Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row (20 page)

Eighteen

M
y eighteenth birthday, in December 1992, came and went on silent feet. There was no cake, no celebration, no well-wishers. Jack didn’t even remember it, or if he did, he made no mention. I’m certain his hatred of me equaled my disgust with him by this point. Having me in his house was a reminder of his failed relationship and disgrace. At least I was now officially an adult, and outside Jerry Driver’s jurisdiction. As a juvenile officer, he was only allowed to harass children.

Domini’s aunt and uncle had decided to move and were leaving her and her mother behind. Domini’s mother was in extremely poor health. She was diabetic and needed insulin injections, not to mention the fact that the left side of her body was almost completely paralyzed from a stroke. It took her ten minutes to walk the length of a room, and she often needed help getting dressed. Needless to say, the doors of opportunity weren’t exactly banging open for her.

After searching for a place to stay, they located a rapidly disintegrating trailer in Lakeshore. They had procured a van to move their things, but a one-hundred-pound pregnant girl and a half-paralyzed woman proved to be less than adept at the moving process. In the end most of the loading and unloading fell to me, but I didn’t really mind. It gave me a chance to look at all the interesting things they had accumulated—old birdcages, roach clips shaped like snakes, mildewed books, and other assorted treasures they hoarded. They were more than a little worried about how they were going to make ends meet.

Meanwhile, pressures continued to mount with Jack. He constantly accused me of things I hadn’t done, such as having parties and letting people go into his room while he was at work. I didn’t know enough people to put together a party, and there was nothing in his room worth going in there for. He would rant and rave, screaming at me, pressing his face right into mine, but he drew the line at hitting me. I could tell he sometimes wanted to, but he never did.

Late one night I could take it no more. He was bellowing at me as usual and I simply got up and left. I walked out while he was in mid-tirade.

It was dark, cold, and drizzling as I walked up and down the streets of Lakeshore. It must have been winter still because I remember I was wearing a leather jacket at the time. It seems it’s always cold, dark, and drizzling when I go through momentous emotional changes. I used to wear an old black slouch hat, and I liked to watch the rain drip off the brim. It made me feel like a character in a spaghetti western. That’s what I did for a couple of hours before finally going to Domini’s, where I slept that night.

I went and got my things the next day while Jack was at work and brought them back to Domini’s. Between my “crazy check” and the money Domini got from her father, we managed to pay rent and survive. We even started buying a few items for the baby we would soon have. We couldn’t afford a car, so a decent job remained beyond my grasp. I was certain that if I just had a way to get across the bridge to Memphis every day, I could find something good.

Domini quit high school because of the pregnancy, and we spent the days together. We went on walks, watched television, fed the ducks that came to the lake, or kept her mom company while listening to music. We passed the days in this fashion for several months. We talked about what we should do once the baby was born and agreed that we should get married, although we never laid solid plans.

I continued talking to my parents on the phone, and not long after I told them Domini was pregnant, they told me they were moving back to Arkansas. It seemed that things weren’t going so well for them in Oregon. I wasn’t certain how I felt about this, because I knew it meant they’d be back in my life. Could be good, could be bad. Time would tell. They would be back in about a week or so. I told them our address so they could come see us once they were in town.

During those calm, quiet, uneventful months with Domini, I fell prey to the belief that things would never change. It wasn’t that I wanted things to remain that way forever; it just seemed that I didn’t have much choice in the matter. I was wasting away. Ever since I was a child, I’d felt like I was doing nothing but waiting for my special place in life to be revealed to me. Often I was frightened that I’d miss it when it happened. I felt that the stagnant life I was living was not what I was destined for, but I had no idea what to do about it. All I could do was wait, wait, wait. I knew I wasn’t meant to live and die in a trailer park the rest of the world had never even heard of.

*  *  *

M
y parents arrived in Arkansas early on a weekday morning in the early spring. Domini and I were still in bed sleeping when my mother and sister knocked at the door and Domini’s mom let them in. I could hear them talking in the living room and figured I’d better get up. If anything, my mother’s southern accent seemed to have deepened while she was away. It was very odd hearing her voice in person again; it made the day seem special somehow, like a holiday.

