Almost Home (23 page)

Shutting down was the only way my mind could preserve itself.

My first two weeks on death row were spent vomiting and sleeping. I was suffering a pretty fierce withdrawal from the antidepressants I had been on for three years. The prison system spends a bare minimum on medical care for inmates, so there was no way in hell they were going to pay for a luxury item like anti-depressants. Instead of gradually lowering my dosage the way it should have been done, I was forced to quit cold turkey. My sleep was troubled and I couldn’t keep anything in my stomach. Even though it was agony, in hindsight I see that they were doing me a favor. I haven’t been on any medication in over ten years, and I’ve never felt physically better or mentally clearer. I also lost all the weight I had gained while sitting in the county jail. You don’t get much exercise when locked up in a cage, so I gained over sixty pounds by the time I went to court. I lost that and more. At one point I was down to 116 pounds.

When I arose from my concrete slab to begin my first full day of prison life, I noticed someone had dropped a package in my cell. Opening it, I saw that it contained a couple stamp envelopes, pen and paper, a can of shaving cream, a razor, a chocolate cupcake, grape soda, and letter of introduction. It was from a guy upstairs named Frankie Parker. No one called him by that name, though. Every-Damien Echols

131

one called him either Ju San or Si-fu. He was a Zen Buddhist, and was ordained as a Rinzai Priest before his execution. That’s where the name Ju San came from.

Si-fu is a generic term that means “teacher” in Chinese. He was a huge white guy with a shaved head and tattoos of Asian style dragons on his back. The package he sent was something he did for every new person that came in, to help them get on their feet.

His constant companion was a guy that greatly resembled a cave man. His name was Gene, and he had dark hair that reached the small of his back and a full beard that reached his chest. Gene was a Theosophist, a follower of H.P. Blav-atsky.

They both loaned me books on Buddhism and Theosophy, and answered

countless questions. Listening to them debate each other in the yard was like watching a tennis match. Both of them lit a fire in me which grew into a decade long educational process. I made my way through texts such as
The Tibetan Book
of the Dead
and
Isis Unveiled
.

These two guys were no dry scholars. They loved to laugh, and nothing was more hilarious to them than the perverse. They were completely irreverent. It was not unusual to hear one or the other make comments such as, “I like the way your butt sticks up in the air when you bow to that little Buddha statue.” Gene was a remarkable painter, and I once saw a canvas he had painted to look like a giant dollar bill. If you looked closely you noticed it wasn’t George Washington’s picture in the middle, it was Jesus. Look even closer and you realized Jesus has a penis for an ear. He then lectured for an hour on what such symbolism meant.

Believe it or not, I actually learned quite a bit from him.

I also learned quite a bit from the guy in the cell next to me, though I’ve never put such knowledge to use. He was an old biker from a gang called the Out-laws—rivals of the Hell’s Angels. 300 pounds, blind in one eye, and barely able to walk, he was a horrendous sight. He was the epitome of hateful, old-age cunning.

He was too old to fight, so he devised other ways to get revenge on those who did him wrong. He was known to befriend his enemies and then feed them rat poison and battery acid. A guy once stole five dollars from him, then found himself on the floor puking up blood after drinking a cup of coffee. He told me everything I needed to know in order to move and operate within the system. He also sold me my first radio. After not hearing music for the past year, Lynyrd Skynyrd sounded like a choir of angels.

After I’d been here a few weeks I started to get requests from media sources, asking me to do interviews. I thought that this could be my chance to tell my story to the rest of the world. It was obvious that no one else was going to do it
Damien Echols

132

for me. So, I granted a couple interviews, with disastrous results. A local news station got hold of the footage of one of my interviews and claimed I had talked

“exclusively” to them. In truth I never talked to anyone from their station, they only cut and spliced the footage to make it appear that I had done so. A newscaster said something like, “Here’s Damien Echols, talking about his leadership of a Satanic cult!” They then showed clips of me speaking about something completely unrelated to anything they had said. That wasn’t the worst part, though.

