October 8, 2019 • 38 mins
On May 6, 1993, three eight-year-old boys - Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers - were found murdered. While there were no witnesses, DNA evidence, or concrete leads that connected Damien Echols and his two friends Jessie Misskelley, Jr. and Jason Baldwin (known as the West Memphis Three), police arrested them anyway - some say simply because of the way they looked.
It became one of the biggest murder trials of our time, and after being sentenced to die from lethal injection, Damien Echols was released after serving eighteen years on death row. In this interview, he and his wife Lorri (who married him while he was still behind bars) are speaking out on life after being sentenced to die, and why he may truly never be free.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think people don't grasp how often this happens, maybe
as many as one out of every ten people who
are sentenced to death or innocent. Now, if one out
of every ten planes crashed, people would demand that something
be done about it. Nobody would fly anymore. But since
most people don't have anyone in their family or anyone
in their immediate circle that are sentenced to death, that's
(00:22):
being executed. It's just being swept under the rug. Hi,
I'm Dr Oz and this is the Doctor Oz podcast.
I'm six. Three eight year old boys were found murdered, stripped, naked,
and hog tied with their own shoelaces. While there were
no witnesses, DNA evidence, or concrete leads that connected Damien
(00:42):
Echols and his two friends, Jesse ms Kelly Jr. And
Jason Baldwin. It became known as the West Memphis Three
by the way police arrested them anyway, as I'm say,
it was simply because of the way they looked. He
became one of the biggest murder trials of our time
and after being said this to die from lethaland action.
Damian Eccles was released after serving eighteen years on death row.
(01:05):
Today he's here with his wife, Lorie, who married him
while he was still behind bars, speaking out of life
after being sentenced to die, and why he made truly
never be free. So Damian, if you can't paint it
for us, a picture for everybody what life was like
in West Memphis, Arkansas, Describe what your childhood was like. Well,
you know, my family, we lived in a state of
(01:27):
incredible poverty. You know, when I was born, my mother
was fifteen years old, my father was sixteen years old.
In our world, in our life, it's you know, no
one had ambitions, no one was looking down the road
for something better to happen, something bigger to happen. It's
almost like you are just going from day to day
trying to survive, and that's all you have time to
(01:48):
think about. Um. You know, I dropped out of school
when I was in ninth grade, and that's still more
education than anyone else in my family has. You know,
if you look back through my family tree, you're not
gonna find like college degrees or high school diplomas, anything
like that. And my family in that regard was not
anything out of the ordinary at all. You know, we
(02:09):
were like for our world, the people surrounding us, the
other families around us. That was pretty much the way
everyone in that area lived. So in the middle of
all this, these three kids get murdered, and that environment
contributed somewhat. And it's not unique your your personal story.
(02:30):
You're probably poorer than most but the other poor people
in the country, But the environment in West Memphis allowed
the possibility of three turns out innocent men to have
been imprisoned put on death row. How did that come
about and what does that look like for the average American?
That's one of those things I think people don't grasp
how often this happens. You know, We've been talks all
(02:52):
over the country with you know, people involved with the
Innocence Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center, things like this,
Brian Stevenson. These people are now estimating that maybe as
many as one out of every ten people who are
sentenced to death or innocent. Now, if one out of
every ten planes crashed, people would demand that something be
done about it. Nobody would fly anymore. But since most
(03:14):
people don't have anyone in their family or anyone in
their immediate circle that are sentenced to death that's being executed,
it's just sort of slipping under the rug, being swept
under the rug. It's one of those things that happens
all the time. I try to make people understand that
my case was nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. The
only thing that might made my case, uh memorable is
(03:37):
that we were fortunate enough to have a documentary film
crew in the courtroom while the trial was taking place.
Who called the entire thing on film. That is the
only reason that I am not just as dead today
as everyone else at this happens to so not to labor,
but you're in a community where just described to everybody
wearing glasses, I know because of being in a tiny cell,
(04:00):
which we'll get to in a second, in salty confinement
destroyed your ability to deal with light. You've got a beard,
looked like sort of top but a handsome version. I mean,
that's what I think. You're a very handsome man. And
yet if I saw you on the street, I'd I'd
be curious. I'd be trying to figure out what's going on.
You're tattered all over um, and you probably look different
(04:21):
than most of the the people that were on the jury
deciding if you're innocent or not. So when these three
poor little boys get murdered. And part of the reason
I'm so animated about this, Like, I feel terrible that
you were on death row. I feel as angry that
a man who's a murderer and a pedophile walked free. Exactly,
So we didn't protect the other people in West Memphis.
