Episode 26: Domini Teer, Part 2

"WE NEVER WALKED ON THE SERVICE ROAD. EVER."

 

 

 

Domini Alia Teer, pregnant girlfriend of Damien Echols, gave an account of May 5 that placed her safely off the scene from the horror at moonrise. Domini, a slender redhead, first was questioned by police with Jason Baldwin and Echols the Sunday after the killings in the front yard of the Baldwin trailer at 245 W. Lake Drive South. Domini told Shane Grif fin and Bill Durham “that on 5/5/93 she, Damien and Jason Baldwin were at Jason’s uncle’s house somewhere around Dover Road mowing the lawn in the early afternoon. Then stated that she got home around 6:00 pm and was there the rest of the night (verified by mother).” Durham reported: “ … Damien phoned his father to pick them up at the laundrymat at Missouri and N. Worthington. They said they were picked up at 6:00PM and Damien’s father took Jason and Dominic home and Damien went home.” Bryn Ridge interviewed Domini at West Memphis Police Department headquarters on May 10, with Mary Margaret Kesterson of the Arkansas State Police sitting in.. Ridge reported: “Domini claimed that on Wednesday 5-5-93 that she went with Damien, Jason, and Ken to Jason’s uncle’s house to watch as Jason mowed his yard. Domini and Damien went to the laundry where they called for Damien’s mother to pick them up. Domini stated that the time was about dark or just before it got dark. Domini stated that she was dropped off at her house and Damien went home. Domini stated that (she) called Damien and that he told her he was tired and was going to sleep. Domini’s mother stated that Domini came in when Time Trax was on TV on Wednesday evening. “Domini stated that on Thursday she and Damien had an argument and took out stress on each other. Domini claimed that the conflict was to do with Jason Baldwin & his girl friend.” Notes indicated the mowing was around 5:45 and that Damien’s mother picked them up around 7:45 to 8 p.m. Also mentioned were teenagers in the local witch cult, Chris (Littrell), Murray (Farris) and Deanna Holcomb. Discrepancies quickly grew in various accounts of the day. For example, police first were told that Damien’s father picked them up, then Damien’s mother, and finally the whole Echols family was in the car. “Time Trax” started at 7 p.m., well before dark. Sunset was at 7:49 p.m. In a later statement, Domini said she got home even earlier, perhaps as early as 5:30. In later statements, she made no mention of a phone call in which Echols claimed he was tired and going to sleep; her description of that conversation is the single instance in which one of the four girls Damien claims he was talking to on the phone actually said they had a phone conversation with Damien in the late afternoon/ early evening. Echols and his family also claimed to have gone to the home of family friends at varying times that evening and afternoon, but well before 8 p.m. Domini took a nap not long after she got home, and then argued with Damien starting around 10 about Baldwin’s supposed girlfriend calling Echols. Police con fiscated a notebook from Domini that contained dark-themed poems with themes of death and suicide. Full of typical teenage angst, they were much of a piece with her boyfriend’s morbid musings in his “Book of Shadows.” Teer gave an extensive statement to John Fogleman on Sept. 10 under a subpoena. Also in the room were her appointed attorney, Gerald Coleman; her mother, Dian Teer, and Gary Gitchell of the WMPD. She explained she dropped out in the 10th grade because she was pregnant and described how she had moved around among various local addresses, her father’s home in Illinois and California. Fogleman asked Domini about Jennifer’s relationship with Damien. Domini explained: “Jason was going out with a girl named Holly and Holly was Jennifer’s best friend.” Fogleman: “Uh huh. Is that what Damien told you?”
Domini: “Yeah.”
Fogleman asked: “Do you know Heather?”
Domini: “Yeah, that was another one of Jason’s girlfriends.”
Fogleman: “How many girlfriends does Jason have?”
Domini: “Jason started going out with the Holly girl, and then him and her didn’t get along or whatever and they broke up and then he started going out with Heather.”
Holly George had no interest in Baldwin and had never been his girlfriend.
Echols, 18-year-old prospective father of Domini’s child, was talking on the phone to his “other” girlfriend, 12-year-old Jennifer Bearden, every day, and was using supposed phone calls from Holly as cover.
