West of Memphis (2013)

Director: Amy Berg
Music: Nick Cave
Run Time: 147 min.
Call Number: HV6534.W47 W473 2013

"In 1993, three 8-year-old boys . . . were murdered in West Memphis, Ark. Police arrested three teenagers – Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Lloyd Misskelley Jr. – and charged them with capital murder based on the theory that Echols, a known reader of Stephen King novels and wearer of black T-shirts, was the ringleader of a homicidal satanic cult, and that Baldwin and Misskelley were his followers. . . . Providing testimony from 'experts' with mail-order diplomas and no direct evidence, the prosecution scared jurors witless with photos of the victims’ mutilated bodies and obtained first-degree convictions in all three cases. Baldwin and Misskelley were sentenced to life in prison, and Echols received the death penalty. . . . Moving and gruesome, West of Memphis is an eloquent disquisition on the banality of evil."

—Leah Churner, Austin Chronicle