terry hobbs 2021
However, in 2010, a series of rapidly unfolding developments turned the tide for Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs .Terry graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1977. Damion Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley were convicted of murdering the children in 1994. The consequences of that online campaign were ruinous: The person they targeted, a Mexican metal musician who worked under the name Morbid, was harassed into hiding. Misskelley, who had entered the West Memphis police station that morning with hopes of reward money he might use to purchase a new truck for his father found himself instead charged with murder and facing life plus 40 years in prison. Years of solitary confinement and the abuse he said he suffered at the hands of prison guards had taken its toll. The trio assumed that the convictions had already been overturned by the time Bakken received the screenerthis was a modern-day witch hunt, they thought, and surely the state of Arkansas had already corrected the course. 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. Berlinger and Sinofsky, the latter of whom died in 2015 at age 58, were able to gain incredible and immediate access to seemingly everyone the case had touched: the families of the victims and the accused, the judge, the lead investigator, members of the community. Echols is an author and mystic living New York with his wife, architect Lorri Davis. Not everyone believes that the West Memphis Three are innocent of the killings of Michael Moore, Stevie Branch, and Christopher Byers. In the Bible Belt, the Satanic Panic took hold with a vengeance. 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. 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. . The state of Arkansas continues to attempt to prevent this testing from happening. The IMDb credits page for the first Paradise Lost is modest, but impressive. 2 They saw this movie and they felt like, I have to do something.. 2011 Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (Documentary) Self - Stepfather of Stevie Branch. In her recantation, Hutcheson stated that when she asked Echols directly if he had killed "those three kids," he replied, "No. But they never had any physical evidence that connected us to this crime, Echols said in 2012. The Paradise Lost cameras captured not only the defenses discussions, but the full testimony, in Misskelleys trial, of an expert on coerced confessions. It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Terry Lee Hobbs of Auburndale, Florida, born in Winter Haven, Florida, who passed away on August 16, 2021, at the age of 56, leaving to mourn family and friends. Jesse was gonna take it anyway. Its evidence that Damien Echols attorneys wanted to do new DNA testing on. Example video title will go here for this video. It had been a long fight to clear their names, and the odds seemed better than ever. Theyve had several victories, including the case of Daniel Villegas, who was acquitted of capital murder in 2018 after a 25-year legal saga. They were found nude and hogtied in a creek in a wooded area in West Memphis. Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021. He says his students seem to have a better grasp on the idea of coerced confessions than any of his peers in 1994. Find the obituary of Terry Hobbs (1957 - 2021) from Caldwell, ID. TERRY HOBBS OBITUARY Terry Roland Hobbs, 62, of Sweetwater, passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2021. Terry Castleman is a data . Like Misskelley in the first trial, Baldwin received a life sentence. Check out never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! During the trials of Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols, Griffis drew tenuous links between circumstantial evidence, such as the killings taking place near the date of the pagan festival of Beltane. The killings came at the peak of the so-called Satanic Panic, a time of heightened worries about ritualistic abuse. The judge ruled that Hobbs could not establish actual malice, and ordered Hobbs to pay Maines legal fees amounting to more than $17,000, according to the Associated Press. Luminol tests, which reveal the hidden presence of blood, were not performed at the scene until six days later. 