(04:41):
So why would they even come to you? How did
they pick the three of you? You didn't even know
one of the people that well, that was your apparently accomplice.
It's a really long complicated story, to be honest. There
was a Uh, they're not exactly police. They were like
a juvenile task force. Who you know, These were some
incredibly shady people. One of them was eventually forced to
(05:05):
resign whenever he was called molesting teenage boys. Another one
eventually went to prison for stealing from what Why would
they pick you? They could have picked anybody out of
the phone book. It was one of these guys used
to come through our neighborhood and terrorized teenage boys. He
would pick up teenage boys and say, either you give
me a blow job or you're going to jail. We
(05:25):
were constantly at war with these people, like trying to
avoid I'm trying to hide from them trying to stay
out of their reach. I mean, these people were absolutely horrendous, uh,
and they just latched onto us. We were the main
ones that they focused on. We weren't the only ones
they focused on by any stretch of the imagination, but
for some reason, we were the main ones that they
(05:46):
focused on. And what was it like sitting in the
courtroom knowing you're innocent, believing the evidence supports that, and
hearing the judge say that actually was the jury first
saying you're guilty. It's really hard to articulate, just because
you're in such a deep state of shock and trauma.
(06:08):
You know, people who saw the documentaries the actual courtroom
footage always say, you know, whenever they came in and
they read they sentence you to death, not once and
not twice, but three times, and you're just standing there,
you know, not really acting like you're upset about it
in any way. You know, you seem so calm. I
try to make people understand what you're seeing is not calm.
It's shock and trauma. You know, if you've ever been
(06:30):
like severely beaten, if you've ever been punched in the head,
you know that a lot of times it doesn't immediately
register as pain. It's more like, you know, bright flashes
a light, alloud noise. You're really disoriented, almost like you
can't keep your feet up under you. When you are
being sentenced to death, it is like being repeatedly punched
in the head. So you're putting this atry confinement. Just
(06:50):
to be clear, if I wrote this down twelve feet
by nine feet, right, besides destroying your eyesight, what else
did it do to you that has even today yours
since your release still pack you. We didn't realize a
lot of the effects that it was having on me
until after I got out. Uh. You know, keep in
mind that whenever I went into prison, I was still
(07:13):
a teenager. My brain had not even finished forming yet.
When you're in there in that environment, your brain does
not form in the same way that people out here's
brain has an opportunity to form. So, for example, we
did not know until I got out that things like
facial recognition, voice recognition had all been damaged. Uh. It
was almost the only way that I can compare. You know,
(07:35):
people think that going to prison is like this devastating thing,
and it was, but honest to God, when I got out,
it was equally devastating. The day I walked out of prison.
It screwed me up just as bad as going to
prison did, because I was not equipped to deal with
what people out here think of his regular life. It
(07:57):
has taken me a long time to try to learn
things that people out here take for granted. It was
there ever a moment sitting in that cells, staring at
the ceiling at three in the morning, because you probably
couldn't tell what time was anyway, that you just said
I'm done, I can't do it. Yeah. Yeah, But it's
not like you're making a choice to give up. It's
(08:19):
more like you I feel like you don't have any
choice but to give up. You know. It's it's it's
it's not like saying I'm not gonna run another mile.
It's like when your body says you cannot run another
mile and you collapse. There were several times when I
would experience stuff like that, and it happens on different levels.
(08:40):
You know. Sometimes it's on an emotional level where you
just feel completely and absolutely emotionally crippled, devastated, so you
feel like you can't go on in that way. Other
times it was physical, you know, not just stuff like, um,
being confined in a cell with no daylight, uh, no
fresh air, but you're also eating absolute garbage in there.
(09:02):
When you try to explain to people what you eat
in prison, it's not anything that people out here understand.
You know, it's not something that you will ever go
into a store and find. Like if you tell people
like they'll say, what did you have for lunch today?
And you say box meal? That's that's the name of
a food like substance that you eat in prison. So
you suffer extreme uh nutritional deficiencies. Um, it's it takes
(09:27):
a toll on you in every way that it can
possibly take a toll on you. It destroys you. There's
lots more. Will we come back? What one reason you
should all be listening carefully to this is you stop
the audience down when you said this on the show,
that nine nine point nine nine people are not going
to die in prison exactly. And so when we do
(09:50):
this to our prisoners, it's not why they're good or
people are bad people. The fact that menage a come
back out. So I'd rather spend my money to get
people to be a better match for society than release sociopaths.
