charred logs and several unopened condom packages.
"Kids get involved in this as a joke," Driver said. "Ninety percent of them are in it for the so-called thrill. There's a small group that's in it seriously."
Drug and alcohol use and sex often are common at the sites, Driver said, which serve as a magnet for kids out for a good time. For many, it's a fad, he said, "but a dangerous one."
Driver could not provide an estimate of the number of young people in Crittenden County involved in such activities, but said the great majority are probably on the fringes and not seriously involved in Satanism.
Local teens often travel to the Stonehenge site at night to socialize and marvel at its legend and chilling atmosphere.
"Sometimes people think it's funny trying to scare other people," said Kim Floresca, 15, who just completed 10th grade at Marion High School. "It's supposed to be a place where cults go out, and they're supposed to sacrifice virgins and animals and stuff."
Floresca said she once went to the Stonehenge site about two years ago with a group of teens who included Misskelley. The night was just a typical night, she said, and Misskelley did nothing out of the ordinary.
Floresca said she never heard of the other two suspects visiting the site.
Floresca said Misskelley told her and other students the day before he was arrested that he participated in the killings.
A group of students were driving last Wednesday after school to a friend's house to go swimming when Misskelley began telling his bizarre tale, she said.
"He was saying he hit the little boy and the little boy ran off and he was taking him back to where Damien and the other boy were," she said. According to Misskelley's story, Echols had already killed the two other boys, she said.
Floresca said she didn't believe Misskelley at the time.
Jim Maguire, a Chattanooga clinical therapist and former Massachusetts police officer who consults with police about Satanism, said anyone in the habit of ritualistic cat killing is more than just dabbling in the occult.
If it is established that satanistic behavior was a motive for deaths of the three West Memphis second-graders, Maguire said those involved would have worked their way up to killing children with earlier animal sacrifices.
Meanwhile, the case's notoriety apparently prompted a trailer park landlord to evict Echols's 16-year-old girlfriend from her $175-a-month trailer home.
The girl's mother, Dian Teer, called The Commercial Appeal to report the eviction from the trailer home that she said her daughter sometimes shared with Echols. She also said neighbors had been calling for their removal from the park.
Teer, 43, said she plans to fight the eviction.
Teer said Saturday that Echols, 18, often stayed overnight in the trailer with her pregnant 16-year-old daughter.
Teer also has said there is nothing to the Satanism rumors, saying Echols is misunderstood.
Caption:
By Dan McComb
An area east of Marion, Ark., that locals call "Stonehenge," on Sunday
was found covered with spray-painted graffiti, including backward swastikas,
pentagrams, tridents and references to Lucifer.
Keywords: MURDER MULTIPLE CHILD AR CHARGE JUVENILE TEEN
RELIGION HOUSING EVICTION
Document Number: 9301260402
OFFICIALS FIND SIGNS OF CULT ACTIVITY
CRITTENDEN SITES REVEAL SATANIC GRAFFITI, CARCASSES
Date: Monday, June 7, 1993
Section: Metro
Page: B1
Illustration: photo
Source: By Marc Perrusquia and Bartholomew Sullivan
The Commercial Appeal
Dateline:
Memo: Different version, Tenn B1
Edition: Final
Authorities began seeing a marked increase in satanic-related graffiti and reports of animal sacrifice about a year ago, a Crittenden County official said Sunday.
Jerry Driver, chief juvenile officer for Crittenden County, said he's visited at least five sites in the county where he's found graffiti and animal carcasses.
Driver's comments came the day The Commercial Appeal obtained a copy of a statement given police by one of the teenagers charged with killing three West Memphis boys. In that statement, Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr. said he was a member of a cult whose members had sexual orgies and mutilated, killed and ate animals.
Misskelley, 17, along with Michael Wayne Echols, 18, and Charles Jason Baldwin, 16, is charged with three counts of capital murder in the deaths of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis.
