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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.
Episodes
Saturday Nov 30, 2019
Saturday Nov 30, 2019
Episode 28: “One of the guys had a devil worshiping book and we would go by it”
"It was like it never even happened"
The Hutchesons, Vicki and son Aaron, were key to solution of the case, offering tantalizing evidence that resulted in the confession of Jessie Misskelley and subsequent arrests of Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin.
Their stories, though, never quite panned out, as mother and son both put their imaginations to work on colorful yarns that increasingly posed problems for the prosecution.
Tall, red-haired Vicki had a sketchy past, including charges for writing hot checks. In May 1993, she recently had separated from her husband, having moved April 19 from the West Memphis neighborhood adjacent to Weaver Elementary to Highland Trailer Park. There the 30-year-old had befriended Jessie Misskelley Jr.
Aaron, a sturdily built, dark-haired 8-year-old, was in the same grade as the dead boys and in the Cub Scout troop run by Michael’s father, Todd. Aaron had played regularly with Michael and Christopher.
Aaron’s description of their friendship grew over the course of police interviews into an ever-changing narrative in which he became a witness to the killings —- and ultimately an unwilling participant. But at first he was regarded as truthful in his tales of seeing five men participate in group sex in the woods and cooking a cat near the boys’ “club house,” near where the killings occurred.
In a report on May 28, Ridge found Aaron’s claim to have seen cult activities from the “club house” to be credible. Ridge, though, was unable to find any sign of the “club house” —- apparently a tree stand that no longer existed by the time Aaron led officers into the woods.
Meanwhile, his mother, drinking heavily and consuming a variety of prescribed and illegal drugs, resolved to “play detective” by getting to know Jessie’s friend Damien. She had heard rumors that Echols was responsible for the murders. She claimed she learned that he was involved with a group known as the Dragons, who supposedly worshipped dragons and whose meetings included a ritual in which they sacrificed genitals.
Victoria Hutcheson first heard about the murders while at the Marion Police Department on May 6, as news of the discovery of the bodies spread. She had taken a lie detector test about a $200 credit overcharge at the truck stop where she worked. She was checking on the results; she passed the polygraph and was cleared of potential charges but was fired nonetheless.
She brought Aaron with her to the station, after checking him out of school when she learned the boys were missing.
The boys were not known to be dead when the Hutchesons arrived at Marion PD.
When Assistant Chief of Police Donald Bray learned Aaron had been friends with Michael and Christopher, he called the WMPD to inform them that Aaron might be a source of information. Then he was told the bodies had been discovered.
Bray immediately began questioning Aaron and his mother.
Vicki said Chris and Michael had asked Aaron to come play with them Wednesday right after school but she had refused permission.
Aaron said he had been with his friends several times at Robin Hood Hills and that Michael had gone swimming in the ditch. His initial account contained none of the over-the-top details that marked later statements.
Bray was well-acquainted with Jerry Driver and Steve Jones, two juvenile officers who had extensive dealings with Echols and friends. Bray readily concurred with them about possible occult aspects to the killings and with their suspicions about Echols and Baldwin. Bray was quickly convinced that Aaron could be the source of vital clues. He pursued information from Aaron long past the point of credibility.
Aaron’s first statement to West Memphis police on May 10 was full of vivid description that had little relation to reality — he said a black man with yellow teeth driving a maroon car had stopped to tell Michael that Michael’s mother had sent him to pick up Michael and that Michael rode off with him. The Moore back yard literally backed up to the main entrance at Weaver Elementary; no one picked Michael up or would have had reason to pick him up; he walked home that day, as always.
On May 27, Aaron told another fantastic tale, though just credible enough to excite investigators. A snippet of that interview, with his childish voice eerily saying “Nobody knows what happened but me,” was played back to Misskelley on June 3, one of several effective interrogation techniques used to elicit Misskelley’s confession.
Aaron said he, Michael and Chris had a club house in Robin Hood and that “sometimes we watched these men. … They were uh, doing nasty stuff. … They, they do what men and woman do,” going on to say that the five men gave each other oral sex while the boys watched from a hiding place.
He said all but one of the men wore black T-shirts, with one wearing a white T-shirt and having long hair. They all carried “big knives.” He described them smoking rolled-up cigarettes that “stunk” and said they painted their faces black. “There was a skull commander he had on a necklace and there is a snake in its eye. …’” The necklace was a pendant similar to a pendant or earring that Echols lost at the Hutcheson home. Aaron had become fascinated by the jewelry after discovering the earring.
Aaron said the men used a briefcase, a detail that agreed with later stories from Jessie Misskelley Jr. about the cult meetings. Aaron said the men had been “mean” to a dog but “they caught cat they cut his head off and ate it. … They ate the whole cat but his head” after cooking him. Misskelley and others told about killing and eating pets.
