A missing eardrum, curiously, signified the first crimes

Usage examples of murders.

During their discussions of the murders, Driver had written the names of eight teenagers on a piece of paper.

Together they conducted the first interviews in the case that focused on the murders as the work of a satanic cult.

To outsiders it seemed a strange pronouncement, an acknowledgment that detectives were considering an unusual explanation for the murders, despite the fact that no evidence suggested it.

The incident that had brought state investigators into Crittenden County arose less than four months before the murders, and the investigation into it was not over yet.

Shortly before those murders occurred, however, Sudbury admitted to state police investigators that he had taken personal possession of at least four weapons that had been seized by the drug task force as evidence.

As news of the murders spread, police across the nation tried to help by relaying information about hundreds of cases that they thought might be related.

A week and a half after the murders, police in West Memphis were told that four days after the bodies were found, two young Memphis men, Chris Morgan and Brian Holland, had left town abruptly and had moved to Oceanside, California.

On May 8, three days after the murders, Detective Ridge questioned the Moores.

For many who learned of it, the leap from the murders to satanism was not much of a leap at all.

By the very next day, May 8, the sense that the murders might be linked to satanism was gaining strength within the department.

As rumors linking the murders to satanists spread, the police began to receive reports that, whether true or not, reinforced their theory.

Within a week after the murders, Hutcheson knew, as many in Marion and West Memphis did, that the police were extremely interested in Damien and his reputed involvement with cults.

By the third week after the murders, the sheer number of allegations that Damien had taken part in the killings was beginning to have an effect.

He denied being involved in the murders and does not know who killed the three boys.

Jessie Misskelley Junior stated that he did take part in the apprehension of the victims and that he was an eyewitness to the murders by Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols.