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About 10 years ago I found out people were spreading lies about me calling me a government snitch David Dorn Damien Echols West Memphis Three

9/24: Damien Echols talks 'Life,' at Changing Hands in Tempe

9/24: Damien Echols talks 'Life,' at Changing Hands in Tempe

by Randy Cordova - Sept. 22, 2012 04:41 PM The Republic | azcentral.com

As one of the West Memphis Three, Damien Echols spent nearly two decades on death row for the murders of three Arkansas Cub Scouts in 1993, a crime he says he didn't commit. Last year, due to a lack of evidence, the men were released amid a flood of publicity.

Now 37, Echols has written "Life After Death," a memoir that details the horrors of prison life. He has become something of a celebrity. Along with "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson and others, Echols produced "West of Memphis," a documentary about the case. He wrote the Pearl Jam song "Army Reserve" with Eddie Vedder and shares matching tattoos with pal Johnny Depp.

Echols, polite and well-spoken, called from a New York hotel to discuss how his life has changed.

Question: Who is the audience for your book?

Answer: People who are interested in the case or people who want to learn more in-depth details than the little segments they've seen on the local news. Hopefully, it's just people who want to learn more.

Q: You have a lot of followers on Twitter. What kind of people are they?

A: Pretty much every end of the spectrum. We've got close to 12,000 people, and they come from every walk of life. They're from every state and lots of other countries. They've been extremely supportive.

Q: Does that surprise you, considering how people know who you are?

A: In some ways, yes, but in some ways it really doesn't surprise me. I used to get tons of mail, even on death row, saying they were sorry for what I was having to go through. It's hard to estimate in the almost 20 years I was locked up how many letters there were, but I knew there were a lot of people out there. It's nice with Twitter, you can respond to people instead of just getting letters in the mail.

Q: Are things such as Twitter a shock for you coming out of prison? It must be a different world from what you were used to.

A: I went literally from solitary confinement one day to being thrown back out in the world the next. For two or three months, I was so traumatized and in shock, it literally made me physically sick. I'm slowly building up a tolerance for this new stimulus I wasn't used to, as well as learning to operate in a whole different world.

Q: What's an example?

A: Well, I had worn chains on my feet every time I walked for 20 years. I wasn't used to walking without chains on my feet, so I was tripping over my feet non-stop. And having to learn little things, like how to use a fork properly, how to use an ATM card, how to turn on a computer. One thing that gets me is when I went into prison, a television had one remote control with the numbers 1 through 9 on it. Now, it's hard to even get the TV to turn on.

Q: That's right: You went in before computers were part of everyday life.

A: I don't think I knew anyone who had a computer. They were like glorified typewriters, and only really rich people had them. Only rich people had cellphones, and they were big and brown and had

an antenna that stuck out of them. I'd only seen them on TV.

Q: Plus, when you went into prison, you essentially went in a kid (he was 18 when he was arrested) and came out a man.

A: I would get upset, because you almost feel like a child because you're so dependent on anyone else to help you do little things that everyone takes for granted. It's a horrible feeling. You have to think that for almost 20 years, I didn't go anywhere. I was in a concrete box. I had just monstrous forms of anxiety. Trying to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B. I had never written checks or filed anything like taxes.

Q: It must also be a shock because people see you in magazines with people like Johnny Depp and think, "Oh, he's living the life."

A: People see the glamour angle or some red-carpet thing with Johnny, but they don't know for the past month I've been homeless, and we've (he and wife, Lorri Davis) been struggling to get a place to stay. Tomorrow, we move to Massachusetts, but we've been moving from hotel to hotel or staying with friends. When we left Arkansas, we literally felt like refugees. I did not have one single penny in my pocket or a change of clothes. If it wasn't for people helping us and trying to get us on our feet, we would have been screwed.

Q: Is your plan to write more books?

A: I've loved writing since I was 12 years old. It felt like something that scratches an itch deep inside of you. What I'm hoping with this book is that people will appreciate the writing style itself, and they'll want to read about more than just the case. That would allow me to go on and write about other things. That's what I would love to do.

Q: Did you write a lot in prison?

A: When I first went to prison, I didn't write hardly at all. I had been so traumatized by what they did to me during the trial, where they took my writings and twisted and manipulated them, that I couldn't even make myself pick up a pen. Gradually, I tried to take back something that had once meant so much to me. I started writing "Life After Death" about seven years ago. Eighty-five percent was written while I was still on death row.

Q: Did you write for yourself or with an audience in mind?

A: It's a really odd thing. I didn't think about publishing, but I had this odd feeling I wasn't just writing for myself. Going through all of these horrific things, I had the feeling that maybe this would mean something to someone other than me. So even though I was writing to keep my sanity, I thought maybe it will mean something to someone else.

Reach the reporter at randy.cordova@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8849. Twitter.com/randy_cordova

9/24: Damien Echols talks 'Life,' at Changing Hands in Tempe

9/24: Damien Echols talks 'Life,' at Changing Hands in Tempe

by Randy Cordova - Sept. 22, 2012 04:41 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

As one of the West Memphis Three, Damien Echols spent nearly two decades on death row for the murders of three Arkansas Cub Scouts in 1993, a crime he says he didn't commit. Last year, due to a lack of evidence, the men were released amid a flood of publicity.

