You are listening to the Roberta Glass True Crime Report, putting the true back in true crime.

From New York City, Roberta Glass is now on the record.

My guest, Gary Meese is a journalist, author, and podcaster who has written three books on the West Memphis Three case.

Blood on Black, Where the Monsters Go, and The Case Against the West Memphis Three Killers.

His podcast of the same name, The Case Against the West Memphis Three Killers, gives a detailed look at the case.

His knowledge of the West Memphis Three case is both impressive and exhaustive.

If there is someone who knows more about the West Memphis Three case, I have yet to come across them.

Welcome, Gary Nees. Thanks, Roberta. Glad to be here.

I wanted to do this episode because I get so many comments, no matter how much I explain this case,

that are really comments that come from the documentary. So the first thing I want to ask you is, were the West Memphis

3 arrested and convicted because they were different and they wore black t-shirts and

listen to Metallica? The thing about just about all these questions is there's often a little

bit of truth mixed in there and that there, you know, there were black t-shirts. And some of those

t-shirts were Metallica T-shirts. And so they figured in a very minor way in the case. But they

weren't arrested because they wore black t-shirts. Black t-shirts with a band name on the front

were common in West Memphis at the time.

One of the officers who went to talk to Damian Eccles and Jason Baldwin on May 9th,

and this is four days after the original killing was wearing a black Grim Reaper t-shirt at the time.

And so I guess maybe he was trying to fit in with the homies in the trailer park

or something. Who knows? But we're talking about, you know, a heavy metal band that really

cultivated more of a so-called, and this is all PR marketing, so forth, but more of a satanic

image than Metallica ever tried to cultivate. On the face of it, it's absurd. Number one,

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