Echols Damien - Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

also by Damien Echols

almost home

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

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Copyright 2012 by Damien Echols Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Echols, Damien.

Life after death / Damien Echols.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-59858-0

1. Echols, Damien. 2. Death row inmatesUnited StatesBiography. 3. PrisonersUnited StatesBiography. 4. False imprisonmentUnited States. I. Title.

HV8700.E33A3 2012 2012026115

364.66092dc23

[B]

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity.

In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

for Lorri

Silently I sit by

Watching men pace their cells

Like leopards

Biting their nails

With furrowed brows

The scene speaks for itself

Damien Echols,
Varner Super Maximum Security Unit, Grady, Arkansas

AUTHORS NOTE

W hat youre about to read is the result of many things Ive written in the past twenty years, including parts of a short memoir self-published in 2005. I was sent to Death Row in 1994, and almost immediately I began keeping a journal. I didnt date most of my writings, it was simply too painful to look at days, months, years slipping past, the reality outside just beyond my reach. Many of the journals I kept are gone, stolen or destroyed when guards raided the barracksanything personal or creative is a prime target in a shakedown. Ive included as much as I could of what remained, and I hope the subject or context of these entries is helpful in placing some of them. Others dont need a time stamp. The conditions I have described in the prison systemthe sadness, horror, and sheer absurdity that Ive seen many human beings subjected towill not have changed by the time you hold this book in your hands.

PREFACE

S aint Raymond Nonnatus, never was it known that anyone who implored your help or sought your intercession was left unaided. To you I come, before you I stand. Despise not my petitions, but in your mercy hear and answer me.

Saint Raymond Nonnatus is one of my patron saints. I would be willing to bet that most people have no idea that he is the patron saint of those who have been falsely accused. I like to think that means I have a special place in his heart, because you cant get much more falsely accused than I have been. So me and old Raymond have struck a bargain. If he helps me out of this situation, then I will travel to all the worlds biggest cathedrals and leave roses and chocolate at the feet of every one of his statues that I can find. You didnt know saints liked chocolate? Well then, thats one thing youve already learned, and were just getting started!

I have three patron saints in all. You may be wondering who the other two are, and how a foul-mouthed sinner such as myself was blessed with not one but three saints to watch over him. My second patron saint is Saint Dismas. Hes the patron saint of prisoners. So far hes done his job and watched over me. Ive got no complaints there. So, what deal do Saint Dismas and I have? Just that I do my part by going to Mass every week in the prison chapel, unless I have a damn good reason not to.

My third patron saint is one Ive had reason to talk with many times in my life. Saint Jude, patron saint of desperate situations. Id say being on Death Row for something I didnt do is pretty desperate. And what does Saint Jude get? He just likes to watch and see what ridiculous predicament I find myself in next.

If I start to believe that the things I write cannot stand on their own merit, then I will lay down my pen. Im often plagued by thoughts that people will think of me only as either someone on Death Row or someone who used to be on Death Row. I grow dissatisfied when I think of people reading my words out of a morbid sense of curiosity. I want people to read what I write because it means something to themeither it makes them laugh, or it makes them remember things theyve forgotten and that once meant something to them, or it simply touches them in some way. I dont want to be an oddity, a freak, or a curiosity. I dont want to be the car wreck that people slow down to gawk at.

If someone begins reading because they want to see life from a perspective different from their own, then I would be content. If someone reads because they want to know what life looks like from where I stand, then I will be happy. Its the ghouls that make me feel ill and uneasythe ones who care nothing for me, but interest themselves only in things like people who are on Death Row. Those people give off the air of circling vultures, and theres something unhealthy about them. They wallow in depression and their lives tend to follow a downward trend. Their spirits seem mostly dead, like larvae festering on summer-day roadkill. I want nothing to do with that energy. I want to create something of lasting beauty, not a grotesque freak show exhibit.

Writing these stories is also a catharsis for me. Its a purge. How could a man be subjected to the things I have been and not be haunted? You cant send a man to Vietnam and not expect him to have flashbacks, can you? This is the only means I have of clearing the trauma out of my psyche. There are no hundred-dollar-an-hour therapy sessions available for me. I have no need of Freud and his Oedipal theories; just give me a pen and paper.

Ive witnessed things in this place that have made me laugh and things that have made me cry. The environment I live in is so warped that incidents that would become legends in the outside world are forgotten the next day. Things that would show up in newspaper headlines in the outside world are given no more than a passing glance behind these filthy walls. When I first arrived at the Tucker Maximum Security Unit located in Tucker, Arkansas, in 1994, it blew my mind. After being locked down for more than ten years, Ive become penitentiary old, and the sights no longer impress me as much. To add the preface of penitentiary to another word redefines it. Penitentiary old can mean anyone thirty or older. Penitentiary rich means a man who has a hundred dollars or more. In the outside world a thirty-year-old man with a hundred dollars would be considered neither old nor richbut in here its a whole nother story.