Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

[Pubrick]

it'd be funny if they did it.

well not funny, per se.

more like.. fucknny.

[Reel]

This case will probably go unsolved for 20 more years, with no known suspects besides these 3 poor chaps.  By then whoever really did it will be dead. It's looking like Terry Hobbs from the last documentary, but to reopen the case would cost millions, and Arkansas isn't even up to it. Hopefully the impact The West of Memphis doc has will cause more than speculation and actually bring the person to justice who did it. I doubt it, though.

[Reel]

  I'm obviously more familiar with the documentaries than most here, judging by the activity in this thread, but did Ron Lax ever appear in any of the Paradise Lost films? I'm thinking he might've shown up in part two. The more I look back on it, I'm quite sure he did, but my memory is hazy. Just looking for a cofirmation, Google and youtube searches don't bring up much on the guy, besides the fact that he will be played by Colin Firth in 'Devil's Knot'!

Ron Lax                                                                                                                                           


Colin Firth


other confirmed cast members:


Pam and Terry Hobbs                                                                                                                   


Reese Witherspoon


and Alessandro Nivola



Damien Echols                                                                                                                                         


James Hamrick




Jason Baldwin                                                                                                                                                                 


Justin Castor



Jessie Miskelley                                                                                                                                           


Kristopher Higgins




Vicki Hutcheson                                                                                                                                   


Mereille Enos



Those are all the key figures in the story. The role of one of the victims, Steve Branch has been cast as well as various other Lawyers and detectives. Amy Ryan's supposed to be in it, too. IMDB doesn't list her character yet, but I got a pretty good idea of who it could be.



Kathy Bakken                                                                     Amy Ryan

[Pubrick]

Good detective work on Amy Ryan there, Lou. She needs to be in more movies I want to see.

But don't mistake thread activity for actual interest, otherwise you'd have to think (as I do) that no one cares about the master anymore, and have all jumped ship to Anna Karenina for some reason.

[Alexandro]

I just don't want to know too much about The Master until I see the film. Seeing TWBB with only the first teaser as background is probably one of the best things I have ever done as a moviegoer.

[RegularKarate]

I'm interested in both! (2 birds, one stone. now I can rest my fingers)

[Reel]

Interesting choice


Prosecutor John Fogelman


Stephen Moyer





Judge David Burnett


Bruce Greenwood

[RegularKarate]

It's great that they got a guy who also puts his hand to his face to play that judge.

[goatcheeser]

I though that both of these documentaries were great. Still have not gotten around to seeing the third one yet. The directors did a good job of exposing the existing problems with our judicial system caused by small town politics and immoral interrogation practices . It also showed how people who could be seen as socially "different" are still being victimized. The film played out like a modern day Salem Witch Trial. If you like documentaries, especially true crime, you should check out these docs.   

[Reel]

West of Memphis: Truth willed out

source:Time Out


The bridges across the Mississippi River from Memphis, the great city of the antebellum South take you from Tennessee to Arkansas. The drive leads through cottonfields into another world where people live dirt-poor lives in trailer-home neighbourhoods.

"That's the reason for the title," says Amy Berg, the director of West of Memphis, the coolly angry and oddly beautiful new film about the so-called West Memphis Three.

"When I was interviewing people in West Memphis, it was plain they considered it part of Memphis. But in Memphis they consider it part of Arkansas.

"They are suffering from an identity crisis. It's very sad. The town is completely lost - and marked by the murders obviously."

The 1993 murders of eight-year-old boys Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers boys in suburban bush in West Memphis gave rise to what is now - thanks in good part to this film conceived and funded by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh - established as a monstrous miscarriage of justice.

Jason Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley jr and Damien Echols were 16, 17 and 18 respectively when they were charged with the killings.

They served more than 17 years in prison - Echols on death row. But on August 19 last year, the three were released on the basis of DNA evidence. Crucially - and grotesquely - they were not exonerated; under an obscure legal provision known as an Alford plea, they pleaded no contest while maintaining their innocence. In doing so, they surrender the right to bring suit for wrongful conviction; the state saves face; and the case remains closed.