Domini described her day on May 5 for Fogleman, saying Echols had not spent the night previously, and that “a friend of his, Ken,” had skipped school and come over at about 7 a.m. They “sat around and waited for Jason and Damien ... Damien got there around 1, and then me and him and Ken just kind of sat around waiting for Jason to get out of school.”
Fogleman asked: “Alright. Is this something that y’all had planned before, about getting together?”
Domini: “Yeah, we had planned it a day before.”
Fogleman: “Alright, what had y’all planned on doing?”
Domini: “Well, we planned on Jason skipping school, and just us hanging around, like at the mall and stuff. ... And Jason went to school that day so we had to wait for him.”
She said school got out at 3:15, Baldwin arrived about 3:25.
Though Damien went to Lakeshore virtually every day to see Jason and Domini, that particular day was somehow different. They had a plan for May 5, just as Damien, Jason and Jessie had a plan.
Fogleman: “ ... And after he got there, what did y’all do?”
Domini: “We walked back to Jason’s house ...”
She said Jason stopped off at his home before coming to her trailer. His little brothers, Matthew and Terry, were home. “... And he called his mom, and his mom told him he needed to go over to his uncle’s and mow the lawn. ... So, we all got up and we all walked over to his uncle’s.”
Fogleman: “Okay. About what time did y’all get to his uncle’s?”
Domini: “Um ... 4 o’clock ... Something like that. .... We walked, you know on the highway, not the service road, but the highway ... We walked over the interstate, through the Wal-Mart parking lot. ... We walked around the side of the building towards the back ... and straight down to his uncle’s house on those back streets. ... It didn’t take us very long, about 10 or 15 minutes.”
Fogleman: “... You got there about 4 or 4:15, then what did you do?”
Domini: “... Jason mowed the lawn ... We sat there for a while watching him mow the lawn, and then me and Damien got up and walked to the laundromat. ... Damien said he had to call his mom. ... To come pick him up. I don’t know, he just called his mom.”
When they left, Baldwin was still mowing, having circled the yard about three times. They left Ken there as well. They sat on the back porch while Baldwin’s uncle got the lawnmower out of the shed.
They called Echols’ mother “about 5 or 5:30, something like that,” and his mother and his sister picked them up. After seeming uncertainty about whether Joe Hutchison was there, she said he was driving.
Domini: “They took me home ... around like 5:45, 6:00. In between there.”
Fogleman: “Do you remember what was on TV when you came in?”
Domini: “I didn’t look at the TV. I walked the dog. ... I just came in and I sat at the kitchen table just for a couple of minutes, and then I got bored, and then I got up, got the dog’s leash and walked to the store with the dog.” The walk was “probably about 10 minutes.”
When she got back, “‘TimeTrax’ was fixin’ to come on. ... And I took a shower, cause Mom had told me what happened while ‘TimeTrax’ ended. Til the end of ‘TimeTrax’ she had told me what happened. ... Then I got out of the shower, and I laid in bed for a while, and Damien called, and me and him bickered back and forth for almost an hour, and then she made me get off the phone.”
Fogleman: “What time did he call?”
Domini: “About 10.” Domini couldn’t account for Echols’ whereabouts from about 6 to about 10 p.m.
Fogleman: “What were y’all bickering about?”
Domini: “Jason, you know, Jason’s girlfriend Holly, called uh, kept calling Damien, crying about Jason and I didn’t like her calling Damien crying to him about Jason.”
Fogleman followed up: “OK, I thought that Jason and Holly had already broken up and he was dating Heather.”
Domini: “Uh uh. He’d ... No. He was going out with Holly, and just a little bit before y’all arrested him, he had started going out with Heather. But, him and Holly were still ... They weren’t going out, but they were just seeing each other .... Cause she was supposed to be breaking up with some other boyfriend while they was trying to go out.”
Fogleman: “Uh huh. OK. And y’all argue about that?”
Domini: “Uh huh.”
Fogleman: “OK, why?”
Domini: “Because she was crying to him, and ... and he was just like, all poor Holly, and then I come crying to him, it wasn’t all poor Holly. It was, he would get mad because I was having mood swings all the time, and I would just (inaudible) ... and he got mad about it, because he didn’t understand. We kept trying to explain to him that I was (inaudible) to do that. ... And I got mad because he was sympathizing with Holly, and I didn’t want Holly calling him at all.”