Who is so damaged, partly because of what we may
have done to them, partly by because what they were
before they went there. They caused more issues for society.
And yes, it's one of The prison is a really
big business in the US. You know, it is a
(10:12):
very big source of income. They call it now the
prison industrial complex. Where we know that certain things lead
to lower rates of resettivism, and we know that certain
things lead to higher rates of resettivism. We give lip
service to, you know, rehabilitating people, keeping them out of prison,
but in actuality, the prison system is built on making
people come back. You know. One example is we know
(10:35):
now that the more connections a person has imprisoned with
people outside the prison, family, friends, support systems, the less
likely they are to come back. The prison system is
designed to try to destroy those connections. They want you
to come back into prison because that's more money they make. Well,
speaking of connections, your wife Flora is here. How did
you hear about Damien and what how how did you
(11:00):
connect with him? And at what point in how long
have you been in jail when Laurie found you? I
was living here in the city and um an absolute
I love film and UM I always went to film
series at MoMA cut new director's new film, Momo's Museum
of Modern Art, and in actuality, the documentary Paradise Lost
(11:27):
was being premiered at that festival, and how long ago
was that would have been get just from Jim was
on the same page. I know this story so well,
but I don't want to skip up in Paradise Loss
was the documentary they were shooting right when Damian was
being tried and convicted. Right, so you've been in jail
for about three years, so the so and I didn't
(11:47):
want to see the film. I had no interest in
true crime or any I just it's just not a
genre I'm interested in. So I just a friend of
mine wanted to see it, and I'm not at all
interested in seeing that movie. But as things happened in
this world, something instinctually at the last minute said go
see that film. Who knows, But I ended up sitting
in a rainy theater on a Monday night seeing a
(12:10):
almost three hour long documentary and I was just floored
after I mean, sitting there, the whole audience was But
I'm from the South and was raised in a fundamentalist
Christian home, so I understood what was going on with
the um community down there, with the you know, the
(12:32):
Satanic scare, and my heart just went out to Damien
because I was kind of like a different person actually
explain that, because that still happens, I think today. It's
a very Christian community Baptist mostly. Yeah, and you're not
so describe what you are because you talk about it
(12:52):
in the book. By the way, part of the reason
I wanted I don't want to be clear this this
book is beautifully written. It's called High Magic with a
K at the end of the magic, and it's just
up that was a guide to the spiritual practices that
saved my life on death Row, which we're gonna get
into a second, but you know, this is what we're
starting with. And if I'm a Baptist growing up in
West Memphis and I see this guy walking around, how
(13:14):
about you what to make out of them? We'll keep
in mind in that kind of community too. Like when
I grew up, I can remember, you know, like preachers
just like railing against things like yoga. You know this
is back in the really early nineties, like eighties when
they were saying yoga is satanic. You know this is
a kind of mindset in this community where if you
are a Buddhist or a Hindu, you're a Satanist. You
(13:36):
just don't know that you're a Satanist. You're being misled
by demons into thinking there's something else. You know, they're
taking you to this state of enlightenment, but in reality,
they're leading you down this path towards hell. They literally
believe this. So when you're talking about things like ceremonial magic,
you know that takes it to a whole Another is
because I'm only asking because I have friends who were
(14:00):
in cults, so to speak, and there was a Satanic element.
I mean, they did practice animal sacrifice, and is that
not part of your ritual? Magic? Is not an element
at that That's an entirely Christian concept, and these are practices.
Ceremonial magic goes all the way back to ancient summer.
There are two ways of understanding mythology, you know. And
(14:24):
by mythology, I mean the Bible, I mean the Torah,
I mean the Koran, I mean the ancient Sumerian tablets.
There are two levels on which these things can be read.
What we think of as front speech and what we
think of as backspeech. Front speech would be to read
them straightforward, the way people in religions read them straightforward.
You know, they take these things, at least to some
(14:44):
extent literally, you know, like, for example, if you're a Christian,
then you literally believe that this guy named Jesus was
the son of God who came to save people from sin,
take them to heaven. All this sort of thing. Front
speech becomes religion. That's like for the masses who don't
want who don't actually you know, spend their lives, dedicate
their lives to understanding what these techniques and practices are. Backspeech,
(15:07):
on the other hand, was sort of for the priest,
the like higher cast of society, the people who would
be related to the king. Backspeech is understanding that what
you're reading, when you're reading these things are encoded techniques.
