Episode 10: "An alien ... not like any human from Earth" The Case Against with Gary Meece #WM3 #DamienEchols #TrueCrime

Episode 10 of The Case Against examines the documented mental ills of young Damien Echols. #WM3 #DamienEchols #TrueCrime 

From "Blood on Black" by Gary Meece 

 

 

 

 

'AN ALIEN, FROM ANOTHER WORLD, NOT LIKE ANY HUMAN ON EARTH"

 

 

 

“I think at the time I probably suffered from what most teenagers suffer from, you know, just teenage angst, maybe depression, maybe sometimes even severe depression,” Damien Echols explained to CNN’s Larry King in 2007 about his adolescence, making it sound as if he was a typical moody teenager.

Echols painted a self-portrait of a fairly ordinary kid just a little out of the norm: “Things weren't exactly the same — especially in the South — as they are now. I believe that I probably stood out in the small town where we were living just because of the music I listened to, the clothes that I wore, things of that nature.

They considered me an oddity. So I drew attention. For example, one of the things they used against us at trial was the fact that I listened to Metallica. You know, back then, 15 years ago, that was something that was considered strange. Now you hear it played on classic rock stations. It's no big deal at all.”

The West Memphis police had more promising leads than who was listening to Metallica, which would have been a rich field for suspects. By 1993, Metallica was one of the top rock acts internationally, playing 77 shows worldwide on its “Nowhere Else to Roam” tour, including dates in such Southern towns as Johnson City, Tenn., Lexington, Ky.,  and Greenville, S.C. Five years earlier, Metallica had been one of the headliners for the Monsters of Rock Tour at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, just across the river from West Memphis. Two years before that, Metallica had opened for Ozzy Osbourne at the Mid-South Coliseum at the Memphis Fairgrounds.

Then as now, being a Metallica fan was no big deal and not something that would single anyone out as a murder suspect.

Echols was known around Marion and West Memphis for his carefully cultivated persona as a sneering specter in black stalking along the side of the road, reveling in his bad reputation as a practitioner of the dark arts.

What troubled authorities was not an immature poseur with Gothic pretensions but the deeply troubled youth behind the cliched facade.

 

In 2001, Dr. George W. Woods, a Berkeley, Calif., psychiatrist, attempted to clarify what was wrong with Damien Echols in a lengthy statement with an encompassing survey of Echols’ mental troubles and background, based greatly on suspect self-reporting.

 

Dr. Woods’ evaluation was requested by the Echols defense to determine if his mental illness affected his competency to stand trial. The defense, attempting to appeal the conviction, contended that antidepressants Echols was taking in 1992-1993 heightened his manic episodes, creating a “psychotic euphoria” that included hallucinations and the delusion that “deities” were transforming him into a “superior entity.”

 

The problems and limitations were longstanding, Dr. Woods explained. “Mr. Echols’ mother, Pamela, was adopted under mysterious circumstances and reared as the only child of her adoptive mother, who was trained as a practical nurse, and her adoptive father, who was an illiterate blue collar worker. When Mr. Echols’ mother began junior high school, she developed bizarre behavior that intensified as she grew older. She stopped attending high school because, in her words, it made her ‘crazy.’ She was unable to cope with the stress of school, stopped leaving her home entirely, and received psychiatric treatment. Her adoptive mother was forced to quit work in order to stay home and care for her. Mr. Echols’ mother, Pamela, married Mr. Echols’ father, Joe Hutchison, when she was only 15.

“Mr. Echols’ mother became pregnant with Mr. Echols during the first year of her marriage. Due to her age and mental condition the pregnancy was high risk and marked by numerous complications. According to her, the pregnancy ‘almost killed me.’ She remained so nauseated and ill that she lost 50 pounds over the course of nine months. Her diet was very poor; she was not well nourished. Her long, high risk labor necessitated a caesarean section from which she recuperated slowly.

“Not surprisingly, Mr. Echols had many problems as an infant and young child. He was ‘fretful and nervous and cried all of the time.’ His mother could not soothe him, and he slept fitfully for only three or four hours a night. At a very young age he began to demonstrate troubling behaviors. He repetitively banged his head against the wall and floor until he was three. ...