Gitchell asked: “How come you weren’t together that afternoon? You’re usually together all the time.”
Domini: “He was just at home. He had to go to the doctor that morning.” That did not explain why they were not together longer that afternoon.
Fogleman: “Did he spend the night that night at your house?”
Domini: “That Wednesday.”
Fogleman: “Uh huh. Did he?”
Domini: “No. He didn’t spend the night that Wednesday.”
Fogleman: “How about Tuesday?”
Domini: “Now, Tuesday, yes. Thursday. Thursday he spent the night because we got into another argument because of the same people and I wanted him to spend the night with me that night cause …”
Fogleman: “Cause you were mad at him?”
Domini: “No, we weren’t mad at each other. We got back. ... We were OK after that. But I still wanted him to stay with me.”
Asked again about Tuesday, she said, “Yeah, he did spend the night Tuesday, cause he went home Wednesday morning ... cause he had a doctor’s appointment.” She said he did not spend the night Friday. Other accounts placed Damien at home on Tuesday.
Domini said Damien spent the night on Thursday. Damien has said he did not spend the night at Domini’s on May 6.
Fogleman backtracked, attempting to clear up confusion about Tuesday night and Wednesday morning: “Now what about Tuesday night, I wasn’t clear on that. I thought you said he did, and then I thought you said he didn’t and so I wasn’t clear on Tuesday night.”
Domini: “On Tuesday? Um … yeah, he did spend the night Tuesday, because he went home Wednesday morning … cause he had a doctor’s appointment.”
Damien would have to have left very early on Wednesday, as Ken showed up around 7 a.m.
She said Echols did not spend the night Friday. Instead, “I spent the night with him Friday.”
Asked about being seen by the Hollingsworth family on the service road, she said, “We never walked on the service road. Ever.”
Fogleman: “Y’all walk on the interstate?”
Domini: “Yeah.”
Fogleman: “Alright, you were not with him. Has he told you that he was with Jason walking around that night?”
Domini fudged again: “I don’t know. Number one he doesn’t walk on the service road, whether he’s with Jason or he’s with me. He just doesn’t walk on the service road because it’s quicker to go over the interstate.”
Fogleman: “OK. Did he tell you that he went walking with Jason anywhere that night?”
Domini paused.
Fogleman: “You quit looking at me. He didn’t tell you that?”
Domini: “No. ... He didn’t tell me he was walking with Jason anywhere at night, cause usually Jason has to be in the house. Cause Jason’s mom is strict. ... Strict about Jason coming in. Because usually she’s at work and she wants him to take care of his little brothers ... So, he usually doesn’t go anywhere at night.”
Fogleman also talked to Dian Teer, Domini’s mother, on Sept. 10. Dian, disabled from a stroke then, has since died.
Age 44 and legally separated from her husband, Dian had lived in Lakeshore since February with her daughter, six cats and a dog in a filthy trailer.
She had known Echols “about two years” and met him “when he started going out with Domini.” He lived with them for several weeks “waiting for his parents to come back from Oregon.”
Fogleman: “Did Damien ever say anything about why he had left Oregon?”
Dian: “No.”
Fogleman: “He never did tell you anything about that?”
Dian: “He came back to be with Domini.” Fogleman: “That’s what he said?”
Dian: “Yes.”
Fogleman: “OK. Did he tell you that?”
Dian: “Yeah.”
Echols left Oregon after being thrown into a mental institution.
Fogleman: “ ... After they came back, has he lived with y’all any?”
Dian: “No. Sometimes he would come over, and they would stay the night, and sometimes she would go over to his parents and stay the night with them.”
Fogleman: “Now, in May, first week in May. Do you remember Damien coming over any?”
Dian: “Yes, just about every day.”
Fogleman: “OK. Was it during that first week in May, would it be morning, afternoon, or would it vary?”
Dian: “It would vary.”
Fogleman: “OK. Uh ... Did Jason ever come over?”
Dian: “Yes, usually he would be with Damien.”
Fogleman: “Alright on the first Wednesday in May, it was May the 5th, uh, did Damien come over that day?”
Dian: “Yes.”
She said he came over about 1 o’clock and stayed “until Jason got out of school.”
Fogleman: “ ... Damien didn’t go get him or anything, Jason just came on over?”
Dian: “Yeah. They had already made plans the day before.”
