Replacing Burnett was Circuit Court Judge David Laser. Branded the West Memphis Three, the mens case was featured in multiple documentaries, earning them support from an array of high-profile musicians, celebrities and activists. Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, breaking news, sweepstakes, and more! The case status is Pending - Other Pending. eyewitness evidence surfaced 16 years later. That was more than the people deciding the case were able to hearthe presiding judge made the expert give most of his testimony without the jury in the courtroom because he questioned its relevance. Not everyone believes that the West Memphis Three are innocent of the killings of Michael Moore, Stevie Branch, and Christopher Byers. I had a friend who was working on 20/20, and they had done a film about exorcism in one of the magazine pieces, Nevins says. Blood and urine samples from both men were collected and sent to the West Memphis Police Department. After roughly 18 months of editing, Paradise Lost debuted at Sundance in January 1996 before heading out to other festivals. In 1994, the FBI said there was scant evidence that violent satanic crimes had ever occurred in America outside of a few isolated incidents, but that was long after TV hosts like Geraldo, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Oprah had spread moral hysteria about musicians weaving supposedly anti-Christian and occult messages into their songs, and long after wrongful convictions were handed down in the infamous McMartin Preschool sexual assault trials. Terry L. Hobbs, 63, of Caldwell, HOBBS, Terry L., passed on March 7,2021 at the age of 63. There are no events scheduled. This is a story of justice delayed and justice denied. Funeral Home Services for Terry are being provi. While Berlinger says that the work of people like Bakken and Sauls was more impressive than that of any celebrity, its undeniable that the famous and influential brought a megaphone and funding mechanism to this case that most never get. Terry Hobbs is apparently still missing : r/UnexplainedPhotos - reddit And they used that visibility to help raise funds for the defense. Theyve had several victories, including the case of Daniel Villegas, who was acquitted of capital murder in 2018 after a 25-year legal saga. Rather, they were fighting for something they believed in. Heavy metal music, role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, and horror movies were regarded as gateways to evil. Websleuths, an online forum for discussions about unsolved homicides and missing-person cases, has more than 100,000 members, and internet vigilantes have used social media and other online breadcrumbs to help track down actual criminals, such as the Canadian murderer and subject of the documentary Dont F*ck With Cats, Luka Magnotta. Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of West Memphis Three murder victim Stevie Branch, has denied any involvement in slayings of Branch and his two friends. Then youd try to find it, and it didnt exist, because when we went out to discussion groups, no one knew about the case yet., After learning that the teens were still in prison, Bakken, Sauls, and Pashley decided to make full use of the budding technological revolution. That November, he says, HBO agreed to give an honorariumroughly $5,000to the families on both sides. hangyermoon 2 yr. ago. She has since expressed her belief that her ex-husband was involved in the murders,citing the discovery of her son's favorite pocket knife in Terry Hobbs' belongings. The Alford plea is a seldom-invoked and somewhat confusing legal maneuver, but the basics are fairly straightforward. Its headlined by not only the films directors, but also Sheila Nevins, its executive producer and winner of 32 individual Emmy awards, more than any other person in history. At the suggestion of the police, Hutcheson hid microphones in her home and borrowed occult books from the library to inspire Echols' interest. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, defense attorneys working for the West Memphis Three filed multiple appeals on their behalf scrutinizing the lack of physical evidence against them. After new DNA evidence was discovered, the West Memphis Three were released from prison in August 2011 by agreeing to an Alford plea, which allowed him to proclaim their innocence while admitting the prosecution had enough evidence to convict him. Spotting a small, black tennis shoe in the water, Jones radioed for help. Sheriff's deputies in Calhoun County say Terry Hobbs was reported missing on Saturday, April 20, 2019. He knew that if he ever got out, hed want to do that in a more organized way. Hobbs denied seeing the boys that night and questioned why eyewitness evidence surfaced 16 years later. Much of Cecil Hotel focuses on the amateur investigators who turned coincidences into conspiracy theories, ultimately accusing an innocent person of her death. Due to marital problems stemming from Stevies death, the couple divorced in 2004, reported CNN. When we were driving in the car a lot, wed play a lot of the Metallica album Master of Puppets, says Alex Sinofsky, who became a doctor instead of getting behind the camera himself. Example video title will go here for this video. Jessie took a polygraph. Its first season ostensibly focused on the disappearance of a Georgia beauty queen, but it spent nearly as much time digging through the salacious details of the victims love life and dipping into amateur psychology as it did looking at evidence. Covered in wounds, all three showed signs of having been beaten. The knife was thrown into the lake by Baldwin's mother a year before the murders. WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. But inside, he was just another prisonerBaldwin didnt know who he could trust. Investigators never found any evidence that tied him, Jason Baldwin, or Jessie Misskelley to the murders of the boys, Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers. Terry Roland Hobbs <p>Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021.