The worst was when the prison administration decided to teach me the folly of my ways.

People in prison have their own language, and it takes awhile to grow accustomed to it. For example, “shoot me a kite” means don’t discuss business out loud, write it down and pass it to me. “Catch out” means shut up and leave or violence will soon follow. “Reckless eyeballing” means you’re looking at someone a little too closely. “Ear hustling” or “Ear popping” means someone is trying to listen in to your conversation. “Shake down” means the guards are coming to destroy your cell in a search for contraband. A shake down is how my “lesson”

started.

I was listening to the radio one day not long after my arrival when two guards came to my cell and barked out, “shake down!” they began knocking my things on the floor and walking on them, deliberately trying to destroy what little prop-erty I was allowed. One of the guards pulled a knife blade out of his boot and tossed it on my bunk, than called for a camera. He took a picture of the knife and wrote a report saying he found it in my cell. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

I thought being set-up for things I didn’t do would stop once I got to prison. I was wrong.

They threw me in “the hole.” The hole is a group of cells located at the back of the prison, out of sight and hearing of everyone else. Temperatures can reach nearly 120 degrees in the summer, and it’s even darker and filthier than the rest of the prison. You aren’t allowed to have anything when you’re in the hole—no toothbrush, no comb, no deodorant, and no contact with the outside world. Its purpose is complete and absolute sensory deprivation. You spend thirty days in the hole, no matter what your offense is. Beating someone half to death or making a homemade lamp shade to go over your light both carry the same penalty: thirty days in the hole. The only thing that differs is how you’re treated while you’re back there.

Damien Echols

133

While in the hole I was beaten, starved, spit on, threatened with death, and subject to various other forms of abuse, both large and small, all at the hands of guards. The reason? The warden said I made the ADC look bad in the interviews I was doing. One night at almost twelve o’clock I heard keys jingling in the hallway and knew they were coming for me. Two guards came into my cell, handcuffed me, and took me up to the warden’s office. One guard held me up by the hair as the warden choked me. I could smell the alcohol on his breath as he ranted and raved about how “sick” I was. One of the guards kept punching me in the stomach while repeatedly asking, “Are you going to tell anyone about this?

Are you?” I had never been subjected to anything like that in my life. I thought adults were only that barbaric in movies.

It happened more than once. On three more occasions, guards came into my cell and beat me. Once I was chained to the bars of the cell while three of them took turns. Another time it was five of them. I was told that they planned on keeping me in the hole for a very long time. Every time the thirty days were up, they could just give me another thirty for something else. The only thing that saved me was the way word leaked out into the rest of the prison, and a deacon from the Catholic Church heard about it. He told the warden that if it didn’t stop he would start telling people what was going on. They didn’t want to risk it, so I was taken out of the hole and put back into the barracks with the rest of death row.

The thing about the prison administration is that they will abuse you as long as you’re quiet. The only way they can’t hurt you is if someone is paying attention. I started talking to more people, doing more interviews, because I knew only that would make them leave me alone. They can’t afford to harm you if the world is watching. They could not drag me into a dark alley, if I had a spotlight shining on me. I even filed a lawsuit against the warden and some of the guards responsible.

In the end it was a waste of my time, as they once again chose the attorney who represented me for the suit. I only saw him once, about ten minutes before the “trial” began. He didn’t do one single thing to help me. I was refused the right to a trial in front of a jury, and he just shrugged his shoulders as if to say

“Oh, well. That’s life.” Instead, a judge alone decided my case. I wasn’t even allowed to talk during the proceeding. We didn’t go to a courtroom, the judge came to the prison so the session could be held in a small room out of public view. The lies the administration told were pretty incredible. They “proved” that the warden couldn’t have done anything to me, because he was in the hospital
Damien Echols

134

recovering from a heart attack. Did the lawyer they appointed me investigate these claims? No. He sat quietly drinking a soda.