I deliberately took my time getting dressed and brushing my hair before going into the living room, mostly because I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea how to behave in this situation. When I finally entered the room I saw my mother and sister in chairs; my sister was wide-eyed but silent. My father wasn’t there. I wondered if that meant anything. My mother turned to see me looking at her, then quickly bustled over to hug me. The first thing that struck me was how much I’d grown. I now stood a full head taller than her. While my mother theatrically shed the few requisite tears, I hugged my sister and asked where my father was. He was at their new place, unloading their things. My little brother was with him. He would meet us at my grandmother Doris’s house for breakfast.

Domini and I went with them and listened to tales of their adventures in Oregon on the way. They seemed to be well rested and cheerful despite their weeklong drive. When I first laid eyes on my father I could see something like doubt in his face, as if, like me, he didn’t know what to do. He was nervous and uncertain.

Not having a clue what to say, I hugged him. Domini did the same. That seemed to put him at ease. The awkwardness faded away, and he began behaving like his normal self. The single most familiar thing about my father to me is his cough. He coughed a great deal because of his lifelong smoking habit, and hearing him cough put me at ease for some reason. It softened my heart toward both of my parents. Perhaps because it reminded me that they were only human, subject to the same failings as everyone else. My mother had gotten pregnant with me at the age of fifteen; they were both high school dropouts and had never known any other life.

At least I was capable of knowing there was some other kind of life possible, even if I was having trouble achieving it. They believed that the way they were living was the only kind of life that existed. They had no imagination to envision anything else, and no desire to reach it. I felt sorry for them. I still do sometimes, although that doesn’t mean their constant idiocy isn’t capable of driving me to the brink of madness. They never have learned from their mistakes. It would probably be easier on everyone if I stopped expecting them to.

After they settled into their new place, I began spending time with them. I alternated living with Domini and at my parents’ place. So did Domini sometimes, and Jason was known to stay over, too. One day he laughingly called me a nomad after we made stops at both places, then traveled to my grandmother’s to see what tasty dishes she would serve. Once he mentioned it, I did feel like a bit of a gypsy. I didn’t quarrel with my parents at that point, maybe because I could always escape them.

I was now legally an adult, an expectant father, and in a relationship I was certain would end in marriage. I never would have abandoned Domini. Sometimes I think that comes from sheer determination not to make the same mistakes my father did. But I was not in love.

I thought of Deanna frequently, wondering what had happened. Through sheer coincidence (I use that word but don’t believe there’s any such thing) I found out where Deanna’s family had started attending church. The possibility of seeing her again plagued me. I couldn’t drive it out of my head. I constantly wondered what would happen, how she would react, what I would see in her eyes, and I had a plethora of questions I needed answers to. I couldn’t understand how she had so thoroughly and completely severed our connection. I needed an explanation.

Sunday morning found me preparing to descend into the hellish realm of fundamentalism. From the outside, the church looked like a Kentucky Fried Chicken shack with a steeple. I knew I didn’t belong there, but I had to do it or I would get no rest. Slinking inside, I took a seat on the last bench of the congregation and watched the activity. People obnoxiously called out greetings, shook hands, and slapped one another on the back as if they hadn’t seen each other in years. I saw people glance at me from the corner of their eyes, but no one approached me. No one smiled at me, shook my hand, or slapped me on the back. No one even said hello.

Scanning the rows, I saw Deanna sitting in the dead center of the room with her family. I hadn’t seen her in a year, but she hadn’t changed at all. I’m not sure what it was that I felt, but my heart was in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. She looked at me . . . and looked away. I didn’t see even a flicker of recognition. What did that mean? I had been expecting something—anything—but her eyes passed over me as if I were not even there.

I sat through the entire hour and a half of the red-faced preacher bellowing and beating his fist against the podium, but never heard a word of it. I stared at Deanna’s back, willing her to turn around and give me some sort of reaction, but she never did.

When it was over, I walked outside and stood on the sidewalk. I was trying to figure out what this meant as I watched her family get in their car and drive away. I turned to leave and heard someone call out, “Hey! I want to talk to you for a minute!” The preacher was staring at me without blinking as he approached.

He stood before me with crossed arms, not offering to shake my hand. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to a pin on my jacket. It was the iron cross from the cover of the Guns N’ Roses album
Appetite for Destruction
. “That some sort of satanic thing?”