</p> <p>Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs .Terry graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. Today, Berlinger calls Revelations the weakest of the three films in the trilogyadvocacy in search of a story as opposed to the in-the-moment, on-the-ground approach of the first Paradise Lost and the in-depth exploration of new evidence in 2011s Purgatory. Terry Hobbs stated both family and co-workers believed he was guilty from day one and continued to believe him guilty after the trial and convictions of the West Memphis Three. Its evidence that Damien Echols attorneys wanted to do new DNA testing on. The sheer mountain moving amount of money it cost to prove the obvious innocence of Jessie, Jason, and Damien still staggers me. The Latest CD: 92 YEARS YOUNG: JAMMIN' AT THE GIBBS HOUSE. (WMC) - Its a case that has captured the nation and certainly the Mid-South. Case Number &colon; 2:21-BK-21177. But Berlinger also believes that the sequel is important for documenting the power of citizen activism. The story felt personal for all of them, but especially Sauls: He had grown up in Florida and Georgia as an outcast obsessed with art and reading some of the same books Damien Echols had. As detailed by The Hollywood Reporter in 2011, Jackson and Walsh helped fund key investigations for the West Memphis Three's defense during the last seven years of their incarceration. Terry Wayne Hobbs was born on May 21st, 1958. He graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. He says his dad and Berlinger werent seeking notorietydocumentaries certainly werent a means to get rich or famous in those days. The reason for the credit gets less curious when hes asked about it: He was a huge Metallica fan. Terry Hobbs passed away in Nampa, Idaho. A hair found on one of the ligatures to bind the boys, however, was found to be consistent with the DNA of Hobbs, according to court documents obtained by Oxygen.com. That story line would make up the bulk of 2000s Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, a rare sequel for a documentary, especially before the streaming era proved that true crime series like Making a Murderer and The Staircase could maintain audience interest for years. I wouldn't do something like that. Now, evidence from the case of the West Memphis Three is either missing or destroyed. But the lawyer quickly noticed inconsistencies in Misskelleys purported confession. Over the course of the initial investigation, a number of alternate suspects and scenarios came to light that were largely ignored or otherwise dismissed by authorities. Boxful of Nightmares is the personal memoirs of Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the children murdered. Creator Payne Lindsey, a filmmaker with no previous experience investigating crimes, had no connection to the victim before he discovered her while Googling cold cases in hopes of finding his own version of runaway successes like Serial and Making a Murderer. After 18 years in prison, the West Memphis Three were finally free, but not exonerated. No knives and not weapons were used," says Jo Lynn McCaughey. Hobbs said, I still believe in my heart that Jessie, Jason, and Damion Echols are responsible for what happened to our children., He added, You look at what happened and then you wonder, what if this did not happen, where would our boys be today? So with less urgency surrounding full exoneration and no documentary cameras rolling, the question 25 years later becomes: Who is paying close enough attention to the case to pick up the fight? $10,000 reward for new information leading to a missing man - WJHG He had been expecting a visitation, but was instead led to the prison chapel office, where inmates were typically brought only if someone close to them had died. Hold for Elkhart County. (Echolswho is in better health today, though his eyesight has degenerated and he has premature arthritis from his time in solitary confinementin particular has maintained a relatively public life, through the five books hes published, performing magic for Patreon subscribers, and making TV appearances to discuss other cases he sees as similar to his.) Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of Branch who was under suspicion but never charged, said he welcomes new DNA testing. He was handed the phone. It was born out of genuine admiration for the fact that these guys took the time out of their lives to dedicate, to go down to Arkansas, to build a website, to really step out of their lives, Berlinger says. "I knew from when I was real small that people were going to know who I was," Echols said in 1994. of Auburndale, FL passed away Monday, August 16, 2021. Baldwin remembers grabbing a Mountain Dew and a burrito and sitting down, still unaware of what he was about to watch. Sinofsky family connection aside, Berlinger says this was an important part of the film: The prosecutors had put heavy metal lyrics and Baldwins and Echolss Metallica fandom on trial as much as the teens themselves. Explore. New access to evidence thought destroyed in 1993 'West Memphis - KAIT (At one point, Sauls says, it landed on Yahoos list of the top 100 websites.) They asked to see a cut, and they immediately said, Not only are we going to let you use all that music, but were not going to charge you anything for it., Metallica would be the first celebrities to throw their support behind the West Memphis Three, but they were far from the last. To learn more, watch The Forgotten West Memphis Three on Saturday, March 28 and Sunday, March 29at 8/7c on Oxygen. While thats cooled from the days of concerts in the shadows of the Arkansas Supreme Court building, the documentaries still live on HBO Max, where they pull in new viewers to this day. (Shortly after Villegass acquittal, Baldwin had something of a full-circle moment with his client: He took him to a Metallica show in El Paso, Texas, where they hung out backstage on the invitation of Lars Ulrich.). June 29 Terry Hobbs, 34, 1718 Spyglass Lane, Mishawaka, booked on a warrant from Elkhart County. Almost 30 years ago, three eight-year-old West Memphis boys were found murdered and three teenagers were charged in the murders. One person who has come up in the investigation is Terry Hobbs, although police have never named him a suspect or charged him in connection with the case. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more. Luminol tests, which reveal the hidden presence of blood, were not performed at the scene until six days later. Now, he was being asked to consider something that he never dreamed he would: accepting a plea deal that would set the West Memphis Three free, but require them to give up their quest for exoneration. Lying in the open air in near 80-degree temperatures accelerated the decomposition of the bodies. In 2009, three witnesses filed affidavits claiming they saw Hobbs with the murdered boys the night they disappeared, contradicting Hobbs previous statements to police, according to CNN. While police had focused on Echols and Baldwin in the intervening weeks because of their reputation, the arrests came largely because of a confession by Misskelley, which was leaked to the largest newspaper in the area, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and ran under the banner headline Teen describes cult torture of boys. At a press conference shortly after the arrests, the lead investigator was asked how confident he felt about the case on a scale of 1-10. He was 56. Cinemorgue Wiki. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs. West Memphis 3 / Terry Hobbs 2022 Update New Scott 94.5K subscribers Subscribe 241 Share 20K views 8 months ago https://www.crimeonline.com/2022/05/. This is before considering the 2013 dramatized movie based on the events (and Leveritts book), Stidhams plans to release the book Harvest of Innocence, and how elements of the case made their way into True Detectives third season. Terry Lee Hobbs Obituary (1964 - 2021) | Auburndale, FL - Echovita Other details that have come to light include that many wounds on the slain children, originally attributed to human bites and/or a serrated blade, were the result of animals feeding on the bodies. A source said the evidence was transferred to shipping containers where there was a fire, and some of the evidence was destroyed. According to Griffis, black hair, black T-shirts, and black jeans were signs that a kid was in league with the devil. Berlinger and Sinofsky began to take notice. A spiritual successor to Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line, and a forerunner of more recent documentaries like Making a Murderer, the film stands today as the most affecting examination of one of the most studied legal cases in U.S. historyone that put heavy metal lyrics and black T-shirts on trial and helped lay the groundwork for the current thinking around false confessions. And the seemingly endless stream of threats against them and the frequent clashes with Mark Byers did nothing to dissuade them. Quickly, however, he realized Berlinger and Sinofsky were taking a different approach. Nobody was saying, This is an outrageous case that needs to be looked into.. On the evening of May 5, 1993, 8-year-olds Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore went missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. When the case was given the option for DNA evidence, everyone but Terry Hobbs said yes. Make a life-giving gesture William Holford Griffiths. But the list of people who have looked at the facts of the case and come away believing Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley are innocent is long. But they were saying that he was about to die.. 21, 2021 at 1:51 PM PDT CALHOUN COUNTY, Fla.. In West Memphis, Hobbs worked as an ice cream delivery man and Hicks worked at a restaurant. Jesse was gonna take it anyway. Attorneys for Echols have submitted a formal request to inspect the records that are available, involving cataloguing of the evidence as well as information on the loss of the evidence. Terry Hobbs Net Worth. Few celebrities at the time did as much as Henry Rollins, however. As part of the deal, they cannot file wrongful-conviction lawsuits, which both Berlinger and Baldwin say couldve cost the state tens of millions of dollars. Mojo had a different idea of what might get the man he affectionately