It's this last bit that must hurt the most. For if the new film does something that the three-part HBO series Paradise Lost did not do, it mounts a powerful case against Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of Stevie Branch. As Variety's reviewer remarks, "where [the third Paradise Lost film] pointed a finger at Hobbs, West of Memphis shakes a fist".

Hobbs' tactical error was to sue Dixie Chicks' singer Natalie Maines (one of many celebrities, including Johnny Depp and Eddie Vedder, who took up the trio's cause) for defamation for her public utterances linking him to the case. The suit opened him to searching cross-examination and coverage of that case - which Berg goes into in electrifying detail - and to say it goes badly for him is to put it mildly.

Berg came on board the project at Jackson and Walsh's invitation - they were impressed with her clear-eyed and gripping 2006 debut Deliver Us From Evil about sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. And it does not escape her notice that the films' subjects have much in common: sexual abuse is a subject that generates much of the hysteria and moral panic that we see at work in this story.

"The thing that interested me was systemic abuse," she says, speaking by phone from Los Angeles. "The justice system and the Catholic Church have a lot in common and for me it was about exposing things that needed to get out."

The allegation that the boys were sexually abused and mutilated as part of a satanic ritual was a fiction that, once established, was self-sustaining.

"Had they figured out that that was not true in the beginning, they would never have convicted these guys. If you took that out of the mix and realised that it was actually post-mortem injury [caused by animal predation] they would have had a better chance of investigating it properly.

"But they were looking for someone who looked like Damien [Echols] because they thought it was a ritual torture case and they thought he was satanic. So everything fit together."

Watching the film, it is hard to believe how willfully blinkered the state remains as the evidence mounts that the trio are innocent. After the Alford - technically a guilty plea - the prosecutor expresses pleasure that "we have a result".

"Everything in the case file shows they railroaded these guys," says Berg. "They didn't report all the information they were privy to and one can only imagine what evidence was actually destroyed.

"But that prosecutor is running for Congress; the judge is a state senator. The stakes are too high for them. It's such a shame. These men are out of prison and obviously that's a good thing. But the parents of the kids are feeling so wronged by the state and Pam Hobbs is in fear for her life that her ex-husband is going to come after her."

Berg pays tribute to Jackson and Walsh who funded not just the film but the painstaking investigations that provided its factual basis.

"They were very busy on The Hobbit but they were always accessible to me. Their response time was unbelievable - minutes, seconds sometimes. But they let me make the film that I wanted to make."

[Reel]

Just giving the thread a little bump to let you guys know that Damien's book hit shelves yesterday:






definitely get your paws on that if you can. been hearing very good things



also, he gave an amazing interview on Opie and Anthony today. the best non funny thing I've heard come out of that show. I was surprised I'd never heard the dude talk for that long of a stretch before!


So if you're interested in that type of thing, you can find the interview here at 1:27:00

[Reel]

Damien Echols reddit AMA


"If you've ever been punched in the head, you know it doesn't register as pain immediately. A lot of times it's like a bright flash of light, or the sound of thunder, and you're incredibly disoriented. Listening to someone sentence you to death for something you know you didn't do is like being punched in the head repeatedly."

[Reel]

GREAT interview with Damien Echols on Jay Mohr's latest episode of Mohr Stories


Whatever your opinion of Jay Mohr is... just listen. No impressions to be found here.

[Reel]

Damien Echols, wife Lorri Davis and Amy Berg ( director of 'West Of Memphis') on The Treatment


West Of Memphis was great!!! The best of all the WM3 docs, although they all have a special place in documentary history. The first one is a very painful time capsule of the entire trial, the second was very speculative in accusing Mark Byers and demonizing him the same way that Damien was. Paradise Lost 3 and West Of Memphis deal with hard facts and evidence to really analyze what happened on that fateful day in 1993, and seem to bring to light who the real culprit is! It's just really sad that it took 20 years to accomplish this.

Highly recommended, good luck in your search for it.

[Reel]

Damien and his wife being a couple of creeps.