Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

Powerful And Disturbing: Eighteen Years Later, The Harrowing True Life Case Of The West Memphis Three Continues
The plight of the infamous West Memphis Three has been the center of controversy for almost two decades now. Upon discovering three eight year old boys murdered and discarded in the Robin Hood Hills area of West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993, a subsequent investigation caused local police to target three teen outsiders for the crime. Based on the most specious of evidence and a rampant desire to see justice done for such a heinous act, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley were convicted and sentenced in 1994 despite a clear lack of physical evidence or motive. Due to Echols appearance, interest in metal music, and fascination with disturbing imagery, the deaths were chalked up to being a part of a dark occult ritual. And a frightened and justifiable mob mentality ruled the day (especially as word of Misskelley's questionable confession circulated).

But the facts never really added up and filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were on hand to document the...

The crime of the 20th - 21st centuries reaches some finality
PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY (2012, 120 minutes, HBO Films) - Here is the anxiously awaited 3rd installment of the continuing sagas of Damien Wayne Echols, James Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley, Jr., all convicted of murdering three 8-year-old boys in 1993. It wasn't aired on HBO and I just saw it On Demand - the only place it is available right now. It had originally been scheduled to air in January.

This compelling albeit slightly muddled documentary sequel begins by retelling the story of "The West Memphis Three" - Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley - and the horrible crime of three young boys' murders. At first I thought this was retread, but I quickly realized this was a vital documentary tool to catch up a viewer who might be new to the story.

The documentary does an excellent job of stunning the viewer by explaining how the case exploded in everyone's faces in the mid-2000s. New evidence was discovered and all of it re-examined; among the evidence was DNA and a new...

The DVD has cool special features, and the film... legendary and revelatory
This "Paradise Lost" trilogy is beyond documentary film making. A better description of the films would be that they are legendary journalistic heroism that are philanthropic education for the American public, in regards to the horrors that CAN arise from the U.S. justice system when it fails.

This film was never meant to be the "final chapter" of the Berlinger and Sinofsky series on the West Memphis 3 case. When the film was practically 100% finished, a surprise hearing was called regarding the case. The hearing was prompted by the fact that the original trial judge David Burnett (who was also the judge for EVERY SINGLE APPEAL HEARING regarding this case) denied the WM3 an evidentiary hearing, despite allegations of juror misconduct in the original trial, recantations of testimony used in court, and DNA evidence that excluded the three defendants from the crime scene or the bodies AND pointed in a different direction that the police never investigated. Burnett's decision...

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