Damien Echols

When: 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 24.

Where: Changing Hands Bookstore, 6428 S. McClintock Drive, Tempe.

Admission: Free. $26.95 for the book.

Details: 480-730-0205, changinghands.com.

Now 37, Echols has written "Life After Death," a memoir that details the horrors of prison life. He has become something of a celebrity. Along with "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson and others, Echols produced "West of Memphis," a documentary about the case. He wrote the Pearl Jam song "Army Reserve" with Eddie Vedder and shares matching tattoos with pal Johnny Depp.

Echols, polite and well-spoken, called from a New York hotel to discuss how his life has changed.

Question: Who is the audience for your book?

Answer: People who are interested in the case or people who want to learn more in-depth details than the little segments they've seen on the local news. Hopefully, it's just people who want to learn more.

Q: You have a lot of followers on Twitter. What kind of people are they?

A: Pretty much every end of the spectrum. We've got close to 12,000 people, and they come from every walk of life. They're from every state and lots of other countries. They've been extremely supportive.

Q: Does that surprise you, considering how people know who you are?

A: In some ways, yes, but in some ways it really doesn't surprise me. I used to get tons of mail, even on death row, saying they were sorry for what I was having to go through. It's hard to estimate in the almost 20 years I was locked up how many letters there were, but I knew there were a lot of people out there. It's nice with Twitter, you can respond to people instead of just getting letters in the mail.

Q: Are things such as Twitter a shock for you coming out of prison? It must be a different world from what you were used to.

A: I went literally from solitary confinement one day to being thrown back out in the world the next. For two or three months, I was so traumatized and in shock, it literally made me physically sick. I'm slowly building up a tolerance for this new stimulus I wasn't used to, as well as learning to operate in a whole different world.

Q: What's an example?

A: Well, I had worn chains on my feet every time I walked for 20 years. I wasn't used to walking without chains on my feet, so I was tripping over my feet non-stop. And having to learn little things, like how to use a fork properly, how to use an ATM card, how to turn on a computer. One thing that gets me is when I went into prison, a television had one remote control with the numbers 1 through 9 on it. Now, it's hard to even get the TV to turn on.

Q: That's right: You went in before computers were part of everyday life.

A: I don't think I knew anyone who had a computer. They were like glorified typewriters, and only really rich people had them. Only rich people had cellphones, and they were big and brown and had an antenna that stuck out of them. I'd only seen them on TV.

Q: Plus, when you went into prison, you essentially went in a kid (he was 18 when he was arrested) and came out a man.

A: I would get upset, because you almost feel like a child because you're so dependent on anyone else to help you do little things that everyone takes for granted. It's a horrible feeling. You have to think that for almost 20 years, I didn't go anywhere. I was in a concrete box. I had just monstrous forms of anxiety. Trying to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B. I had never written checks or filed anything like taxes.

Q: It must also be a shock because people see you in magazines with people like Johnny Depp and think, "Oh, he's living the life."

A: People see the glamour angle or some red-carpet thing with Johnny, but they don't know for the past month I've been homeless, and we've (he and wife, Lorri Davis) been struggling to get a place to stay. Tomorrow, we move to Massachusetts, but we've been moving from hotel to hotel or staying with friends. When we left Arkansas, we literally felt like refugees. I did not have one single penny in my pocket or a change of clothes. If it wasn't for people helping us and trying to get us on our feet, we would have been screwed.

Q: Is your plan to write more books?

A: I've loved writing since I was 12 years old. It felt like something that scratches an itch deep inside of you. What I'm hoping with this book is that people will appreciate the writing style itself, and they'll want to read about more than just the case. That would allow me to go on and write about other things. That's what I would love to do.

Q: Did you write a lot in prison?

A: When I first went to prison, I didn't write hardly at all. I had been so traumatized by what they did to me during the trial, where they took my writings and twisted and manipulated them, that I couldn't even make myself pick up a pen. Gradually, I tried to take back something that had once meant so much to me. I started writing "Life After Death" about seven years ago. Eighty-five percent was written while I was still on death row.

Q: Did you write for yourself or with an audience in mind?

A: It's a really odd thing. I didn't think about publishing, but I had this odd feeling I wasn't just writing for myself. Going through all of these horrific things, I had the feeling that maybe this would mean something to someone other than me. So even though I was writing to keep my sanity, I thought maybe it will mean something to someone else.

Reach the reporter at randy.cordova@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8849. Twitter.com/randy_cordova

After Jail and Release, New Fame as an Author

After Jail and Release, New Fame as an Author

By DAVE ITZKOFF

Published: September 23, 2012

On a Thursday afternoon walk along Canal Street, Damien Echols was reflecting on how this busy thoroughfare once nourished him in the first few months after his August 2011 release from a super-maximum-security prison in Arkansas.

Arriving from a life spent largely in solitary confinement and awaiting a death sentence, Mr. Echols was starved for human interaction and feasted on this downtown Manhattan smorgasbord teeming with awed tourists, stubborn natives and street peddlers hawking unfamiliar wares as if it were a five-course dinner.

