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Unresolved: A True Crime & Mystery Podcast

West Memphis Three (Part Four: Trials & Tribulations)

Unresolved: A True Crime & Mystery Podcast

Unresolved Productions

History, True Crime, Society & Culture

4.52.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2026

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

"When we saw Damien and Jason being chained up and taken off, it was just so emotional, because we felt the wrong guys were being carted off."

In June of 1993, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were two young filmmakers coming off their acclaimed breakthrough and looking for a new opportunity. That's when an executive from HBO told them about a new story that had just taken place down in West Memphis, Arkansas, in which three teenagers were accused of killing three eight-year-olds. They assumed it would be a pretty straightforward story of youth violence.

They spent their first few weeks with the victims' families and interviewed the prosecutors and police officials about the case. But then they met the defendants, everything changed for them. Over the next ten months, they were allowed unprecedented access to the courtroom, the families, the defendants, and the investigation...



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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This episode contains graphic content that may not be suitable for all ages.

0:08.0

Listener discretion is advised.

0:10.0

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available.

0:15.0

Call or text 988 or chat with someone at 988 lifeline.org. Those outside of the U.S.

0:22.6

reach out to someone at your local crisis center or hotline.

0:25.6

Please do not suffer in silence.

0:32.6

And you know, interestingly, in terms of like a filmmaker's journey, the thing that's,

0:38.8

I think the most interesting for us is that when we went down to make the first film, we

0:44.8

weren't on some mission to write a great wrong.

0:48.5

We were storytellers who were told a story by H.

0:52.0

Not told, sent a story by Shield and Evans at HBO about these, you know, it was a local news clipping

0:57.6

that had been picked up by the New York Times.

0:59.4

And the way the press was spinning the story was that these guys were definitely guilty.

1:03.2

And so we were going down, we thought, to make like a real life River's Edge, you know,

1:07.0

a team of a film about, you know, disaffected youth, about how rotten three kids could be to kill three eight-year-olds.

1:15.3

And so, you know, we went down thinking we were going to, you know, do a study of, you know, this kind of horrible crime.

1:21.7

And once we got into it, you know, like one plus one was not equaling to.

1:26.3

The evidence was, you know, like one plus one was not equaling two. The evidence was, you know,

1:28.9

the local chief of police, you know, sent on a scale of one to ten, the cases in 11 to us, it

1:35.2

was like a negative one. I mean, the evidence was flimsy and circumstantial. And then when

1:39.8

we finally met and interviewed the West Memphis Three, we looked at each other and said,

1:43.9

you know, this is not a film about devil worshipers.

...

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