“Following Mr. Echols’ birth his mother suffered a miscarriage and soon after became pregnant with his younger sister. ... Mr. Echols’ mother was not able to care for her two small children, so she sent Mr. Echols to live with his maternal grandmother. Although Mr. Echols returned to live with his mother and father, his mother was very dependent on her mother for assistance in caring for Mr. Echols and, later, his sister.

Pamela Echols was never able to live on her own or care for her children without a great deal of support. She remained dependent on others for guidance and assistance with child rearing.

“Like Mr. Echols’ mother, his father, Joe Hutchi- son, also appears to have suffered from mental instabili- ty. Joe Hutchison is uniformly described as immature, self absorbed, cruel and capricious. He chronically neglected and abused his family. He berated his wife and son, set unrealistic expectations, called them degrading names, destroyed their most cherished possessions, terrorized them by threatening to break their bones and hurt them in other ways, and isolated them from community and family support by moving frequently -- sometimes impulsively leaving a residence only days or weeks after moving in. On one occasion, he forced his wife to leave her hospital bed to move with him to an- other city. He found sadistic pleasure in donning horrifying rubber masks of hideous monsters and appearing at his son’s bedroom window where he terrified Mr. Echols by making gruesome noises. In addition, Mr. Hutchison kept his family anxious with his fixation on the notion that others were trying to hurt him. For ex- ample, he was convinced ‘people were trying to run him down’ and constantly harangued his wife and son about the individuals who were trying to kill him. ...

“Neither mother nor child was equipped to deal with Joe Hutchison’s increasingly disturbed behavior. Fearing for her life and those of her children Pamela Echols finally found the courage to divorce Joe Hutchison in 1986.”

Damien was the product of two extremely unstable parents. Damien’s troubling and often bizarre behavior from an early age worried family members.

None of this suggested that the result would be a teenager whose only complaint would be your average case of ‘“the summertime blues.”

Dr. Woods continued: “Mr. Echols first recalls being overwhelmed by distressing and terrifying emotions in the second grade when he was positive there was going to be a nuclear war. He believed he ‘had to get back to where something told him he came from before the war started.’ As he grew older this obsession evolved into a driving force that consumed him and ‘took up every bit of brain space and brain power.’ He became convinced that he was ‘an alien, from another world, not like any human on earth.’”

Problems at home continued, Dr. Woods noted. “Mr. Echols’ mental deterioration spiraled against the backdrop of his unpredictable and troubled home life. His mother’s confusion and dependence continued.

Within days of divorcing Joe Hutchison she married Andy Jack Echols, an illiterate laborer who worked intermittently as a roofer. The family was extremely poor. They found a shack set in the middle of crop fields that were doused with pesticides at regular intervals. Despite the extremely unhealthy conditions, the Echols remained in the shack for five years. …"

Damien’s adoptive father, the since-deceased Jack Echols, gave his impressions of the young Damien on Sept. 4, 2000: “I married Pam Hutchison in 1986, shortly after she split up from her husband Joe. I had known her from the city through friends that we both had. I adopted both of her children, Michelle and Damien.

When I adopted Damien, his name was Michael and he had to change his last name to Echols and while he was doing that he changed his first name to Damien.

Damien was reading about a preacher named Damien who he liked and that is how he got his name.

“When we first got married, I lived in some apartments in Marion. Pamela and her children moved in with me and we stayed there for a few months. We finally moved into a house that needed a lot of work that was in the middle of a wheat field. Some folks might call it a shack, but it gave us a roof over our heads and a place to go home to. It was only 35 dollars a month and we needed someplace that did not cost very much. I fixed the house up as best I could. We had a toi- let in the bathroom and a sink in the kitchen, but they weren't hooked up right so we could not use them at first. I fixed up a pump that was supposed to pump in water, but it could only handle a little bit of water at a time. We learned to use as little water as possible. Since water was a problem we ate off paper plates so we did not have to do dishes. During part of the year, the water would quit running and we had to bring it in from outside. Most of the time we went to Pamela's mama's house and my children's houses and filled up gallon jugs. We tried to fill up enough at one time so that we only had to go every other day or so. We had to haul in wood to heat the place, and it got plenty cold in that part of Arkansas. I got paid okay when I was roofing but if there was ever a storm or other bad weather then I did not work and we did not get a paycheck for that week. I was the only one working in the family so it was real hard when I missed out on work.”