Aaron thought the boys went to watch the men on Wednesday … “They got caught, and then they never told the men, and the men sorta killed them.”
On June 2, shortly before the arrest of his friend Jessie, Aaron elaborated with details about the men, saying they would dance around a fire and say “bad stuff” about “Jesus and God. I mean the Devil and God. … That they said they like the Devil and they hate God.” Aaron told Ridge and Allen: “They wore all white and they painted themselves black. … They all talk in Spanish.”
Aaron also had a strange story about Misskelley: “Little Jessie said that um, he seen Michael. …. He seen a police car. He was coming out from the um and he seen the police car and like he ran under … back underneath the bridge. … He didn’t see Chris or Steve. … Little Jessie said he seen a um he seen a cop … cop car coming out from underneath the bridge close to my house … It was close to my, I think there were coming to my house, and they … they got lost to where I lived.”
Ridge asked: “… You think Stevie and Michael were coming to your house?”
Aaron: “Because I think they all was, I told Michael before.”
Ridge: “Where you lived, so you thought maybe they were going to ride over to your house? And Little Jessie said he thought he saw them that day. Is that right?”
Aaron: “He did see Michael.”
Ridge repeated: “He did see Michael.”
Aaron: “Michael has brown hair and he had on our Cub Scout T-shirt and his blue pants.”
Ridge: “Oh, where did he see him at?”
Aaron: “He seen him — you know that bridge where that train going today um, he seen him underneath that one. … That’s close to my house.” If Misskelley actually told Aaron the details about the clothes, that would be highly incriminating, but Aaron's statements had little credibility; as for second-hand statements from Misskelley, even less so.
In his initial statements, Misskelley said he had seen a boy on a bicycle near Seventh Street — one of the routes between Highland and Robin Hood — who hid when he saw a police car. Apparently Misskelley also told Aaron this story —- to no clear purpose.
Ridge asked Aaron about Misskelley’s friends, and Aaron mentioned Bubba (Ashley) and Dennis (Carter). Asked about someone named Damien, he said “Bubba’s friend, Bubba’s friend. … I never knew him, but Jessie … Jessie um, shown me him and I didn’t get real close to him.”
Ridge asked questions trying to connect possible suspects with the men in the woods, but Aaron had never seen any of them elsewhere, except once at a Flash Market convenience store. The one who wore a white tank top was paying for gas for “a nice car … it was a convertible.”
Asked if the men had seen the boys, Aaron replied, “Uh, I think so because that one man with the white tank top said ‘Hi fellows, it was … he said wasn’t you guys watching us?’ … We got … We got … We got kind scared, we ran right out. … he just said come back, and we didn’t say a word because we knew we wasn’t suppose to talk to strangers?”
Ridge pushed Aaron to be specific about the “nasty things” the men did. Aaron explained they would put a penis “in somebody’s bottom.”
After the June 3 arrests, Aaron gave statements on June 4, 7, 8 and 9 describing how he rode over to Robin Hood after going home with his mother to Highland on May 5. He began claiming he witnessed Damien, Jason and Jessie kill his three friends.
The June 4 statement to Don Bray had such unlikely details as Michael and Chris finding guns during the assault: “… They said on a count of three, we are gonna jump out and Michael said, one, two, and he jumped out, he pointed the gun at them … he pulled the trigger and nothing came out cause it wasn’t loaded.”
He described Misskelley pursuing Stevie: “He chased him down, he caught him and … he put his face in the water for about five seconds and pulled it out, and he said I don’t want to kill you, yet, until what my boss says. … He went to his boss and he said that, you need to kill him, cause we already killed the other two.” The “boss” was Damien.
He alleged Damien raped Michael and that Michael had died and turned blue after being cut in the neck. He claimed Chris also was cut in the neck and “they cut their private parts off” all the boys.
He claimed Baldwin had walked around the Hutcheson home, tapping on the window, while carrying a “policeman’s gun.”
The parts of the June 4 statement that could be checked out — such as injuries to the boys — bore little relation to reality, but police continued to set up interviews with the boy.
Aaron repeated much of the statement on June 7, including the description of the boys using guns and of Damien being “the boss.” After being asked about contradictory statements concerning the roles of Jason and Jessie, he claimed that Jason asked to be called Jessie.