Fogleman: “OK. So Jason and Damien had already made plans to get together?”
Dian: “Yeah.”
Fogleman: “OK. Did Damien tell you that?”
Dian: “I was there usually when they made the plans ... cause they came over a lot in the afternoon.”
Again, the “plans” came up, but it was not clear how a day with “plans” differed from “just about every day.”
Dian said the teenagers spent 15 or 20 minutes at her trailer after Jason arrived before they left.
Dian: “Later Domini came home ... It was still light, and I think it was around 5:30 or 6:00.” She thought she was watching “A Different World.”
Fogleman: “OK. Earlier, do you remember one of the officers talking to you earlier? Oh, like a few days after this happened. Do you remember that?
Dian: “Yes.”
Fogleman: “Officer Ridge. Do you remember him?”
Dian: “Yes.”
Fogleman: “Um, let’s see ... OK. Do you remember telling him that ‘Time Trax’ was on TV?”
Dian: “Well, that was later. That was around 7. Because Domini took the dog for a walk down to the store, and when she came back, it was around 7, because ‘Time Trax’ had just come on. And she took her shower, and I had to tell her the ending of it ... cause I always watch ‘Time Trax’ and ‘Kung Fu.’”
“And then what did she do?”
Dian: “She laid down on the bed by me and went to sleep.”
Fogleman: “OK, did she talk to anybody on the telephone that night?”
Dian: “Yeah, Damien. ...”
She said Domini did not talk to anyone else.
Fogleman: “You do remember her talking to Damien?”
Dian: “Yes.”
Fogleman: “What time was that?”
Dian: “He called around 10. And they talked for an hour. Cause I had to make her get off the phone. Cause they were just arguing back and forth anyway. …” According to Dian, Domini had no contact with Damien from 5:30-6 to around 10.
Fogleman: “... What were they arguing about, do you know?”
Dian: “Jason’s girlfriend had called Damien up crying to Damien about Jason. ... They weren’t getting along, or had had an argument or something ... so she called Damien up trying to get Damien to talk to Jason for her. ...”
Fogleman: “ ... Why would they argue about that, do you know?”
Dian: “Domini didn’t want Jason’s girlfriend calling Damien ... Kids get very possessive with each other ... and those two were very possessive about each other.”
Fogleman: “OK. Did you know that Damien had a bunch of other girlfriends?”
Dian: “Not to my knowledge.”
Fogleman: “You didn’t know that?”
Dian: “No.”
Fogleman: “How about Jennifer? A girl named Jennifer. You don’t know anything about her?”
Dian: “Jennifer was Jason’s girlfriend.”
Fogleman: “Heather Cliett was Jason’s girlfriend, or Jason had more than one.”
Dian: “I think he had two at the time, I’m not sure. But, I remember hearing both their names.”
She didn’t know who Holly George was and only heard about Vicki Hutcheson after the case broke.
Dian said Echols’ mother had brought Domini home in a blue car. She only saw Pam, Damien and Domini in the car, not Michelle or Joe as described by others, and not Jason.
Fogleman asked: “ ... You’d mentioned that Damien and Jason had made plans. What kind of plans had they made?”
Dian: “Just that they were going to get together and do something that evening. Usually they would go over to Wal-Mart and play video games, or over to Jason’s and play video games.”
They had “plans” to “do something that evening” but Dian gave no specifics.
Fogleman: “What did you do on May the 4th? What did Domini do on May 4th?”
Dian: “Well, she was with Damien and Jason. I think they went to play video games that day?”
Fogleman: “OK. What time did they leave?”
Dian: “I don’t remember.”
Fogleman: “OK, was it morning or afternoon?”
Dian: “It was usually afternoon when they left.”
Fogleman: “Do you know what time Domini go home that day?”
Dian: “No I don’t remember, but it was usually later.”
Fogleman: “How about May the 6th, on Thursday. What did Domini do that day?”
Dian: “She was with Damien. Damien came over that day, and he spent the night with us that night.”
Fogleman: “He spent the night that Thursday night?”
Dian: “Yes.”
Fogleman: “OK. And how long was he over there that day? Was it all day, or did he come at 1 o’clock or 4 o’clock?”
Dian: “Most of the day, I believe.”
Fogleman: “OK. Was he there at lunch time?”