In the end, it all worked out. The warden was fired, although it wasn’t because of anything he’d done to me. Some of his other foul deeds caught up to him. The worst of the guards were also either fired or given promotions and shipped to other prisons in the state. The one who put the knife in my cell continued to work there for many more years, despite constant reports of abuse. Eventually the ADC had no choice but to “take action” against him—he was caught on camera beating a handcuffed inmate in the face. No charges were ever filed against any of these people. After all, it’s not like they were actually abusing people, you know.

They’re just prisoners.

I was still a child when I was sent here. I grew into adulthood, both mentally and physically, in this hellhole. I came into this situation wide-eyed and naïve.

Now I view most everything and everyone with narrow eyed suspicion. I’ve learned the hard way that the world is not my friend. I thought that pretty much the entire human race wanted me to die a slow, painful death, until a miracle occurred. It seems my hopes of receiving divine intervention weren’t completely misplaced.

While in jail I had granted an interview to a crew from HBO. They wanted to film a documentary. I had mostly forgotten about it after I had been in prison for a year or so, thinking nothing had come of it. They had interviewed me, Domini, my family, the cops, the victim’s families, and anyone else who would talk. They also filmed the entire trial, from beginning to end. I didn’t see it when it finally aired, but many other people around the world did. Contrary to popular reckon-ing, not everyone in prison has cable television. I personally do not know of any who do.

On a daily basis I started receiving letters and cards from people all over the country who had seen the film and were horrified by it. The overwhelming senti-ment was, “That could have been me they did that to!” You have to understand that up until this point I had received no sympathy or empathy from anyone.

Everywhere I turned I found nothing but disgust, contempt, and hatred. The whole world wanted me to die. It’s impossible to have any hope in the face of such opposition. Now I was suddenly receiving letters from people saying, ‘I’m so sorry for what had been done to you, I wish there was something I could do to help.”

Damien Echols

135

A single letter like this would have been enough to kindle a tiny spark of hope in my heart, but I received hundreds. Every day at least one or two arrived, sometimes as many as ten or twenty. I would lie on my bunk and flip through these letters over and over again, savoring them like a fat kid with a fistful of candy.

Sometimes tears streamed from my eyes as I looked to the heavens and whispered

“Thank you, thank you,” over and over again. I clutched those letters to my chest and slept with them under my head. I had never been so thankful for anything in my entire life.

One thing I’ve noticed time and time again in prison is how quickly people in the outside world forget you. Their lives do not stop simply because yours does.

Sooner or later they get over the grieving process and move on. Even your family.

Two years is a very long time for someone to stick by your side once you’re in prison. Most don’t even last that long. Domini moved on with her life, she’s now married, has a beautiful daughter, and lives all the way on the other side of the country. I haven’t even seen my own father in many, many years. He and my mother divorced and both remarried. He has another family to worry about and care for now. There’s not much he could have done for me anyway. All around me are people who have been abandoned to their fates. No one comes to see them or offers encouragement. No one writes them long letters with news from home. They have no one to call when they’re so sad or scared that they feel they can’t go on. No one sends them a few dollars so they don’t have to eat the rancid prison food. They are the true living dead. The world has moved on, and they are forgotten.

The thought that I could have so easily been one of them fills my heart with terror. I’m fortunate beyond my ability to describe because I’ve had a few friends who have stuck by my side since almost the beginning.

Three devoted characters from the west coast came into my life years ago, and have been a constant source of support ever since. Kathy, Grove, and Burk. Collectively they are “the K.G.B.” These people have gone above and beyond the call of duty to do everything they can to help. They’ve invested countless hours of their own time to spreading the word about this case. They never miss a court hearing and never forget a birthday. Through their unwavering belief and devo-tion many others have come to hear about and join the crusade. There are now more names than I can mention, and I could write a “Thank you” book consist-ing of nothing but names of people who have went out of their way to help.