called J.B. out of prison. Except this was 1996, and home internet was still in its infancy. there are no assignments to cushion your grade, so either pass or fail. October 14, 2017: #26 on the JazzWeek chart! McCaughey says her sister is very upset. In 2013, Jackson and Damien Echols produced a fourth documentary about the case. Terry Hobbs was born in 1958 and grew up in Northern Arkansas. Essentially, it allows the accused to assert their innocence while pleading guilty, conceding that the prosecution has an overwhelming amount of evidence to procure a conviction. But they werent just voices in the growing choir calling for the West Memphis Threes releasethey were leading the movement. Terry Roland Hobbs Obituary More than 2,500 people attended and the story dominated the local press for days. Terry Hobbs Obituary - Death Notice and Service Information The only possible culprits were 18-year-old Damien Echols, a poor teen with an interest in the occult and a record of mental illness, his friend Jason Baldwin, a quiet kid whose talent for art tended toward dark subjects, and Jessie Misskelley, a 17-year-old misfit with an IQ of 73. The level of corruption in the American justice system is glaring and sickening.. Leave your condolences to the family on this memorial page or send flowers to show you care. He could have been me, he told Rolling Stone in 2011. The prosecutor would later say, There was a lack of physical evidence to tie anyone or anything to the crime scene, while the lead investigatorthe same one who told the press the case was an 11 out of 10would concede, Youve got a lot of circumstantial evidence is what youve got. You still dont really know what happened to these kids. Terry Hobbs is absolutely terrible. 2011 Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (Documentary) Self - Stepfather of Stevie Branch. 2012 West of Memphis (Documentary) Self - Steven Branch's Stepfather. Terry Hobbs - Biography - IMDb The pair abruptly fled to Oceanside, Calif., four days after the murders. We are sad to announce that on September 11, 2021 we had to say goodbye to Terry Hobbs of Sweetwater, Texas. With the area secured, Detective Bryn Ridge volunteered to search the ditch. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! Who Killed The Forgotten West Memphis Three? In an email to The Ringer, Rollins stressed that inaction was not an option., Myself and the many people I worked with did what we could to help bring attention to the case and generate much needed financial aid, he wrote. Hes subdued when discussing the facts of the case, but he comes alive while recounting his work with the Jaycees while in prison, or buying Metallicas Black Album when it came out in 1991. The Legacy of 'Paradise Lost' & the West Memphis Three - The Ringer He began his career in the. Terry Hobbs Breaks His Silence | WREG.com I didn't even comprehend that the situation could get this serious that it can go this far. Once there got to be this global pressure, and there was a big concert here with really big-name musicians within a mile of our Supreme Court building, things started suddenly to change, she says. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. But further down, in the section for the music department, theres a curious inclusion of a consultant who never worked in film again: Alex Sinofsky, the son of Bruce who was 12 at the time of Paradise Losts release. The idea of killer teens in the Christian South, not any greater sense of purpose, was mainly what intrigued Sheila Nevins, then the head of HBOs documentary division, when she spotted a story about the case on the inside pages of The New York Times. A year after the DNA results were released, Hobbs sued Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines for defamation, claiming she implied he was a murderer on the bands website and at a 2007 rally, according to The New York Times. Hide Self (6 credits) 2012 48 Hours: Hard Evidence (TV Series) Self. Their bikes were found by a pipe nearby. A statement he made to the producers of Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills did little to help his public image. How do you measure the legacy of Paradise Lost, which is one of the best reviewed documentaries of all time and considered among the most influential, but whose mission is only partly complete? Yet, Judge David Burnett accepted Griffis as an expert. Reaching its apex in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Satanic Panic was a wave of paranoia rooted in the belief that Satanic cults intent on corrupting the souls of the young had infiltrated American society. Its like ripping a Band-Aid off a wound. This family in-fighting led to him shooting his brother-in-law. " Every crime, no matter what it is, gets blamed on Satanism.". By the end of Paradise Lost, you cant believe they were found guilty, Bakken says. This is a brand new website dedicated to the internationally famous musician, Terry Gibbs. However, within the first crucial hours after the bodies were discovered, mistakes were made at the crime scene that negatively impacted the investigation. It just needed a catalyst. Local 24 News EXCLUSIVE: Terry Hobbs on his new memoir on the West Memphis 3. It's one. Events. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs .Terry graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. There also were issues with other details he provided, including how the victims were bound and whether the boys were raped.