In his writings, Damien has described this portion of his childhood with great bitterness.

Jack Echols continued: “Damien was not in very good health while we lived at the old farm house. He was not able to go outside of the house because he got really sick. He had a real hard time with his breathing because of all the crops outside the house. Sometimes his eyes and throat swelled up and he could not swallow or see very good. The place right below his eyes turned to a darkish color kind of like he had been hit in the eye. I think the worst thing for Damien, though, were his headaches. From the time that we moved into that house, he would get terrible headaches. He asked me to squeeze his head so that his pain would go away. I would put my arms around his head, like in a head lock and I squeezed it. I did not want to hurt him but he always asked to squeeze harder, so I did. I think that the pain of the headache hurt more than the squeezing of his head. He got relief for a few moments while I did this but the headache always came back. He took some medicine to help with his breathing and to try and keep his swelling down and it did help a little bit but not near as much as we wanted it to work.

“Damien went through these spells where he could not sleep no matter how hard he tried to. He stayed up for three or four nights in a row without sleeping at all. These periods were very hard for him and by the end of the second day of no sleep, he was exhausted, fussy, and miserable. He cried a lot during these times and no one seemed to be able to help him with what he was upset about. We never could figure out what he was so upset about, but there was no doubt in my mind that he was as miserable as a little boy could be. His sister Michelle went in his room to talk to him and he sometimes fell asleep for a couple of hours or so and then he stayed up for another few days before getting anymore sleep. I was worried about Damien but I did not know what to do. I had to work during the day and every evening when I came home, I hoped that he would be asleep but he was normally still up. After many days of this, Damien finally slept for an entire night. Once he got a full night's rest, he went for a few weeks without having trouble sleeping. I always hoped that these times would not come back but they always did. It just about broke my heart to see how hard Damien tried to handle his problems, but he never was able to figure out what made him so sad.

“Damien never was a really happy boy. He got really sad sometimes and no one, including Damien, had any idea what was wrong. He cried really hard and I asked him what was making him so sad and he told me that he did not know. I never could figure out how someone could cry so hard and not know why they were sad and it was real hard to watch Damien go through this. Damien used to spend a few days in a row where he cried really hard. Sometimes it seemed like he was having trouble with his breathing because he cried so much. During these periods, Damien sometimes started laughing uncontrollably, just like one of those laughs that comes from the belly. It was very strange to me that he went from crying to laughing and I was confused about why he did this. Michelle and his mama tried to get him to stop being so sad but the only thing that ever seemed to help him was time. After a while, he would finally get to where he could stop crying and being so sad. Damien went through this on a regular basis.

“There were other times when Damien had so much energy he did not know what to do. He got really excited and kind of hyper and he always walked at these times. Damien walked to some of the parks in the area, to some of his friends houses, and across town. He told me that he sometimes got confused because he was sure where he needed to go but when he got there he felt like he was in the wrong place. I thought that he meant that he changed his mind about where he wanted to go but he told me that it was not like that. Damien did not decide where he was supposed to walk to but got a feeling about where he should be but, when he got where he was going, his feeling changed and he had to go somewhere else. He was real frustrated at these times and I did not know how to help him. I did not really understand what he meant about not knowing where he wanted to be. I sometimes felt that I should have done a better job trying to figure out what he was talking about and maybe then I could have made things a little better for him.