Dian: “Yeah.”
Later, Gitchell asked: “How did Damian and your daughter leave on the 5th? How did they ... did they go anywhere together on the 5th?”
Dian: “That Wednesday?”
Gitchell: “Yeah.”
Dian: “Yeah, they all went over to cut Jason’s uncle’s yard.”
Fogleman: “And they walked.”
Dian: “Yeah.”
Gitchell: “Do you know what time they got back?”
Dian: “Around 5:30 or 6.”
Fogleman: “Now did ... that night, did Damien call Domini or did Domini call Damien?”
Dian: “Damien called Domini ...”
In an affidavit dated May 27, 2008, Domini Teer Ferris, then living in Phoenix, Ariz., stated:
“On the morning of May 5th, I was at my home in Lakeshore. A friend named Ken came over. Damien, who had a doctor’s appointment that morning, arrived at about 1 p.m. Damien, Ken, and I then waited for Jason Baldwin to come over after Jason finished school.
“Jason arrived at about 3:25 p.m. We then walked over to Jason’s home, which was also in the Lakeshore area.
“Jason’s two little brothers, Matthew and Terry, were at his home. Jason called his mother and was told that he had to go to his uncle’s to mow the lawn. We then walked over to the home of Jason’s uncle. We arrived there about 4 p.m.
“We watched Jason mow his uncle’s lawn. Later Damien and I walked to the nearby laundromat and called Damien’s mother. His father, mother, and sisters then arrived in the car to pick us up. They then dropped me off at my home.
“I walked the dog and took a shower. After I laid down for a while, Damien called at about 10 p.m., and we bickered back and forth on the phone for nearly an hour. I was upset because Holly, an ex-girlfriend of Jason, kept calling Damien to discuss her problems with Jason, and I didn’t like that.”
The 2008 statement offered no alibi for Echols and threw his “sisters” into the family car (Echols had only one sister, Michelle); Domini's story otherwise varied little from 1993.
Domini was available to testify for the defense but was not called. While roughly consistent, her statements offered discrepancies such as times and who picked them up at the laundromat.
In a phone interview in October of 2016, Domini Ferris said she was agreeing to talk because “It’s all over now … It was a long time ago.” She was polite and friendly and quick to answer questions, with no hesitation in a voice still high-pitched and soft.
Domini deliberately had withdrawn from any public presence in the case “because it just seemed like it interfered in my life; just because it had put itself in the middle of my life, I did not want to put my life in the middle of it.”
She last talked to Echols “two days after he got out. ‘Hope to see you. I’m fine.’ That’s about all that was.”
Domini said she took their son, Seth, to visit his father in prison from time to time until Lorri Davis moved to Arkansas. The visits stopped because of Davis, who eventually married Damien. “I don’t trust her. She just shows up from out of the blue from New York or wherever she came from.”
Seth still does not talk with Damien. “My son tried to like talk to him. Damien just, you know, kind of blew him off so we just let sleeping dogs lie there.” Domini acknowledged about Echols: “He’s weird. He’s all into this weird magical BS stuff. I never had any interest in that.”
She saw little interest from Jason in magick but she had not known him well. “Not really. We didn’t get along. I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me. He came over to my house sometimes with Damien or I went over to his with Damien. But I didn’t have too much to do with Jason.”
She remembered Jessie as “weird.”
Looking back on the investigation, trial and incarceration of her child’s father, she said, “We would never want anyone to go through that situation. I wouldn’t want to go through it again. Ever. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. I wouldn’t want it on my now-16-year-old girl. I keep trying to keep them sheltered because of all that happened then. It changed the way I look at cops and how I view detectives and everything. It just wasn’t right.
“It’s botched, every bit of it. Every bit. They probably handled that about as bad as they handled Jon-Benet.”
Asked if she had any ideas on who committed the crimes, she said, “I guess I do have a lot of them … from just some random bum to maybe the parents were involved in a bad drug deal to just somebody that nobody knows anything about.”
She had no doubts about the innocence of the West Memphis 3. “No matter how weird Damien is, no matter how weird Jessie is, they would never do this. No way. They were the scapegoats no matter what.”

Meece, Gary. Blood on Black: The Case Against the West Memphis 3, Volume I (The Case Against the West Memphis 3 Killers Book 1) . UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.