I told him it most certainly was not, but he still looked dubious.

“I don’t want you coming here making people uncomfortable.” He looked like he was working himself up into a state of anger.

“Don’t worry, I won’t be back.” I walked away, still trying to figure out what it all meant.

Nineteen

B
y May, Domini and I had been arguing a little, though nothing serious. It was mostly in the vein of people who have spent too much time together and just need a break. I had slept at my parents’ house for a couple of nights to create some breathing space. One morning I got up and went out to have a nice big bowl of Froot Loops for breakfast. Toucan Sam makes a mean box of cereal. While I was happily munching and contemplating the fact that I would soon have a bowl of pink milk, I flipped on the television. Nothing goes better with Fruit Loops than cartoons. There were no cartoons that day. Every channel was showing the same special news coverage of three murdered kids who had been discovered the day before. The reports all said the same thing: the bodies of three eight-year-old boys had been found mutilated in a wooded area nearby. It looked like every reporter in the world had descended upon West Memphis.

It wasn’t just the people on TV talking about it—the whole town was abuzz. It was the conversation on everyone’s lips, and the rumors were already starting to fly. I heard the same two words countless times over the next month: “Satanists” and “sacrifice.” Each day that passed without a suspect being arrested only increased the talk, as the words cemented themselves more firmly in the minds of every gossipmonger in town.

The very same day, Friday, May 7, I saw the first news coverage is when the police began to sniff around my door, although they later denied it and said they never considered me a suspect until several weeks down the road. Not long after the coverage began, a cop named James Sudbury and Jerry Driver’s sidekick, Jones, came knocking. I found it interesting that Driver himself didn’t show up. They came into the house and said they wanted to talk to me privately. Evidently they did not want my family to hear what they had to say. My mother, sister, and paternal grandmother watched as I led Sudbury and Jones into Michelle’s bedroom and closed the door. They sat on the edge of the bed, one on either side of me.

This was the first time I’d ever seen Sudbury. He was potbellied, with a horrible comb-over and weak, watery eyes. He also sported the same seventies porn mustache so popular among his colleagues. He didn’t say much, and just sat quietly while Driver’s cohort asked the questions. Jones was all saccharine and lying eyes as he said things like “Something bad has happened, and we really need your help.” Instead of questioning me about the murders, he stayed on topics such as “What’s your favorite book of the Bible, and why? Have you ever read anything by Anton LaVey? Who is your favorite author?” It seemed they couldn’t decide between conducting a murder investigation and filing a book report. Of course eventually came the inevitable “Have you heard anything about devil-worshippers in the area, or any plans to sacrifice children?” I found it sickening. Instead of attempting to find out who had murdered three children, they indulged in these childish fairy tales and grab-ass games. A fine example of your tax dollars at work.

Before leaving, they took a Polaroid picture of me. Later, I found out they showed it to nearly everyone in town, using it to plant ideas in the minds of an already frightened public. In court they denied taking the picture or ever even coming to see me that day. They had to, because Jones and Driver were from a different office and weren’t supposed to be involved in the investigation in any way. By that point in the courtroom, the blatant lies would no longer shock me because I’d seen them do it too many times.

This visit was the first of many. They were soon coming at me every single day. They came to my parents’ house, to Domini’s trailer, and to Jason’s house. It wasn’t always the same two; there was a rotating crew of about six of them. It was the same questions, day after day. It became pretty apparent that these clowns weren’t looking for a murderer. Jerry Driver and his two cohorts, Jones and Murray, put a bug in the ear of the West Memphis police department, and they couldn’t shake it. Instead of conducting a real murder investigation and checking the forensic evidence, the police started immediately chasing stories of black-robed figures that danced around bonfires and chanted demonic incantations.

Beginning that day, that’s all anyone talked about. The entire town was petrified because they were convinced hell had broken loose in Arkansas. Every redneck preacher in the area was preaching sermons about how we were in the “end times,” so you better get right with God or else the devil would come for you, too. You must keep in mind that this is a state in which one out of every four people can’t read above a fifth-grade level. Ignorance breeds superstition. People believed these stories and helped them grow. After being shown my picture, one man swore to the police that I had caused him to levitate. Another swore that the police told him they had found body parts under my bed. These sorts of stories passed for investigation.

The constant harassment continued to escalate. Within days, instead of coming to my house they were taking me to the police station. It was easier for them to play good cop, bad cop there. One of them (usually Sudbury, whose breath smelled as if he ate onions morning, noon, and night) would get in my face and scream, “You’re going to fry! You may as well tell us you did it now!” The other cop would then pretend to be my friend and act as if he were rescuing me from Sudbury’s “wrath.” I was only a teenager, and the whole thing looked pretty pathetic even to me.

This continued day after day for a month. My grandmother grew worried and sold her rings to hire an attorney to come to the police station with me, but the police refused to let him in. They lied and said I never asked for him, even though I did so several times. My grandmother lost her engagement and wedding rings for nothing.

I didn’t think there was anything wrong with answering their questions, because I had nothing to hide. I had done nothing wrong, and figured they would sooner or later get this insanity out of their system. It didn’t work that way. The more I cooperated, the more abusive and belligerent they became.

In spite of their abusive behavior, the threat didn’t feel any more escalated than the tone of the harassment we’d been through for nearly two years where Driver was concerned. That changed permanently the last time I was picked up and brought into the police station before the arrest. I was kept there for eight hours. I was not allowed a drink of water, a bite of food, or even to use the restroom. They screamed and threatened me the entire time, trying to force me to make a confession. The psychological pressure was enormous. They would have kept me all night if I hadn’t finally demanded they either charge me with a crime or let me go home. I suffered from extreme exhaustion, my head was pounding, and my body kept trying to vomit, although there was nothing in my stomach. I felt like I’d been run over. If you’ve never been through anything like that, there’s no way you can understand. There’s no word that describes what they did to me other than “torture.”

On the evening of June 3, my mother, father, and Nanny left to go to a casino for a night of gambling. My grandmother loved playing blackjack more than just about anything else in the world, and my parents were more than happy to keep her company at the table. They would be gone all night. Michelle, Jason, Domini, and I had all settled down for an evening of watching horror videos. We were making fun of a movie that seemed to have been put together with more imagination than money when someone started beating on the door. Not knocking, beating. You could feel the vibration through your feet on the floor. Outside someone screamed, “This is Sudbury. Open the door!”

My first thought was,
To hell with that
. I was sick of those ass clowns tormenting me day after day. I figured it was more of the same and that they’d eventually get tired of waiting and leave. When the beating continued and grew even more persistent, I knew something wasn’t right. They were being even more aggressive than usual. I went to answer the door to see what they wanted.

When I opened the door, there were three cops standing on the steps, all pointing guns directly at my face. The barrels of their weapons were less than three inches from touching my skin. Another cop stood on the ground pointing a gun at my chest. Sudbury nearly tackled me in his eagerness to handcuff me and get me into a cop car. Looking over my shoulder, I told Domini, “Don’t worry about it.”
After all, it’s impossible for them to prove you’ve done something you haven’t done, right?
At least that’s what I thought.

It was a scene of utter chaos. I don’t recall whether my rights were read to me amid the noise and police stampede. I didn’t see them arrest Jason; I was rushed out too quickly. I later found out they took him out right after me. After I was put into a car, I was driven straight to the police station and escorted to a small office by a cop who looked disturbingly like a pig that had been taught to walk upright. I never saw a single cop in the station who was even close to being physically fit, but this guy was the worst of the lot. He was so fat he was suffocating under his own weight. He weighed at least 350 pounds. He had no neck, and his nose was turned up like a snout. I’ve learned over the years that sooner or later a person’s physical appearance comes to resemble whatever is in their heart. I shudder to think what this guy’s true nature was. For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking of him as “Piggy Little.”

Piggy Little was an old-school asshole. You could tell he’d never succeeded at anything in his life, and he was out for revenge. He seemed to think his personal God-given mission in life was to harass and torment me in every way possible. He kept his hands on me at all times—he pushed, pulled, and jerked me around continuously.

After ten or fifteen minutes, the chief inspector came into the office and sat behind a desk. His name was Gary Gitchell, and I’d seen him at the station a couple of times before, but I’d never had to deal with him. Gitchell was slightly more intelligent than his coworkers, which is most likely why he was the boss. He was no intellectual giant, but he didn’t have to be when compared with the rest.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked.