What magic is, what ceremonial magic is, is the Western
path to enlightenment. It starts off an ancient summer and
(15:28):
would eventually spread throughout every culture in the world. It
would become every religion that we know today. You know,
for example, the three major what we call gods of
ancient summer would be Um, a New and Lil and Inky.
When they are transported to India, they become Brahma, Vishnu,
and Shiva, you know, the Holy Trinity. We think of
(15:50):
the Trinity as like a Christian concept, and it's not.
It has existed since the very dawn of human civilization.
Ceremonial magic is about understanding the backstory, the back speech
behind these things and doing the actual practices, you know,
not believing the stuff like um anything from animal sacrifice
on one hand, to you know, stories like Noah and
(16:11):
the Ark on the other. You know, it's it's about
knowing that this story is not actually about a man
who put a bunch of animals on a boat to
save them from a flood. What that's referring to. You know,
just this one example, and I won't go on about
this forever, but just this one example of of knowing
the Ark. All of these practices deal with UM star systems. Essentially,
(16:32):
it's what you're you're looking at, you know, for example, uh,
humanity has sort of progressed through this evolution of going
from polytheism to monotheism over time. Well, when you're looking
at like ancient summer that starts off with polytheism, all
of these stories lead one into the next. From polytheism,
you go into Judaism. Judaism is like a very thinly
(16:52):
veiled version of the Sumerian stories. You know. For example,
in in sumer the moon god Sin. When you get
to Judaism, he becomes Moses. It's like we what we
think of as a dispensation. All of this is based
on the sun, the astrological signs. You know. For example,
in sumer Um, the sun would have risen when it
(17:16):
would have risen on the spring equinox, it would have
been in the sign of Taurus during the age of Judaism.
That's why I insumer when you see the kings, the
gods are all wearing these helmets with bullhorns on them,
because it's the age of Taurus. When it then progresses
to Judaism, you're talking about the time whenever, whenever the
sun would have risen for that two thousand one years,
(17:37):
it would have risen in the sign of Aries, which
is why you hear all the stuff. It's symbolism about
the Jews sacrificing rams goats, the scapegoat they blow, the
horn made out of a rams horn, all of this
sort of stuff. All it is is you're you're changing
religion based on the sun signs. You go from Judaism
into Christianity, which would have been the next two I
(18:00):
was in one d years, which would be the age
of Pisces, which was why Christ was represented by fish.
Whenever he goes to feed the masses, how does he
feed them with two fish? The sign of Pisces. Christ
and the twelve Disciples represent represent the Sun and the
twelve signs of the zodiac. When you're talking about something,
going back to the story of Noah for a second,
Noah taking these animals onto an arc. Anytime you hear
(18:21):
about animals in the Bible and the Torah, any of
these religions, what you are hearing about are coded symbols
for the zodiac, star systems, constellations. Noah taking these animals
onto the arc represents someone preserving these teachings so that
they will be passed on to future generations in the world,
that they won't be lost due to tumultuous, turbulent times
(18:44):
in human history civilizations, that this will be a continued lineage.
And that's what high magic is. It is a current
of energy and teachings that extend from modern day all
the way back through Christianity, all the way back through Judaism,
all the way back through the ancient traditions of Sumeria.
I just I gotta say I'm at a bit of
bias here. I was so blown away on the show.
(19:06):
But how areadite you are? How thoughtful you are, like
just the words that you pick. And how does a
kid growing up the son of a fifteen year old mother,
sixty year old child, and desperate poverty, quitting school in
ninth grade? How did you put all these pieces together?
I think it's it's really two things. One was I
had almost twenty years to do a lot of reading,
(19:29):
so I read a lot. You know, I'm working on now.
I'm already in the editing process for the book that
will come after this. This is my fourth book. I
think you cannot write unless you read a lot. I
learned how to write from reading. When I was in prison.