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. They were naked and hog-tied with their own shoelaces, and showed signs of blunt force trauma and mutilation, the latter of which may have been the work of wild animals, reported the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper. Coverage of the latest true crime stories and famous cases explained, as well as the best TV shows, movies and podcasts in the genre. Baldwin, the youngest member of the trio that had come to be known as the West Memphis Three, was serving a life sentence after being convicted on charges connected to the 1993 killings of three 8-year-old boys. every single person in my class was either . there are no assignments to cushion your grade, so either pass or fail. McCaughey says her sister is very upset. Although she was unable to recall the exact location or anyone who attended the alleged meeting, she claimed a drunken Echols confessed to the murders. But Berlinger also believes that the sequel is important for documenting the power of citizen activism. One of the prosecution's key pieces of evidence linking Jason Baldwin to the crime a survival knife with a serrated edge recovered from a lake behind his home has also come under scrutiny. In the years since the trial, John Mark Byers, adoptive father of Christopher Byers, and Pamela Hobbs, mother of Stevie Branch, became vocal supporters of the West Memphis Three. At the suggestion of the police, Hutcheson hid microphones in her home and borrowed occult books from the library to inspire Echols' interest. On August 19, 2011, all three accepted the deal and were immediately released from prison. Polygraph tests revealed deception in the answers of both men in regard to the crimes. All of those factors combined to create a tipping point, says Leveritt. In 1994, Dr. Dale W. Griffis was a retired police officer who had embarked on a second career as a self-styled consultant on occult and cult-related crime. Two of the West Memphis Three's most ardent supporters were director Peter Jackson, best known for The Lord of the Rings films, and his partner Fran Walsh. Hobbs denied seeing the boys that night and questioned why eyewitness evidence surfaced 16 years later. of Auburndale, FL passed away Monday, August 16, 2021. Terry Hobbs, Todd Moore, and Dana Moore still maintain that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley murdered their sons. And they used that visibility to help raise funds for the defense. Published: Dec. 21, 2021 at 9:56 PM CST WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. Make a life-giving gesture They procured the domain WM3.org and made a website, updating it with whatever information they could track down. Stating that she would ask around, Hutcheson agreed to "play detective.". The whole point of the web sleuths presented in the Cecil Hotel is that you cannot assume something is truthful just because circumstantially it seems interesting. Im not the judge. Debates still occur regularly onlinethe West Memphis Three subreddit is fairly active for one on a 28-year-old caseand podcasts have looked at the crime from all angles. The idea of the average citizen becoming embroiled in a criminal investigation isnt far-fetched in 2021, decades removed from the launch of WM3.org. Here's when clocks will 'spring forward' in 2023. You still dont really know what happened to these kids. To learn more, watch The Forgotten West Memphis Three on Saturday, March 28 and Sunday, March 29at 8/7c on Oxygen. Terry Hobbs says he is a church member, a father, and working man and in no way a killer. Terry Wayne Hobbs was born on May 21st, 1958. All three had been submerged face down in the mud, stripped naked, and bound with their shoelaces. Inconsistencies in Terry Hobbs' alibi, as well as revelations about subsequent violent acts, have also led many to believe that he may be the actual killer. The cult part of the Commercial Appeals headline signaled how the case would be defined by both the media and prosecutors. 21, 2021 at 1:51 PM PDT CALHOUN COUNTY, Fla.. After ending his first marriage, he wed Pamela Hicks Branch in 1986, when her son Stevie was almost 2 years old. 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. When he was released in 2011, he met John Hardin, who worked with the West Memphis Three support group Arkansas Take Action, and the two bonded over a desire to do for others what had just been done for Baldwin. Blood and urine samples from both men were collected and sent to the West Memphis Police Department. They were naked and hog-tied with their own shoelaces, and showed signs of blunt force trauma and mutilation, the latter of which may have been the work of wild animals, reported the, Three teenage boys were arrested for the crimes , Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life without parole while Echols received the death penalty. We made a promise early on that we would never pretend to be law enforcement or detectives, Sauls says. 