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The author of "The Case Against the West Memphis 3 Killers" follows new developments in the case, as well as other cases covered in various podcasts, televisions shows and documentaries, such as "Making a Murderer," "Truth and Justice," "The Staircase," and related news coverage, with a heavy emphasis on detailing misinformation and propaganda designed to subvert the judicial process.
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Sunday Jun 02, 2019
Sunday Jun 02, 2019
"Jessie took a knife out of his pocket and put a knife to my throat"
Even more so than Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr.’s name was linked to a number of violent episodes, often aimed at younger children.
John Earl Perschke Jr., a 14-year-old eighth-grader living at Lakeshore, confirmed to Detective Bill Durham on Sept. 6, 1993, that he had been attacked by Misskelley.
Perschke said the incident in January 1992 on the railroad tracks northwest of Lakeshore was witnessed by at least five others. “We heard someone coming up ...,” said Perschke’s handwritten statement. “We tried to hide. ... Jason, Damien, Jessie, Buddy and four other boys were with them and so Jessie shoved me against the side .... Jessie was first talking to me and then after a while Jessie took a knife out of his pocket and put a knife to my throat and he said would you like to be dead and so he shoved the knife harder and so he put the knife up and then Jessie hit me and Buddy too and ... I couldn’t tell who all was hitting me. Damien and Jason and the other boys were still on the railroad tracks and there he was yelling at me and then they all left. I walked home. I was coughing up blood.” The incident was another example as well of Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley hanging out together.
A girl at that scene, Tiffany Allen, was a 13-year-old Lakeshore resident when she gave a statement on Oct. 7, 1993, about another violent attack by Misskelley: “We had gotten into an argument and he had been spreading a rumor around that he was having sexual intercourse with me to all these people and I confronted him with it and he kept saying all this stuff so I slapped him ... For a year I didn’t hear anything from him and ... somebody came up to me and said that he had been looking for me and so I just didn’t worry about and one day I was walking through the park and he was at the road and .... he came up to me. He started running at me and my boyfriend stepped in front of me and he hit Carl. … He hit Carl and then he hit me and we started to walk away and he started coming after us again, so we ran ... until one of my friends’ parents came and got us and took me to my house.” She had a busted lip.
Ridge had a copy of the complaint dated March, 12, 1993, the day after, that gave essentially the same account.
Her mother, Gayla Allen, was present during the interview along with the child’s grandmother, Vera Hill. Gayla Allen told Ridge she had gone to the Misskelley home after the incident. Jessie Jr. ran out the front door while she was knocking on the back door. When she returned later, “OK, I knock on the door. Jessie Sr. was sitting in there and he said that he just could not do anything with his son.”
Tiffany said Susie Brewer, Misskelley’s girlfriend, had made threats: “She just said that if I put Jessie in court or in jail or anything like that I better watch my back because they were all going to be after me, and all this stuff, and um, his cousins confronted me with it, and everything and I never ever, ever heard nothing from Jessie. It was always somebody else.”
Tiffany, identified as a cult member by Misskelley, denied any direct knowledge of a Satanic cult at Lakeshore but said that if one did exist, it would be meeting at nighttime in a field behind the old sewage plant. Ridge reported: “Tiffany admitted that she was aware that a cult like group did exist in or around the trailer park but she did not know any of the members nor had she attended any of the meetings. She seemed afraid for her safety and reluctant to give any information concerning these activities because of the fears she had for her safety. Tiffany stated that she did not know Jessie to be a member of a Satanic group, however she also stated that she has been with people that she had heard were in the group and she was unaware that they were members as well.”
She also described a fight she had witnessed between Jason Baldwin and John Perschke. “John hit him hard and he started bleeding and then after the fight and everything Damien bends down, put his finger in, dips into the blood and then sticks it in his mouth.”
Misskelley repeatedly told a similar story, widely told around the trailer parks, that contributed to the belief that Echols was a blood-drinking Satanist.
Little Jessie had long-term problems with violent acting out.
Misskelley recently had been involved in an incident in which he threw a rock at a little girl aged about 5 or 6, hitting her in the head, prompting a call to police. He was on probation on those charges when he was arrested for the murders.
Years earlier, on May 4, 1988, when he was about 11, Misskelley had been accused of hitting another girl in the head with a rock or brick after Misskelley began beating up her abusive boyfriend; when Misskelley attacked her boyfriend, she had jumped in to defend the boyfriend.
Even earlier, Misskelley had stabbed a fourth-grade classmate in the mouth with a pencil.
His problems dated to early childhood; counseling and hospitalization had been recommended but there was never follow-through from his parents.
“Blood of Innocents” described a June 1987 report from a social worker based on a court-ordered exam.
The social worker quoted Shelbia Misskelley, his stepmother: “He gets so mad, he’s capable of hurting someone.” She said he had a habit of punching out windows, once requiring several stitches to his left hand. When blood was found on one of his shirts after his arrest, Misskelley said it was his own, shed after punching out soda bottles.
According to “Blood of Innocents,” the social worker’s report stated: “Mrs. Misskelley reported Jessie does not own up to his wrongs, that he always blames someone else. She denies Jessie becomes physical with she or her husband but will clinch his fist and take his anger out on someone else or something like breaking the window.”
Shelbia Misskelley told the social worker: “I don’t think he can control” his temper. “He needs some help.”
Years later, a former FBI profiler, apparently oblivious to the history of violence common to all three killers, weighed in on the case.
In “Law and Disorder,” John Douglas wrote, “Damien and Jason had no indicative violence in their pasts, and while Jessie was known for a hot temper, he channeled his aggressions into pursuits such as wrestling. … Though the three were raised in a culture in which corporal punishment was common, none were abused … In sum, I found … nothing in the behavioral backgrounds of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin or Jessie Misskelley to suggest that any were guilt of murder.”
Douglas was hired by the defenders of the killers. Douglas did not respond to questions about the case.
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