The show you're about to listen to may contain themes of violence, occult activities, strong language, and other sensitive material.

With an emphasis on cult's murder and other adult matters, listener discretion is advised.

On cult leader, I strive for telling stories in a truthful matter, though press, media, and other resources cannot always be verified.

Sources can be found in the show notes. Hello and welcome back to Colt Leader. I'm your cult leader, and we welcome back to cold leader. I'm your cult leader, Spencer Henry, and we're back

with part two of the West Memphis 3. We're going to do a quick recap so we don't lose the plot

because this story was already, we have a lot going on here. Okay? We have three eight-year-old

boys, Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers, who went missing

on May 5th of 1993, and by the next day, we're found in Robin Hood Hills, naked, bound,

beaten, mutilated, and submerged in a drainage ditch.

The scene, chaotic. Cause of death? Not immediately clear.

And there was zero clear physical evidence pointing to a suspect at the time. Investigators quickly

decided this wasn't random. The brutality, the bindings, the rumors, it all started forming a narrative to

them. And in a small, deeply religious community,

that narrative had turned into talk of rituals, occult activity, Satanism, full on satanic panic.

That is when this guy, Damien Eccles, gets pulled into it because he stood out in town, right? He's wearing the black

clothes. He's listening to heavy metal music. He's interested in Wicca and alternative religion.

Anywhere else, just a teenager figuring himself out. But here, it made him look suspicious,

not because of direct physical evidence, but because he seemed to fit this emerging theory that the cops and the people in town had come up with.

This theory investigators were building that it was an outsider, an outcast teen, taking revenge on the city.

So police started building around that.

Talking to people, collecting rumors.

Some people were like, oh, Damien,

...