“I remember that Damien had some strange needs. Some things could never be out of place and had to be put in a place just so. He had the same pillow all his life and if it ever got misplaced, he howled his head off. Damien could not sleep with any other pillow for as long as I have known him. He had a lot of fear about the closet in his room and did not want any of his toys ever put in the closet. If his toys were in the closet, he panicked and thought they would die. Damien had these two fire hats; one was black and one was red. We had to keep the hats under the bathroom sink just so and right beside each other. If they were not in their place, it made him panic and afraid. …

“Sometimes Damien did not have any appetite and he did not eat for several days. It did not seem to matter what Pamela put on the table, he did not want to eat it. After a few days of not eating, Damien looked weaker and I could tell it was wearing on him. I wished that he would eat for his health but when he did not have an appetite there was nothing any one could do.”

Dr. Woods wrote: “Going from Joe Hutchison to Andy Echols was like going from the frying pan into the fire. In addition to increased isolation and poverty and being exposed to toxic pesticides, the Department of Human Services (DHS) records show that Andy Echols sexually abused Mr. Echols’ younger sister repeatedly until she mustered the courage to report him to her school counselor. DHS intervened and Pamela moved her children out of the shack. Yet, that was as much as Pamela Hutchison Echols was able to do to protect her children from the ravages of poverty, domestic violence, mental illness and sexual abuse. For, no sooner had she separated from Andy Echols than she, Damien and his sister moved in with Joe Hutchison, along with Joe Hutchison’s own mentally impaired son. The return of Joe Hutchison, whom Mr. Echols had not seen for years, coincided with Mr. Echols’ first psychiatric hospitalization.”

Echols’ mental troubles did not get better with age, wrote Dr. Woods. “In adolescence Mr. Echols became frankly suicidal. Unable to find a way out of his depression and hopelessness, he thought the only escape from his constant mental, physical and emotional pain was to kill himself. ... At about the age of 16, his mental illness took a sudden turn for the worst. Mr.

Echols describes feeling disorganized and out of control of his racing thoughts and emotions. He began to ‘laugh hysterically and make other people think I was crazy.’ For Mr. Echols ‘manic-ness’ meant ‘everything sped up and became frantic. Others called it hysterical,’ but Mr. Echols described it as ‘... being driven.’ When he ‘... went crazy, everything sped up.’ He ‘... had no thought process.’ He could not remember ‘... all of the weird things I did,’ but people would tell him about them lat- er and he was surprised by his actions. For example, he recalled a time when ‘some kids threw a hamburger up on the ceiling’ and he reached up, grabbed it, and ate it.

“His mania was interspersed with periods of ‘waiting’ interminably for ‘an abstract thing that might come in the blink of an eye.’ He was mentally confused and ‘did not know what he was waiting for.’ Mr. Echols ‘tried cutting’ himself to ‘feel different somehow’ and ‘to see if it would let some of the pain out.’ He felt ‘worn-out.’ During the one year of high school he attended in the ninth grade, he kept a journal at the instruction of his English teacher. It became more and more abstract -- ‘when I wrote about one thing it came out as something else. If I wrote about the moon, I was actually describing the grocery store.’

“Mr. Echols reported that the intense shift between depression and mania ‘literally drove me crazy.’ He remembered that ‘everything hurt, from the smell of water to green grass, brown grass.’ He was exquisitely sensitive to ‘the way people smelled’ and ‘the smell of water.’ He described manic episodes when his ‘brain rolled, like a TV that is not adjusted.’ He believed his brain rolled when it rained or when he was near a large body of water. The change of seasons had a strong effect on him also, especially fall and winter, and made ‘his brain roll constantly.’

“Mr. Echols’ overwhelming depression and other problems with mood during childhood and adolescence caused disabling disturbances in his emotions, thoughts, behavior and physical health. His sleep was irregular; he often had no energy to perform the simplest tasks; his thoughts were paralyzingly sluggish or racing at speeds he could not control. He felt caught in time, and thought it was hopeless even to think about feeling better or gaining control over his life. He ruminated about painful memories and insignificant events. He could not concentrate and became easily confused; it was impossible to make even simple decisions. He cried and ‘sobbed all the time without any understanding of what made ...’ him so sad. He had no ability to feel joy or pleasure. He became completely inconsolable and isolated, unable to relate to others in any meaningful way. He was inexplicably sensitive to physical sensations and reacted to the slightest changes in his environment. His body ‘hurt when the sun went up or when the sun went down, when it rained or when it did not rain.’ He could not stop or escape from the pain; it became ‘a throb that never went away.’ He despised himself and felt worthless; he was consumed with shame and despair.”

