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number of car windows at a vintage auto shop. This incident earned him probation and an order of restitution. There was also an arrest for shoplifting, a conviction that was expunged after a twelve-month diversion of judgment, but until Jason’s arrest in June 1993, he wasn’t regarded as much of a troublemaker.
    Jason had been friends with Damien since the two were in junior high school, during their skateboarding phase. Despite living in the same trailer park—Lakeshore Estates—Damien and Jason hadn’t realized they were neighbors until Jason rode by one day on his bicycle. They began hanging out daily, listening to music, playing video games, and chasing girls. Jason’s younger brother Matt would often come with Jason. Matt was something of an entrepreneur in the trailer park, his specialty being the purveying of pornography culled from abandoned hobo hovels. He had an acerbic wit and fit right in with his brother and Damien. The boys had a good time together, Damien likening the friendship to a scene from Stand by Me . Were it not for that friendship with Damien Echols, Jason would not have had a bull’s-eye on his back.
    Jessie
    Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr. was another misfit teenager hanging around West Memphis. The son of a poverty-stricken, hard-drinking auto mechanic, Jessie Misskelley Sr., “Little Jessie” knew several “mothers” during his formative years. He was born on July 10, 1975. His mother and Big Jessie never married, and she took off to California when Jesse was very young, leaving Jesse’s father to raise him alone. By the time Jessie was four years old, Jessie Sr. had married a woman named Shelbia, and it was she who would later claim that Jessie suffered from chronic separation anxiety, throwing fits whenever she was out of his sight. When Big Jessie and Shelbia divorced, and Lee Rush entered the picture, she became mother number three. 19 According to Jessie’s friend Dennis Carter, Jessie didn’t like Rush at all, saying she “stayed drunk all the time.” Once, Jessie had walked into the trailer and found her “passed out on the couch wearing nothing but her panties.” 20 Both Shelbia and Lee Rush appeared in the film Paradise Lost . Shelbia was steadfast in her belief in Jessie’s innocence; Lee Rush seemed ready to throw him to the wolves.
    Little Jessie’s unstable childhood was exacerbated by a mental handicap. He was borderline retarded, having been variously tested with an IQ of between 67 and 72. 21 In his early years his handicap manifested itself in rage. In the fourth grade Jessie stabbed a classmate in the mouth with a pencil. He was an uncontrollable child who often took his frustration out on inanimate objects such as windows, as well as on other children. At age eleven he attacked a girl with a brick, knocking her to the ground. By the time he reached his teens, Jessie Misskelley could be considered downright mean when provoked. At five feet one inches tall, Jessie was decidedly small. This, combined with his explosive temper, gave him a reputation as a tough character, a little guy with something to prove. “I was fighting all the time,” Misskelley said in a 2001 prison interview. 22 He was described by his teachers as belligerent and prone to outbursts, both verbal and physical. Psychological help had been recommended several times for Jessie, but the family finances would not allow it. He was a boy in desperate need of help, and the societal failure to treat him for his behavioral problems was quite literally a crime.
    Jessie met Damien Echols through Jason Baldwin. “One day I knocked on Jason’s door,” Damien said, “and his mother answered. Before I even asked, Jason’s mom said ‘He’s at Jessie Misskelley’s,’ and I thought, Who is Jessie Misskelley ?” He claimed that this was their first meeting and that he “never did see Jessie much.” He and Jason would run into Jessie here and there and hang out. Damien found Jessie to be an affable