“I believe it was Henry Rollins, also a longtime supporter and friend of Damien’s, who said it, and it’s absolutely true: it could have been any of us,” [Johnny] Depp said of the circumstances surrounding the West Memphis Three’s wrongful imprisonment. “Because, what, you look different? [The authorities] put their eyeball on Damien and didn’t take it off, even though everything around them — they didn’t look at the insane amount of holes in the case. They just looked at the guy with the black T-shirt and the long black hair. It was a witch hunt.”

If you aren’t familiar with Damien Echols, if you aren’t familiar with the West Memphis Three, if you aren’t familiar with gross legal injustice, perhaps you should read this book.  Life After Death is Damien Echols’ new memoir about his time spent in the Arkansas prison system, outlining his stay on death row.  

Controversy and public outcry has kept these convicted murderers in the news. There was a three part documentary, Paradise Lost: the Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.  These documentaries worked to inform the public of the horrendous injustice that three boys from West Memphis, AR were given.  As exampled earlier, celebrities rallied to the cause.  Even Metallica allowed their music to be used in the film, the first time any of their songs have appeared in a movie.  What was displayed was incompetence on the part of the police, and the legal system in general.  What Henry Rollins is saying via Johnny Depp is these poor young men were convicted of a crime because they looked different.  They didn’t conform to cultural norms, and the police took that as a threat to the community.  Because they had long hair and wore black, they were probably murderers.

With that aside, with that understanding, imagine living on death row for having long hair and dressing in black.  Imagine a situation that starts when you are a youthful eighteen year old and lasts eighteen years.  Imagine that you are in a small room by yourself for twenty-three hours a day because you had long hair and wore black.  I can’ t speak for you, reader, by I don’t know how I would take it.  I can’t imagine the anger that would boil inside me.  Honestly, it is terrifying to think of.  What happens when you are wrongly convicted?  It’s one of the many reasons I don’t believe in capital punishment: innocent people should NEVER die.  (Ahem.  That goes for drone strikes too, Mr. President.)

Keeping all of that in mind, Damien Echols was a high school dropout.  Damien Echols didn’t make it to the tenth grade.  Yet, when faced with the unimaginable fear of wrongful conviction and death row, he found “incredible reserves of patience, spirituality, and perseverance that kept him alive and sane while incarcerated for nearly two decades.”  While in prison he married, and became an ordained Buddhist minister. Faced with such gross tragedy, unable to leave a tiny cell, Echols continued to live his life.  And this high school dropout, convicted murderer, has written a book that was born compelling and grew into a “riveting, explosive classic of prison literature.”

Read this inspiring tale.  Find peacefulness in the worst situation.  Listen to Damien Echols on the September 25 episode of On Point with Tom Ashbrook here.  Happy reading, y’all.

Life after Death by Damien Echols, Blue Rider Press, September 2012, $26.95, First Edition Signed.

by Simon

Everyone has heard about John Wayne Gacy.  He’s the guy who killed thirty three young boys in the mid and late seventies in “Chicagoland”  and then buried them in the crawl space beneath his house.  Oh, and he was also a professional clown for hire named Pogo.

I’ve read a couple of books about Gacy before but this one definitely stands in a class all its own.  As a matter of fact, this is by far the best written and most entertaining true crime book I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot of them).  What makes this book stand out is that unlike most serial killer/true crime books this one isn’t written by a journalist, psychologist, family member of the accused or the accused himself.  Defending a Monster was written by Sam Amirante, the lawyer whose task it was to defend Gacy against the state of Illinois in what would become one of the most notorious trials of all time.  I’d never thought about it before but who better to relay such a story than the defendant’s lawyer?  Genius.

“‘Sam, could you do me a favor?’

A telephone call, seven short words, a simple-enough request.  That’s how it all began.

I knew the guy on the other end of the line.  Everyone on the Northwest Side did.  He was a political wannabe, one of those guys that was always around, talking about all the big shots he knew, hoping that the importance of others would rub off on him, a nice-enough guy – maybe a little pushy, a bit of a blowhard, telling tall tales, but still, a nice-enough guy.”

With this book you get a whole different type of story than with most like it.  It’s not all just dates and facts and confessions.  This is conversations, letters and notes that an accused serial killer would only share with his lawyer.  The insight and observations are incredible.

“‘This boy,’ he said, gently tapping the picture with his fingertip, ‘This boy is dead.  He’s dead.  This isn’t the boy from the drugstore…but this boy is dead.  He is in a river.’

Time switched to slow motion.  I looked at Stevens and then back at the pathetic, broken lump of a man in front of me.  I guess I had some suspicions; if I was honest, they were there, nagging questions put there by Sullivan and other, the mayor.  They were all so sure.  But until that moment, I wanted to believe my client.  I wanted him to tell me that he had driven Rob to the Greyhound station or that Rob was staying with Rossi or Cram and that Gacy had given him a job and that Rob wanted to leave home.  Something.  Something else.

The gravity of his statement was beginning to register.  I looked at Stevens again, puzzled, then back at Gacy.  I was shaking my head.  Something wasn’t right.  ‘What the fuck are you talking about, John?  That is Robby Piest, the Piest kid, the kid from the drugstore, the kid that everyone has been looking for.  That’s him.’

Gacy looked at me.  His sagging, dead, watery eyes pierced me.

‘So…many,’ he softly murmured, barely a whisper.”

This book isn’t for just anyone out there but if you are indeed a fan of the true crime genre I promise you’ll not be sorry you picked up this book.

by Zita