Aaron said on June 8: “Jessie told me that something was gonna happen. … Something was going to happen to Michael, Chris and Steve … He uh, he just said uh, you go and get your friends and I’ll go and get my friends, we will do down to Robin Hood and do something. …
“I seen them Wednesday … I told them to let’s go to Robin Hood, and then ask my mommy if I could go. … Steve and Chris came up to my mommy’s window and asked if I could go to Robin Hood. … They asked if I could go over to his house for two hours and stay. … She said, no. … Then I went there after I got finished doing … on my bike. … I went the Service Road, then I got to Luv’s and turned ... I went to Blue Beacon.” Then, Aaron told Bray, he went into the woods where he saw Michael and Chris hiding from “them men” behind a tree. The five included “Jessie Jason and Damien. I didn’t know the other two.”
Aaron said Michael told him that Stevie, who wasn’t there, had gone with “the fifth man,” Misskelley. “Steve got away, he got caught back and got killed. … Steve seen Jessie and started running. … Then he got away, and ... he got away again and got caught. … He uh ran and Jessie uh, was chasing him and he hit his face on the pipe. … the pipe that you walk across. It wasn’t bleeding, he just uh, started crying and stuff. … It was just a little bruise.”
He said Michael and Chris jumped out of the tree to help Stevie. “Then they got caught, and got killed.”
Aaron said Jessie killed Stevie but then described Stevie running into Damien and being stabbed in the stomach —- not an area where Stevie was actually stabbed. Then, he said, Stevie was cut in the neck. Stevie was stripped and thrown into the water, and “they turned blue and died … all three of them.” Later, he claimed Jessie raped Stevie.
At this point Aaron’s story, with some credible —- or at least possible — aspects but wrong on the wounds and other details, veered again into sheer fantasy. “And then they caught me and got tied up and about 40 seconds I got untied and left and then I didn’t remember nothing else about it.”
Aaron then said Michael died first with a stab wound to the neck and another wound from Jessie.
Aaron said he saw all this from up in a tree: “I was trying to climb down, but I fell down and hit my, I hit my back … I could hardly walk or get up … I got up and I kicked. I kicked the knife and he, he tied me up and just left me there. … They said that they might kill me.”
He said Chris was killed after Steve, after being raped by Damien. The story grew increasingly confused with various claims about who died first, with a story of Michael falling down after trying to get up after being stabbed and then hitting his face on a rock and wrapping up with the claim that Michael was cut on his private parts.
The supposed plan for a meet-up in the woods to “do something” resonated with Misskelley’s description of the teens’ plans to go into West Memphis that day. But, coupled with a incoherent, error-filled fantasy, and coming after the arrest of Misskelley, Aaron’s story only served to frustrate investigators.
Vicki originally said Aaron was with her as she ran errands on the afternoon of May 5.
By June 2, she was telling a different story to Bray. After initially refusing to let Aaron go over to Michael’s house, “she thinks (4:00 p.m.) he rode his bike to his uncle Johnny Dedman’s house, three streets over. He is supposed to check in with her every two hours. She has not asked Johnny if Aaron was there, on that day. She has not asked Aaron either. She doesn’t remember if Aaron was back home by 6:00 p.m.” With that lack of detail about her small son’s whereabouts, it suddenly was possible, if unlikely, that Aaron had been at Robin Hood Hills on May 5.
Johnny Dedman also figured into Jessie Misskelley’s alibi for May 5, with Misskelley and Aaron Hutcheson supposedly both being over at the Dedman home at roughly the same time. Despite being a potentially important witness both on the Aaron Hutcheson narrative and the Misskelley alibi, there is no available police interview with Dedman, though he did show up on the list of potential witnesses for the defense.
In his June 9 interview with Bray and Gitchell, in the presence of his mother, Aaron repeated the story about Misskelley arranging the meeting. Aaron told them: “Jessie told me that um, something was going to happen to my friends.” Aaron said he was told this on Tuesday, with a meet-up between the groups set for Wednesday.
The story was similar to the previous day’s tale, with added details such as Jessie was the one who caught him and tied him up again.
Gitchell pressed Aaron to tell the truth, with Aaron claiming that Jessie “abused” him.
Police interviewed Aaron again on Dec. 31, 1993, with John Fogleman, Bray and James Thompson, Vicki’s boyfriend, at the East Arkansas Mental Health offices. Taping behind a two-way mirror were Ridge and Gitchell. Vicki Hutcheson was elsewhere in the building, with Judy Hicks, the Hutchesons’ therapist.
Aaron told them that, before the killings, Jessie told him that he wanted to meet some of his friends. He said he had seen Jessie, Damien and Jason at Robin Hood when he had lived in the neighborhood. He saw them do “what men and women do.” Looking down, avoiding eye contact, Aaron told his story in a quiet, hesitant voice, often difficult to hear.
Eventually he began crying. He said he did not want to talk about his story and had nightmares. “It makes me scared.”
