Paradise Lost is a documentary about a triple-homicide in West Memphis, AR in the mid-90s, in which three teen social outcasts were railroaded by the justice system and imprisoned for a ghastly crime they didn’t commit.

How this film evaded my radar I’ll never know, but though it originally aired on HBO over ten years ago, I just saw it recently. It’s a powerful and troubling film. What’s troubling about it is what a complete travesty of justice it depicts. The case was so riddled with police misconduct and incompetence, I wouldn’t have believed it it I’d seen that on Law & Order. It’s a case where truth is stranger than fiction; I’d’ve thought that no police force would conduct an investigation that way, not in this modern era. Yet it really happened, and these innocent kids are still rotting in jail. And how did they end up there? Well, it’s complicated, but it’s mostly because of this: they thought metal and witchcraft were cool.

There’s a follow up documentary (and a third one in the works), which updates the status of the West Memphis Three (as the convicted teens came to be known), and examines the actual physical evidence found at the crime scene. What’s funny (or sad) about it is that it confirms what seemed obvious to me even without all the extra detail. The police’s case indicates that the kids were murdered in the woods in Robin Hood Hills, where they were found, but it was immediately clear to even an untrained investigator like me that it was simply a dump site and not the murder scene. A forensics expert confirms this in the sequel, and shows other evidence not previously disclosed in the documentary: namely that one of the victims had bite marks on him. And oh yeah, the creepy and obviously unbalanced step-father of one of the victims just happened to have all his teeth removed at some point (when and how varies, depending on when you ask him–he’s provided several different stories).

In any case, it’s riveting stuff, though prepare to be outraged before viewing it. You can read more about the West Memphis Three and the case on the Free the West Memphis Three website.

On a lighter, but related note, in the documentary, the crazy step-father at one point says on camera, as if addressing the West Memphis Three: “The day you die, every year on May 5 I’m gonna come to your grave, I’m gonna spit on you, I’m gonna curse the day you were born, and I’m sure while I’m standin’ there I’m gonna have to let go of some other bodily functions on your grave!”

Well that little snippet was used at the start of some metal song, and now for the life of me I can think of what it was, or what band it was. When I first heard the song, I had no idea of the significance of that as an epigraph, so now I’m curious to go back and read the lyrics to see how deep the song actually is. Anyone have any idea what song that’s from?