Last August, three men were released from prison in Arkansas – one of them from death row. This wouldn’t have happened without two HBO documentaries, the 1996 Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and its 2000 sequel Paradise Lost 2: Revelations. Every night this week, HBO is airing its third documentary Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, which wraps up the series. You don’t need to have watched the first two to get the full impact of Paradise Lost 3.
The men had served over eighteen years each for a horrific crime that they apparently had nothing to do with. Three second grade Cub Scouts were brutally raped, murdered and their bodies mutilated. The authorities, under understandable pressure to solve the crime, arrested three Metallica-loving teenagers and railroaded them for a supposed Satanic ritual killing. Although no physical evidence tied them to the crime, one teen with an IQ of 76 was browbeaten for twelve hours into a confession that he later recanted.
The HBO films spawned media interest and public and celebrity support for the convicted men, who became known as the West Memphis Three.
Recently processed DNA evidence was inconsistent with any of the defendants. Facing the specter of a futile new trial, the prosecutor accepted a plea bargain that freed the men without their having to acknowledge guilt. Interestingly, the father of one of the victims has gone from the villain of the second HBO film to a supporter of the recently freed men. Here’s the New York Times coverage of the August 2011 developments.
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is on the short list for the Best Documentary Oscar this year.
[youtube-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqQnnXTTm3w]