Paradise Lost (the WM3 Movie) finally coming to DVD

Arguably more of a MPSIMS thread, but since it’s about a DVD I’ll drop it here.

The Berlinger/Sinofsky HBO documentary Paradise Lost - The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills is finally coming to DVD. (It’s sequel has been in DVD for years but it’s a first for the original- makes no sense- the rumor is that the holdup has been holdups on the copyright holders of songs featured in the movie but I don’t know how true that is).

For those unfamiliar with the case, this documentary cast a spotlight on a 1993 murder case (that link is to an excellent lengthy objective article on the case by Crime Library; a shorter intro is found on Wikipedia the definitive book thus far is Devil’s Knot) that resulted in what I and many others on these boards believe to be one of the most terrifying miscarriages of justice in the history of the country. Three boys were sentenced to prison (one to death row, the other two to life) for the murder and mutilation of three boys based primarily on the belief they were Satanists in spite of a complete lack of reliable witnesses, any compelling physical evidence, any semblance of a motive, based in large part on the “confession” of a mentally retarded boy who was questioned for hours without counsel and with a baseball bat present in the room for some odd reason and even so got many specific elements of the case wrong (including the time it occurred and whether the victims were sexually abused), the testimony of a woman who has since completely recanted her statement (she states freely that she perjured herself to avoid jailtime and keep custody of her son) and an “expert on the occult and renowned author” whose expertise was derived from a mail order doctorate and whose author status relies on one (1) self published book that is housed in one (1) library in the country (per OCLC WorldCat). Several of the people responsible for the arrest and conviction have since resigned due to corruption related charges in other matters.

While I’m not absolutely convinced of their innocence (though I’m at least mostly there) I am 100% convinced that they did not get a fair trial and that absolutely nothing was proven beyond a doubt, reasonable or otherwise. It’s a case everybody should have some familiarity with. (There are some very heated Pit threads on this trial if anybody cares to look them up.)

Also available: Damien Echols’s memoir Almost Home. I haven’t read this myself but plan to at some point in the near future.