I stared at him blankly, saying nothing.

“You may as well tell me something now because your friend has already confessed. This is your only chance to make sure you don’t take all the blame.” I felt like I had somehow gotten lost in this conversation, or that I must be missing something, because it wasn’t making sense to me. Friend? Confessed?

“Who are you talking about?” I asked. It was his turn to look at me blankly. I had no idea who he could be talking about, because I knew it couldn’t be Jason.

He continued along the same lines with statements like “You should just tell us something, because your friend is already pointing the finger at you. If you want to make sure he doesn’t put everything on you, this is your only chance.” This went on for at least half an hour, Gitchell talking while Piggy glared. When he finally realized this wasn’t going anywhere, I was put inside a cell that wasn’t much larger than a phone booth. I was left there throughout the night, confined to a space so small I couldn’t even stretch my legs out. There was no water, no restroom, nothing. Every so often Gitchell came in and asked more of the same. At one point he came in and said, “One of the officers told me you wanted to talk to me.” I hadn’t even seen an officer in hours. “He lied,” I informed him. This continued until well after sunrise.

When I wasn’t being questioned, I was trying to solve this mystery. Who could Gitchell be talking about? What had this friend said I had done? None of it made any sense.

A cop came in and demanded my clothes. I’d never experienced anything like this in my life and thought him some sort of pervert, judging by the looks of him. I was given more clothes—an old, ragged police uniform that was at least twelve sizes too large. I had to gather the waist and tie it in a knot to keep the pants from falling down. This is how I made my first court appearance.

At ten in the morning on June 4, I was arraigned. Jason, Jessie, and I were called separately. I was walked down a narrow hallway that suddenly opened up into a courtroom. I was stunned by the contrast. The jail itself was filthy and roach-infested to the point of making you not want to touch anything for fear of contamination. It was a place the general public was never meant to see. I’d grown used to that, so the dazzlingly clean and well-lit courtroom was jarring.

I blinked like an animal pulled from its hole and looked around me. The place was packed from wall to wall, and the only faces I recognized were my mother’s and father’s. Everyone else in the place watched me with hatred in their eyes. Every few seconds someone popped up as though in a Whac-A-Mole game and snapped pictures of me. I hadn’t slept in about thirty-six hours, so everything had an even more surreal quality to it.

The judge—his name was Rainey—began rambling while I leaned against a wall to keep my knees from buckling. Four cops kept their hands on me at all times, as if they expected me to break and run at any second. In the course of maybe ten minutes, I was charged with three counts of capital murder. I didn’t hear the charges outside the panic, fear, and exhaustion in my head. When the judge got to the “How do you plead?” part of the show, I said, “Not guilty.” I was following the instructions of a lawyer temporarily assigned to me, who’d told me minutes before the hearing what to say. My voice sounded flat, dull, and small. I felt a wave of outrage directed toward me from the peanut gallery. The judge’s droning voice sounded strangely like an auctioneer as he began talking about a confession. I was so exhausted and in such shock that I could follow very little of what he was saying. It finally dawned on me that he was asking if I wanted the confession read out loud or just entered into the record. I was starting to feel a little pissed, and my voice was a little more forceful this time as I said, “Read it.” I could tell he didn’t like that idea at all. As a matter of fact he seemed downright uncomfortable as he looked down and started shuffling papers.

Finally he stuttered that he wasn’t going to do that, but that he would call for a recess until after I had read it. During the recess I was taken into a broom closet filled with cleaning supplies, and was handed a stack of papers while two cops stood staring at me. My brain was so numb I could comprehend only about one-fifth of what I was reading, but at least now I knew who had made the confession. The name written at the top was “Jessie Misskelley.” My first thought was,
Did he really do it?
Followed quickly by,
Why did he say I did it?
Even in my shell-shocked state I could tell something about his “confession” wasn’t right. For one thing, every line seemed to contradict the one before it. Any idiot could plainly see he was just agreeing with everything the cops said. That’s when I knew why the judge didn’t want it read out loud. Anyone with even an average IQ could see it was a setup. The whole thing seemed shady.