Pressed for details, he stopped talking and sat picking at his hands and then playing with a watch to keep his hands busy.
He admitted his fear of Misskelley: “They’ll kill my mom if I talk.”
He claimed he had been abused by Misskelley: “he put his private in my bottom.” Aaron said he was afraid he would be taken from his mom because he had been abused by Jessie.
Aaron said Misskelley wanted him to “do something bad” to get into Misskelley’s “club,” and Michael and Chris were invited to join. Aaron did not know Stevie would show up.
Aaron again told of riding his bicycle from Highland Park to Robin Hood, traversing the routes of the interstate and service roads. Such a trip, particularly a route of about 3 miles over the 7th Street overpass, would be feasible though not bicycle-friendly.
He claimed he saw the attack from a hiding place, though Misskelley was aware of his presence. “He asked me if I wanted to kill them and I said no.” When the attack was over, “he said don’t tell anybody. Don’t tell anybody or I’ll kill your mom.”
“It was almost dark” he returned home.
The next day, Aaron went over to Misskelley’s home and “he only looked at me like I did something bad.”
His description of Misskelley holding down Michael, Damien holding down Stevie and Jason holding down Chris was in accord with Misskelley’s confessions generally. Aaron offered a number of contradictory statements about his own role.
Aaron heard Damien say “We tricked you” as the attacks started. Aaron claimed there were two others present, a male in a hat with a dragon T-shirt and another male. He could offer little description beyond that, though he consistently described five attackers.
He said the killers carried a duffel bag with equipment for the kill. They used canes in the beatings. Asked in which hand the teens held their canes, Aaron told Bray, “I get mixed up with right and left.”
The Dec. 31 interview was in two parts, both roughly an hour. Aaron benefited from a break, returning in a confident and relaxed mood. Thompson was out of the room for the wrap-up session.
At times, Aaron seemed strangely lighthearted, smiling as he talked about being abused by Jessie or about his friends being killed, in contrast to the earlier session.
At one point, he stood up and playfully pulled a knife from his pocket that Thompson had given him. That prompted Aaron describing Jessie having a knife. Aaron played with the knife as the interview progressed, opening and closing the blade. Bray eventually took the knife from the boy.
As the conversation turned toward knives, Aaron identified Damien as having the knife found in the lake behind Baldwin’s trailer.
Toward the end, Aaron got bored and restless. “I told everything two or three times. Can we leave?”
Aaron said he was not scared of anyone “unless they’re witches. I hate witches” and oddly expressed concern about Damien’s son Seth, an infant, being a witch.
Like many others, he said Damien possessed a cat’s skull. He said “they ate the cat” after cooking it on a grill top. Then he drew a picture of the cat saying “help me.”
While Aaron’s story on Dec. 31 was less fantastic and more consistent than his earlier fantasies, the small, emotionally fragile boy clearly was not a reliable witness.
Bray conducted yet another interview with Aaron at the Marion Police Department on Jan. 30, 1994, prompted by Aaron volunteering details on “some other stuff that happened.”
Aaron told an implausible story about how Misskelley forced him to participate in the castration of Christopher and then drink a glassful of blood. Among unlikely details, he told how a “a white guy and a black guy” arrived on the scene, with the “black guy” threatening Aaron with a gun “and he made me say I hate Jesus and I love the devil.” Bray pressed for details until the boy lapsed into long silences.
Aaron did not testify at trial. In 2004, he told the Arkansas Times he was no longer sure if he saw the murders or if, shocked by the deaths, he imagined he had seen the murders. At that time, he was convinced the boys had been killed by Mark Byers.
In the same story, Aaron said his statements had been complete fabrications. He said the police tricked him into saying things that were not true. The statements clearly did contain elements of truth —- he did know the dead boys, for example. As with his mother, who eventually claimed her Echols stories were wildly exaggerated, a blanket disclaimer raised questions that likely will never be answered.
His mother did testify in the Misskelley trial, though not the Echols/Baldwin trial, giving a fairly straightforward description of how Echols, with Misskelley, took her to a witches’ meeting. She testified she and Echols left but Misskelley stayed. Jurors did not hear salacious details about incipient orgies and other bizarre goings-on.
Comments (4)
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nice job!
Thursday Mar 17, 2022
My head is spinning...those last Episodes...so many idiots telling lies and changing them and telling different lies ..no wonder this case was never reopened...lol..no way did they want to interview these morons again!!!
Monday Apr 05, 2021
Always look forward to every episode. Thank you Gary.
Friday Dec 06, 2019
Great work brother. Thank you for keeping the info coming and keeping the case alive.
Saturday Nov 30, 2019
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