I would average, you know, anywhere from three to five
books a week. The other half of the equation, I believe,
and I honestly believe, this is ceremonial magic. You know,
(19:53):
we know now we're learning in science about like different
brain states, you know, like alpha and these different states
that your brain goes into Well, what we're learning now
is that whenever you reach the really high end of
this frequency and the really low end of this frequency,
what sort of happens is the two hemispheres of your
brain start to function as one. You know, it's not
(20:14):
like two different things anymore. I believe whenever that happens,
it enhances your ability to learn and remember. And honestly,
it's what allowed me to get over like the tremendous
post traumatic stress disorder that I was experiencing whenever I
first got out things of that nature. So you know,
I really do think it is from reading a lot
and a lot of it is from the practices of
(20:35):
ceremonial magic, and you basically became a monk. I mean that,
if there's any silver lining about what what happened to you,
you're you're tossed in a century deprivation chamber, but not
the good kindly. That's exactly what I what happened. When
I first walked into prison. I would see a lot
(20:56):
of people in there that would start to stagnate to generate,
you know, ten years down the road there the exact
same person they were when they walked into the door,
or in a worse condition, you know, mental illness starts
to set in all sorts of things going on. A
guy told me whenever I first went in, like within
two or three days of walking into the doors of
death Row, he said, you're going to do one of
two things in this cell. You're going to either sit
(21:17):
in that cell and go insane, or you can turn
the cell into a monastery and keep trying to improve yourself,
growing something. And that's what I tried to do to
the absolute best of my ability. So let me pick
up the story that we Laurie's part. But you know,
I'm also curious about when when you found him. You
come from a traditional Christian background, but there are a
(21:38):
lot of things that you talk about that are very
threatening to a traditional Christian theology. Well, how did you
do with that? I mean, yes, he's very handsome, compelling
that the lead comment, I think it probably was like
the lead like, whoa, this is really interesting and I
could and handsome, um, but I help him, I can
(21:59):
save him. But but there are some things that might
have been off putting given where you were from as well. No, absolutely,
and I think that there are still some questions being
asked and around my family, um, because they are very
it's a very you know, I grew up in a
very as you say, traditional Christian home and we're talking
(22:21):
no Southern Baptists, very literal in their understanding of the Bible. UM.
And I'm very unrespectful of people. I mean, certainly my
family and everyone. It's I'm just respectful whatever anyone believes.
But by that time, by the time I met Damian,
I had already left those teachings and beliefs behind and
(22:44):
was kind of charting my own path. I hadn't. I mean,
I'm grateful Damien's taught me a great deal, so I
practice magic too. Um. But we started started out. When
I first met him, he was sitting umse in and
so I found a local Buddhist um center and I
(23:05):
started sitting because it was just something that I knew
was going to help me because I was in a
very stressful situation when I got to Arkansas. So, yes,
answer your question very threatening to a lot of people
because it threatens they're very the foundation of their belief system.
And that's that's so You've got Johnny Depp, Peter Jackson,
(23:27):
a bunch of folks get behind Damien because they see
the documentary to your point that otherwise woulout have known
about it, although there are many Damians probably in prison
right now and there's no DNA of it, just thinking you. Uh.
So they start to get behind you and started the lobby,
and in the middle of all the story, you start
moving from being an advocate for reevaluating this too falling
(23:50):
in love with them. Yeah. That wasn't really in my
long range plan, huh, Lawyer. I was a landscape architect,
So how would a landscape landscape architect be able to
get someone out of prison with a lot of help
from people who knew what they were doing? But that
(24:12):
what happened was when when I went to Arkansas, he
had a pro bono attorney, and which meant, I mean,
I love pro bono attorneys, but they don't have a
lot of time to work on the case. So I
realized what we needed to do was race funds to
hire attorneys and investigators and all of the expertise that
we were going to need. But I had no idea
(24:33):
what I was doing. Slowly people would come on board,
um and actually fran wash and Peter Jackson, their knowledge
was unbelievable they're in the middle of making King Kong.
For heaven's sakes, I'm getting twenty emails a day from
fran Wash Go see this forensic pathologists call this person,
drive up to this courthouse in a Missouri and look
(24:55):
through there, which is what I was doing. They would
give so much direction and why I know about this stuff? Idea.
But they were great, And then we eventually got some
really amazing attorneys and investigators, forensic scientists. We just built
a huge team. But it cost, I mean, it was
very expensive. Back to the love part, getting deaths, happily married.
(25:19):
Now we're talking about a magic so I mean, I mean,
what do you call you mom? Mom? I'm I'm getting married.
Did you manifest her while you're sitting in somebody? Did it?