Now, however, Mr. Echols compared this same block to a far less appetizing meal: “A sack full of McDonald’s hamburgers,” he called it.

It’s not that Mr. Echols, 37, one of the defendants in the notorious West Memphis Three murder case and the author of a new memoir, “Life After Death,” has become tired of a frantic, indifferent city or jaded by his own long-sought, hard-won freedom.

But after a year on the outside he finds himself an unlikely and uncomfortable celebrity. He is famous mostly because of things for which he does not want to be recognized, yet he is unable completely to shun the spotlight he says he needs to win himself a full exoneration.

“You can have all the evidence in the world, and that’s still only 50 percent of the fight,” said Mr. Echols, who speaks in a soft but resolute voice. “The other 50 percent is media. You have to get the media to pay attention. If not, they’ll sweep it under the rug and keep going.”

Tall and lean with long black hair, Mr. Echols is most widely known for having been convicted in 1994, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., for the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Ark., a crime the three men say they did not commit. Last year Mr. Echols, Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Misskelley were released, after almost 20 years, in a deal that required them to plead guilty even though they continue to maintain their innocence.

Since then Mr. Echols has lived a bifurcated existence. He has become well known from the three “Paradise Lost” documentaries, directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, that chronicled the West Memphis Three case, and he has spent time with several of the entertainment-world luminaries who fought for his release and have helped finance his exoneration efforts, including Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder and the “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson. (Mr. Jackson and Mr. Echols are also among the producers of a coming documentary, “West of Memphis.”)

But Mr. Echols says his private life is happily mundane. He and his wife, Lorri Davis, live in Salem, Mass., a city with long connections to magic and the dark arts that has become a modest mecca of New Age shops and meditation centers; he calls it “the only place on earth where I’m in the majority.”

On trips to New York, Mr. Echols prefers to hang out at Sacred Tattoo, the SoHo studio where he obtained the numerous ink designs on various parts of his body — runic symbols, ankhs, serpents and sundry winged creatures — and where its staff treats him as a friend and brother.

Trying to recall Mr. Echols’s first visit to Sacred Tattoo, its manager, Kevin Wilson, said it was like when “any other weird-looking dude walks through the door, it all just blurs together.”

But when Mr. Echols showed him his identification, Mr. Wilson recalled: “I was just like, ‘Really?’ I think his reply after that was, ‘Uh, you know who I am?’ I was like, ‘Dude, how can you not?’ This was like one of those cases of all cases.”

There is a similar push-and-pull duality that Mr. Echols feels about the release of “Life After Death,” which is published by Blue Rider Press and whose back cover bears endorsements from Mr. Depp, Mr. Vedder and Mr. Jackson. (Reviewing the memoir in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called it “a haunting book.”)

As he promotes the book with interviews and media appearances, Mr. Echols knows he will inevitably be asked about the adversities that he, Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Misskelley endured.

“Imagine the worst thing that’s ever happened to you and then having to talk about it over and over,” Mr. Echols said. “At the same time, for us, it’s kind of a necessary evil, just because there’s no sense of closure, for us.”

His book tour has also led to unusual opportunities like an appearance last Friday at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square, featuring him in conversation with Mr. Depp.

“If it was just me, they probably wouldn’t have to deal with 500 screaming 19-year-old girls,” Mr. Echols said with a chuckle. But he praised Mr. Depp for using his fame to focus attention on the event and on his book. “There’s nothing in it for him,” he said. “It’s obviously not going to advance his career in any way.”

Under a heavy security presence Mr. Depp, wearing a feathered hat and Western-style clothing, and Mr. Echols, dressed in his customary black, made their way through the crowd that had gathered at the store, posing for some paparazzi photographs before sitting in facing chairs on a stage.

As he queried Mr. Echols about his itinerant Southern upbringing and the horrific conditions of his incarceration, Mr. Depp was even more soft-spoken than the author, responding to his tales of abuse, suffering and redemption with the occasional “Wow” or deeply sarcastic “Nice.”

At one point Mr. Depp suggested he’d had some help preparing his own remarks. After reading a question to Mr. Echols about whether Americans are deliberately ignorant of the conditions faced by prison inmates, Mr. Depp said: “I’d like to shake the hand of whoever wrote that question, because you just spun me completely backwards. I’m not completely sure where I am now.”

Mr. Echols kept his even composure throughout the night, whether speaking about the casual racism of the man he regarded as his grandfather; the fellow death-row inmates who kept rats as pets; or the coping skills that helped him through the many hardships he has faced.

With dark laughter and some colorful language Mr. Echols said he had been taught to take a good “whupping,” “From my family, from my upbringing,” he said, “I just learned that life isn’t always great, and you just have to roll with whatever it hands you.”

After signing books and posing for photographs with fans for nearly an hour, Mr. Echols gathered with friends, relatives and supporters to celebrate his literary success. Praised for the self-assurance he had shown at the book event, Mr. Echols said it was all an illusion.

“I was scared to death,” he said. “The more scared I get, the calmer I am.”