Echols's mother Sunday said the talk of Satanism in the case is hurting her son's right to a fair trial.
Pamela Hutchison took issue Sunday with press and television reports that she said portrayed her son as involved in devil worship.
People who know Echols have said he claimed to worship the devil and that he carried around a cat's skull and called himself Damien, as in the popular Omen movies.
But Hutchison said her son took the name from a book about Father Damien, a Belgian missionary priest who worked with lepers on Molokai in the Hawaiian islands in the 19th Century.
Echols was not involved in Satanism, Hutchison said. She said she believes her son is innocent.
Authorities, though, have noted an increase in activity that seems to be related to Satanism. Sunday at one of the sites where the activity has taken place - known to locals as "Stonehenge" after the ancient Druidic monoliths near Cambridge in England - there were the remains of a dead gray cat with tan feet and a plastic bag containing a part of a rattlesnake.
The site, which is an abandoned concrete cotton gin, is covered with spray- painted graffiti, including backward swastikas, pentagrams, tridents and references to Lucifer. Besides broken bottles and spent shotgun shells, Stonehenge contained charred logs and several unopened condom packages.
"Kids get involved in this as a joke," Driver said. "Ninety percent of them are in it for the so-called thrill. There's a small group that's in it seriously."
Drug and alcohol use and sex often are common at the sites, Driver said, which serve as a magnet for kids out for a good time. For many, it's a fad, he said, "but a dangerous one."
Driver could not provide an estimate of the number of young people in Crittenden County involved in such activities, but said the great majority are probably on the fringes and not seriously involved in Satanism.
Local teens often travel to the Stonehenge site at night to socialize and marvel at its legend and chilling atmosphere.
"Sometimes people think it's funny trying to scare other people," said Kim Floresca, 15, who just completed 10th grade at Marion High School. "It's supposed to be a place where cults go out, and they're supposed to sacrifice virgins and animals and stuff."
Floresca said she once went to the Stonehenge site about two years ago with a group of teens who included Misskelley. The night was just a typical night, she said, and Misskelley did nothing out of the ordinary.
Floresca said she never heard of the other two suspects visiting the site.
Floresca said Misskelley told her and other students the day before he was arrested that he participated in the killings.
A group of students were driving last Wednesday after school to a friend's house to go swimming when Misskelley began telling his bizarre tale, she said.
"He was saying he hit the little boy and the little boy ran off and he was taking him back to where Damien and the other boy were," she said. According to Misskelley's story, Echols had already killed the two other boys, she said.
Floresca said she didn't believe Misskelley at the time.
Jim Maguire, a Chattanooga clinical therapist and former Massachusetts police officer who consults with police about Satanism, said anyone in the habit of ritualistic cat killing is more than just dabbling in the occult.
If it is established that satanistic behavior was a motive for deaths of the three West Memphis second-graders, Maguire said those involved would have worked their way up to killing children with earlier animal sacrifices.
Meanwhile, the case's notoriety apparently prompted a trailer park landlord to evict Echols's 16-year-old girlfriend from her $175-a-month trailer home.
The girl's mother, Dian Teer, called The Commercial Appeal to report the eviction from the trailer home that she said her daughter sometimes shared with Echols. She also said neighbors had been calling for their removal from the park.
Teer, 43, said she plans to fight the eviction.
Teer said Saturday that Echols, 18, often stayed overnight in the trailer with her pregnant 16-year-old daughter.
Teer also has said there is nothing to the Satanism rumors, saying Echols is misunderstood.
Caption:
By Dan McComb
An area east of Marion, Ark., that locals call "Stonehenge," on Sunday
was found covered with spray-painted graffiti, including backward swastikas,
pentagrams, tridents and references to Lucifer.
Keywords: MURDER MULTIPLE CHILD AR CHARGE JUVENILE TEEN
RELIGION HOUSING EVICTION
Document Number: 9301260402