Was we started. I wrote to him after I saw
the film. I wanted. All I knew was I wanted
to help in some way I didn't know. I felt
(25:40):
very I felt a connection to him just because of
I understood, like I said, because of the community. So
I wrote to him and asked what I could do
to help. Maybe sin Books. I mean I was here
in Manhattan, he was in Arkansas, he wrote back. We
started writing and his letters were incredible. I mean you
hear him speak. His letters were just so thoughtful and
(26:02):
um beautifully written and for you know what, We're righting
all the time every day and then he starts calling me,
and you know, within not too long, I realized there's
something very very special here. And at the same time,
there was a great deal of fear for me. I mean,
it's but it's almost like I didn't have time for
(26:22):
the fear. It just I felt like I just got
into this river and started going and things just started
happening and before you knew it, and I never looked back,
And yes I did. I fell in love with them.
We fell in love with each other. And it was
intense and it was there's something about, of course, the
situation that just made it even more emotional because of
(26:43):
what was at stake. Um, but we're both very I think,
intense people, so no matter what was going to happen,
it was going to be we're gonna hit hit us hard.
And it did. More questions after the break. So as
you're going through this trying to get him off, you
get married while he's still in prison. Damn it, you
(27:05):
meet me while are you know the worst thing possible
was to give someone hope and then take it away
from them again. Yes, you know so if you described earlier,
it's sort of a challenge away. What was your relationship
like with the other inmates? And I know there's a
story if you don't mind sharing with everybody about a
pecan pie. Yeah, I mean, you don't develop friends in
(27:27):
prison the way people out here think of the word
in prison. The best you're gonna hope for is that
you find someone that you have this agreement and that
you can count on, where you know that no matter what,
I'm gonna watch your back and you're gonna watch mine.
And I was fortunate enough to develop friends like that
through the years that I was in prison. But it's
it's also very difficult when when I first got to prison,
(27:50):
for probably the first three years that I was there,
I kept waiting for some person to walk through the
door that I can actually have a conversation with, like
a like a normal conversation, not talking about even you know,
about like magic or religion or anything else, just like
a normal conversation. And it did not happen. And then
finally after about three years, it hit me, it's not
going to happen because normal people don't kill people. You know,
(28:14):
your average i Q of people on death row is
about eighty five. And that's average. You've got a lot
that are below that. Uh, you know, one the example
won't take people in less than eighty two. Yes, because
it's too dangerous to train them. Yes. And and you
know you would have people that like the example that
you just gave. The guy with the pecan pie. This
(28:35):
is a man that whenever they get ready to execute him,
he had shot himself and effectively given himself a lobotomy,
shot himself in the head, but survived. They still take
him to trial, sentence him to death. When it comes
time to execute him, they asked him what he wants
for his last meal. He says, pecan pie. He eats
half of the pie. Whenever they come to get him
to execute him, he wraps the other half of the
(28:55):
pie up and says he's gonna say that until afterwards.
He cannot even grab the fact that these people are
about to kill him. Oh my goodness. So you get
through this and uh, there's that moment when you find
out he's actually getting out. I mean, how does that
hit you? Well, he said something before, which was exactly
(29:19):
the same for me. I just went into shock because
the conditions of his release were uh an offered plea
and they had all of these and and and so
what the state had asked of us wasn't We couldn't
tell anyone he was getting out. So in order to prepare,
(29:39):
I had no way to prepare, wed no place to live.
I didn't know where we're going to live. I didn't
you know, we had no money because everything I had
had gone into the case. So I mean, it's just
this sort of free falling suddenly and trying to prepare
for this release, and then it ended up getting delayed.
We thought it was three days and end up being
seven days or nine days, I can't remember it does
(30:02):
and just trying to figure out how we were going
to live and this and it did feel like a
bomb just went off because I had to just leave.
We had to just leave Arkansas, and thankfully fran Wash
and Peter Jackson gave us a place to live here
in the city four years, so we had a place
to live, and slowly, you know, things started falling into place.
(30:23):
But I was faced with the knowledge that I had
I didn't know how to take care of him. I mean,
we're talking about someone who's extremely in deep trauma and
I'm not prepared. I don't know what to do. I mean,
to this day, I look back on it and it's
heartbreaking to me because he suffered and I didn't know
(30:45):
how to take care of him, and it's did you
find someone who could help you? We were thrown into
this media circus, and so we were for two years.
He had a book on the New York Times bestseller list,
we had a film that came out at Sundance and
then went into you know, major distributions. So for two
years we're touring and on planes and he's literally had
(31:08):
had two nervous breakdowns that we didn't have him hospitalized.
