Why would find it impossible to believe that someone would make a false confession, especially

when it comes to violent crimes like murder, but it does happen, especially when the

confessor is confused, scared, manipulated, and especially susceptible to social pressure for cognitive or other reasons.

One of the most well-known examples of a false confession in recent US memory happened in the case

of the West Memphis 3. On May 6th 1993 the bodies of three 8-year-old

boys were found in a pond in a little wooded area of West Memphis

Arkansas. The crime was extremely heinous. The children's clothing had been removed,

their hands and feet had been bound with their own shoelaces, one of the victim's

genitals appeared to have been savagely mutilated. The members of West Memphis

law enforcement assigned this

investigation had never come across a shocking crime quite like this. Three young

bound bodies and no wildly irresponsible paranoia of a local juvenile parole officer

named Jerry Driver, law enforcement efforts very quickly focused in on one

local teenager named Damien Eccles.

Damien dressed in all black, listened to heavy metal, had evil tattooed on his knuckles,

and was a follower of Wicca. And in Jerry's mind, that all equaled to Damien being the leader of a local satanic cult. In 1993 a nationwide

satanic panic that it begun in 1980 still had a powerful grip on the minds of

many in the conservative Christian South, The follower of any religion outside of Christianity

was regarded with a lot of suspicion, and followers of any religion that fit under the big

umbrella of paganism were often accused of literally worshiping the devil in a way

that actual members of the Levian Church of Satan or the satanic temple

would find utterly laughable. The satanic panic is called a panic because it was not rational.

...