13h 35min, feb 8, 2012 y - GUARDIAN
Johnny Depp Options
West Memphis Three
Memoir
Description:
Johnny Depp looks set to become the latest high-profile film-maker to take a creative interest in the controversial case of convicted child killers the West Memphis Three after optioning a forthcoming memoir by one of their number, Damien Echols.
Echols, who is now in his mid-30s, was convicted in 1993 alongside Jessie Misskelley Jr, and Jason Baldwin, of the murder of three eight-year-old boy scouts in West Memphis, Arkansas. Investigating police at the time labelled the killings part of a satanic ritual. He was freed last year after 18 years on death row under a controversial plea bargain which got the trio out of jail but denied them permission to sue the state authorities for wrongful imprisonment.
There have so far been four documentaries made about the trio's plight, which attracted attention from celebrity supporters such as Metallica, Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins and Depp himself. The Paradise Lost series of films, by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, were instrumental in helping free the three – the film-makers had originally planned to shoot a film about what they thought was a case of cult killings in a small rural community for HBO in 1996 and wound up uncovering evidence of faulty DNA evidence and police coercion.
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