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. During the final year of the two-year span, from July 2021 to July 2022, California lost about 211,000 people, according to data from the state Department of Finance. Terry Hobbs Memphis 32, 14-Jun, Superior Funeral Home-Hollywood. I didn't even comprehend that the situation could get this serious that it can go this far. No explanation has yet been given as to why such a seemingly important lead was dropped. But on that early morning in 1997, Jason Baldwin wasnt concerned with Berlinger and Sinofskys craft, or legal precedent, or crusading celebrities. "Everyone has a story and this just happens to be mine," said Hobbs. We are sad to announce that on September 11, 2021 we had to say goodbye to Terry Hobbs of Sweetwater, Texas. Oxygen Insider is your all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more. Case Number : 2:21-BK-21177. He had always maintained he didnt commit the crimes, and outside the Varner Units walls, a growing chorus of activists and legal observers were arguing that same thing on his behalf. Echols' disdain for authority, penchant for black clothes, and propensity to make shocking statements didn't help his plight. Covered in wounds, all three showed signs of having been beaten. Berlinger also concedes Revelations had some ethical problems, chiefly because it raised the possibility that Mark Byers committed the killings. In the joint trial of Baldwin and Echols, which took place separately from Misskelleys, Berlinger and Sinofsky filmed the surreal moments that juries were actually present for: a rundown of the books Echols checked out of the library, a parade of band T-shirts worn by the pair, a copy of a Blue Oyster Cult record found in Damiens girlfriends house that became evidence because of the word cult and song titles like Dont Fear the Reaper. What the cameras couldnt capture, however, was the introduction of physical evidencethe prosecution didnt offer much of that aside from a knife that was never directly linked to the crimes and fabric threads deemed microscopically similar to items found in Baldwins and Echolss homes, an assertion that has been questioned in the years since the trials. But they werent just voices in the growing choir calling for the West Memphis Threes releasethey were leading the movement. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. The reason for the credit gets less curious when hes asked about it: He was a huge Metallica fan. Armchair detectives of today, I think a lot of them dabble in conspiracy theory, Berlinger says. Wherever it was screened, Berlinger says, it was followed by intense Q&As from audience members who couldnt believe what theyd just watched. The documentarians found me in one of the worst things a person could go through, Baldwin says. https://t.co/dXOtQkmjee. February 27, 2023 (76 years old) View obituary. But the lawyer quickly noticed inconsistencies in Misskelleys purported confession. Its like ripping a Band-Aid off a wound. Case Details Parties . Hobbs was Branch's stepfather. Wading into the murky water, Allen unknowingly dislodged the pale, grotesquely arched form of Micheal Moore. Show more Show more What's next for West. October 14, 2017: #26 on the JazzWeek chart! . The next to be found was Stevie Branch, quickly followed by Christopher Byers. They couldnt have been cooler, recalls Berlinger, who would go on to direct the 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster alongside Bruce Sinofsky. La Mirada, California. 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. This family in-fighting led to him shooting his brother-in-law. The next day, their bodies were found in a nearby canal. People would drive by and yell at us, Theyre going to burn in hell, Sauls says. They even hired experts to examine the case, including a forensic criminal profiler who discovered what appeared to be bite marks on one of the victims that didnt match any of the convicted. Three teenage boys were arrested for the crimes Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr. and prosecutors argued they killed the boys as part of a Satanic ritual. Yet, Judge David Burnett accepted Griffis as an expert. Hobbs said he wrote the book so people, especially other victims of crime, could understand the tragedy he has gone through and how it impacted his life. Berlinger and Sinofsky expected a similar result to come quickly in the West Memphis Three case. Case Details. Searching obituaries is a great place to start your family tree research. This is a story of justice delayed and justice denied. 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. Terry Hobbs, Actor: Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers. Paso Robles, California. Last year, I noticed that Terry went missing. . He began his career in the plumbing business at a very young age, workingfor his . Except this was 1996, and home internet was still in its infancy. That the slain boys were each 8 years-old was important because eight was a "witch's number." "I knew from when I was real small that people were going to know who I was," Echols said in 1994. Over the years there has been lots of speculation and finger pointing as to who was responsible. Baldwins attorneys even avoided putting him on the witness stand or mounting much of a defense, believing the burden was on the state. Here were these guysat best they were neutral. We were mainly in it for the aesthetics of filmmaking, but the last scene of Paradise Lost, when Damien is chained up and sent away to death row, that was just heartbreaking and devastating for us, Berlinger says. October 13, 2018 - Happy 94th Birthday Terry! (Police questioned Byers several times during the investigation, but never considered him a suspect.) Mojo was right. 