Dr. Woods added:

“Mr. Echols has been evaluated on three separate occasions by three different psychologists, each of whom administered a battery of tests. A prominent feature of each evaluation was the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which was administered on June 8, 1992; September 2, 1992; and February 20, 1994. The independent test results were quite consistent; all revealed valid profiles and strong indications of depression, mania, severe anxiety, delusions and psychosis.

“Test results for the June 8, 1992, MMPI reflected elevations on scores of psychotic thinking, including hallucinations, paranoid ideation, and delusions, as well as severe anxiety and other related emotional disturbances. The suggested diagnoses were schizophrenia, disorganized type; and bipolar disorder, manic. Individual responses on this test revealed that Mr. Echols was afraid of losing his mind, had bizarre thoughts, and had very peculiar experiences. Three months later, on September 2, 1992, a second MMPI was administered.

The test results very closely paralleled the findings of the earlier MMPI. Shortly before Mr. Echols’ trial began in 1994, he was administered the MMPI a third time for the purpose of identifying mitigating evidence. Like the other two, this MMPI revealed psychotic thought processes consistent with schizophrenia. Specific indicators of a thought disorder included mental confusion, persecutory ideas, acute anxiety, and depressed suicidal ideation. ...

“Prior to and during his murder trial, Damien Echols suffered from a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by enduring delusions, auditory and visual hallucinations and severe mood swings ranging from suicidal depression to extreme mania.”

Dr. Woods wrote: “Mr. Echols’ accounts of his symptoms since childhood are consistent with severe traumatic stress disorders and mood disorders. He reported periods of dissociation in which he ‘lost’ long spans of time. He also endorsed numerous physical problems, including frequent severe headaches (for which he was treated with prescription medications as a child), heart palpitations, difficulty breathing (he was diagnosed with and treated for asthma), and chronic sleeping problems. He reported having nightmares from which he awakened in a terrified state as often as twice a night. These symptoms persisted throughout his childhood and adolescence and grew to include periods of psychosis. …

“ Although he has received no psychiatric treatment on death row Mr. Echols stated his mental illness has improved significantly since his incarceration. ...

“Prior to and during his trial, Mr. Echols heard ‘voices that were not really voices’ and he ‘was not sure if it was a voice inside’ his head or ‘somebody else’s voice.’ He thought it ‘was nearly impossible’ to tell if it was his voice or somebody/something else. He experi- enced visual hallucinations that ‘were personifications of others. They were like smoke, changing shape but present and constant.’ The personifications had specific names and activities. One was ‘Morpheus Sandman’ who was a hybrid of a human being and a god. Another example was ‘Washington crossing the Delaware.’ Mr.

Echols saw Washington cross the Delaware with ‘Her- mes on the boat.’ Hermes was able to cross with Wash- ington because ‘Hermes was moving backwards through time.’ Mr. Echols came to believe that he was the same as these personifications, ‘made of the same material and from the same place.’

“Mr. Echols stated that at some point in his adolescence he came to believe he was ‘something that was almost a supreme being that came from a place other people didn’t come from.’ This transformation caused him to change physically, the pertinent changes appearing in his ‘appendages, hands, feet, hair.’ He acquired ‘an entirely different bone structure that was not human.’ He developed ‘stronger senses.’ His eyesight was better and his ‘ability to smell and taste changed.’ He had a different stance, moved his eyes and held his head differently. He grew his nails so that they would be a ‘perfect 1 ½ inches long.’ When he looked at his hands, he could see his bones. His weight dropped to 116 pounds, consistent with neurovegetative signs seen in mood disorders. This period of physical change be- gan the year before his arrest and lasted for about two years after he was on death row. …”

Echols’ lifelong struggle with mental illness took several violent turns in the year leading up to his arrest.

 

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