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. As for Paradise Lost, it was the inciting incident in the two-decade chain of events that led to the release of the West Memphis Three. None of the three believed that, but Echolss healthand the possibility that even if he survived, he would still be on death row should the fight for retrials failmade it an imperative. At the time of the West Memphis Three trial, Griffis claimed to have given seminars to 38,000 police officers all over the globe. Echols said in 2012, he will never give up his mission to exonerate himself. But they were saying that he was about to die.. In February, Netflix released Berlingers Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, a docuseries that looked at the 2013 death of Elisa Lam, a Canadian student who died while vacationing in Los Angeles. He responded proudly, 11.. The first film gave rise to a movement devoted to reopening the investigation in hopes of exonerating, and ultimately freeing, Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols, and Jessie Misskelley. That included Mojo, who came calling around 2 a.m. that day trying to coax him out of his cell. Who Killed The Forgotten West Memphis Three? By the time she got done watching it, her life was forever changed. In August 2011, Jason Baldwin was pulled from his prison cell under confusing circumstances once again. Under order of the Arkansas Supreme Court, there were to be new evidentiary hearings in the case. Metallica had never licensed a song for a film before, but when they learned about the case, Berlinger says, they made an exception. But inside, he was just another prisonerBaldwin didnt know who he could trust. Misskelley returned to life in West Memphis. - The West Memphis 3: Free (2012) . One of the keys to understanding the West Memphis Three murders is the phenomenon known as the Satanic Panic. The sneaker ligatures in which Terry Hobbs' DNA was found in," Soury said . 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. Michelle McNamara helped crack the Golden State Killer case by poring over thousands of pages of case files while working on her book Ill Be Gone in the Dark, which was published two years after her 2016 death, while Chris Lambert and his podcast Your Own Backyard were highlighted by authorities after two arrests in April in connection with the 1996 disappearance of Cal Poly student Kristin Smart. If the state of Arkansas has a deep and abiding belief that the West Memphis Three are child murderers and did these terrible crimes, then shame on them for letting them out after 18 and a half years because a bunch of celebrities are whining about it, Berlinger says. It was a call about Damien Echolshe wasnt dead, but his wife, Lorri Davis, feared he might be soon. Its something that Baldwin couldnt envision when he first agreed to let the documentarians interview him in jail in exchange for an honorarium, or even when Mojo played that VHS tape for him in 1997. There have also been several high-profile incidents of laypeople reinvestigating decades-old cold cases in more rigorous, journalistic ways and helping bring them to a resolution. Bakken and Sauls say they tried to avoid offering theories about the case publicly, opting instead to try to work through official channels. So when I saw this tiny little article in the Times, I wasnt about to free anybody that was guilty. 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. The pair abruptly fled to Oceanside, Calif., four days after the murders. The level of corruption in the American justice system is glaring and sickening.. I said, Im going to send some kids down there., Those kids turned out to be Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the young documentarians who had recently completed the acclaimed Brothers Keeper, a film chronicling a death and the resulting trial in a small upstate New York village. The knife was thrown into the lake by Baldwin's mother a year before the murders. Terry Hobbs, the stepfather of eight-year-old victim Stevie Branch, has been named in documents released in Marian, Arkansas by the attorneys for Pam Hobbs, Stevie's mother. By the end of Paradise Lost, you cant believe they were found guilty, Bakken says. Quickly, however, he realized Berlinger and Sinofsky were taking a different approach. Replacing Burnett was Circuit Court Judge David Laser. Lying in the open air in near 80-degree temperatures accelerated the decomposition of the bodies. Making his way through the muck on his hands and knees, Ridge soon discovered clothing twisted around sticks and thrust into the ditch's bottom. It wasnt hard for him to imagine his teenage self ending up in Echolss situation. At that time, I was a little naive that what you read in the paper must have some truth to it, and all the press reports coming out of Arkansas were saying that this was like a slam dunk, an open-and-shut case with a confession that was printed in the newspaper.. In 1996, a screener for Paradise Lost passed her desk. Timeline Of The West Memphis Three Victims, Motivations For Investigating The West Memphis Case. This is a brand new website dedicated to the internationally famous musician, Terry Gibbs. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie Hobbs. weaving supposedly anti-Christian and occult messages into their songs, he discovered her while Googling cold cases, funded an extensive private investigation, a November 2010 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling, biggest allies in the years before his 2020 death, acquitted of capital murder in 2018 after a 25-year legal saga. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. The bodies had been removed from the water and placed on the adjacent embankment, possibly disturbing physical evidence or otherwise contaminating the scene. The case status is Pending - Other Pending. Terry Hobbs was born on November 25, 1969 in Columbus, Georgia, USA. Hobbs described what it was like the day the three walked free. 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. (Despite Misskelleys statement, the coroners examination found no injuries on the victims consistent with sexual assault.) Terry Hobbs's income source is mostly from being a successful Actor. Although blood scrapings were taken, the West Memphis police lost the evidence. March 8, 2021, Terry Hobbs passed away on March 8, 2021 in Boise, Idaho. Among them was a disoriented, muddy, and bleeding African-American man who stumbled into a West Memphis Bojangles restaurant men's room less than a mile from the crime scene. Well, perhaps not nobody. Terry was born on September 11, 1959 in Sweetwater, to Jack Harvey and Marjorie. 34465541-95D0-45B0-BEEB-B9E0361A315A He says his dad and Berlinger werent seeking notorietydocumentaries certainly werent a means to get rich or famous in those days. And that is why Echols has attorneys who want to use a new DNA test called M-Vac, a wet vacuum system that can find more DNA than older tests. Nobody was saying, This is an outrageous case that needs to be looked into.. 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. She says she is too because they believe they are hearing different stories. Baldwin remembers grabbing a Mountain Dew and a burrito and sitting down, still unaware of what he was about to watch. But it wasnt in the ways its directors had hoped. As the appeals processes stretched across several years and the buzz of the initial film faded, the directors began looking for ways to keep the story alive. Among those active in the cause were singer Eddie Vedder of the band Pearl Jam, the country music trio The Dixie Chicks, punk rock icon and poet Henry Rollins, and actor Johnny Depp. The districts current prosecuting attorney, Keith Chrestman, did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but his predecessor Scott Ellington, whose office negotiated the deals, told The New York Times in 2011 that while new trials would have likely resulted in acquittals, We dont think that there is anybody else. The Moore family has been outspoken about the end result, vehemently protesting the 2012 Oscar nomination for the third Paradise Lost installment. They began attending appeal hearings and visiting Baldwin, Echols, and Misskelley in prison. Investigators kept minimal notes and omitted pertinent details including criminal records. At the request of West Memphis authorities, the two were picked up and questioned by Oceanside police. Nevertheless, Echols made no incriminating statements. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. A later confession during the trial phase would prove equally problematic. At approximately 1:30 p.m., Steve Jones, a juvenile parole officer from Crittenden County, peered over the steep bank of a water-filled ditch in the woods near the Blue Beacon truck wash. (2 weeks at #1, on for 19 weeks!) With the guards blessings, Mojo led Baldwin to Varners visitation room, where everything had been put away aside from two chairs set up in front of a cart holding a small TV and a VCR. 1.0. . It ranges from Mark Byers, the crusading stepfather who became one of the West Memphis Threes biggest allies in the years before his 2020 death, to famed FBI criminal profiler (and Mindhunter inspiration) John E. Douglas. Their advocates believe the Alford pleas represent their own form of injustice, but correcting that is a less pressing issue than the early battlesthe men are free and have been able to mostly live their lives in the years since their release. 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. This is the true story of the West Memphis Three murders. Unaware of what was to come, Allen explained that he just wanted to ask him some questions. (At one point, Sauls says, it landed on Yahoos list of the top 100 websites.)