He didn't want to be. We didn't know what I
didn't know what I was doing, basically, So I'm curious.
My idea of magic is always a way of I've
seen as a way of changing the natural plane, so
manipulating reality. For lack of a better way of describing it,
(31:31):
how did you use magic to deal with your psyche
when you're having these nervous breakdowns? Well, a lot of it.
I think what you're describing is the aspect of magic
that most people are familiar with. That's the aspect that
people think of when they think of magic, and that
could be from anything from you know, like old stories
of wizards doing this or that all the way up
until modern times, stuff like uh, the secret or um,
(31:56):
the law of attraction, things of that nature. So that's
the stuff that people are becoming more familiar with now
and realizing that, yes, we can have an effect on
ourselves and uh to some extents on our environment and
everything else due to this. But that is like a
side effect of magic. And by side effect, I'll give
you one example of what made me, Like Laurie said,
while Ago, I used to sit zos in meditation when
(32:18):
I was on death row, I actually received or nation
in the rens eyes Japan, the Renzi tradition of Japanese Buddhism,
which was what used to train the samurai in ancient Japan.
I had his en master that would come from Japan
to the prison to teach me I sent as. I
was in for probably three to four hours a day
cross legged. Um. Usually if you're doing the traditional Japanese style,
(32:39):
you're sitting almost on your knees instead of cross legged
you're sitting what they call Caesar position. Um, but I
did that for hours a day and trying to experience
some of the things that I had read you were
supposed to experience with this kind of meditation, you know,
like being more in the present moment, uh, feeling less
stress and anxiety, or or feeling less anger and resentment
(33:01):
at your situation circumstances. And I felt like I never
was really getting that. So at a certain point I
realized that, Okay, I'm gonna stop doing this and I'm
going to go back to the Western method of obtaining
these same results. Now, I did not at the time.
I thought magic was exactly what you just said. I
didn't realize there was in higher aspect to it. I
(33:22):
thought it was about changing your reality. Uh. What happened
one day is Laurie came to see me, and I
sat on the bed and reached over to put my
shoes on, and it was like a bomb went off
inside my head. I realized, for the first time in
my entire existence, I was actually in the present moment,
(33:46):
something that I had not experienced with years of zas
in practice. Of course, you know, the second you realize
that it's it's shattered and you're right back to conceptual
thinking things like that. But I saw for the first
time what was possible, you know, I saw that I
wasn't even trying to experience that. I was just doing
the regular practices of magic. And that happened as a
(34:07):
side effect. It felt to me, you know, to to
someone else, it might sound like a small, insignificant thing,
but to me it was absolutely life changing. I realized
that doing these practices has a tremendous effect on our
psyche and on our conscious. Give us one practice, just
(34:28):
one concrete thing for the listening, because I want to
actually get the book and you know you'll you'll get
some insights and some motivation from that. But just an
example of tell me that you do right now. Well,
the main thing that I focus on and I still
to this day, just because of what was done to
me and like from people who sort of had that
exts to grind against magic and didn't understand what it is.
You hear the word pentagram and people automatically freak out,
(34:50):
you know, they think that's something dark or satanic or whatever.
It was one of the very first symbols of divinity
in the world. There is nothing remotely dark or anything
else about it. The main practice that I do now,
and I think that had the biggest effect on me,
is what in magic we call the lesser banishing ritual
of the pentagram. Now, when you would first less banishing
(35:11):
ritual of the peddical exactly when you would first go
to a magical order, a lodge, whatever, and you would
say I want to learn magic, and they would say, well,
that's great, here, take this, go do this for a year,
and then come back and talk to us if you
still want to learn more. Most people aren't going to
do it for a year, you know. Most people think
that magic is like a shortcut to money and sex
or whatever the hell it is they want to manifest.
(35:33):
If you do this practice, this is the thing you
don't have. Some people say I don't believe in magic.
I always think that that's not really what they mean.
What they mean is they have never tried it for
any exterior in extended period of time. Because if you
do this it will have a certain effects. But what
you do. You have the pantagram in front of it,
you meditate like a mandala who you use um the
(35:55):
same energy that people are using in other practices like reiki,
che gung uh g. You are using an energy that
we have a name for in every single culture in
the world except ours, you know, like the Chinese call itch,
the Japanese call energy. You use that to push energy
out of your surroundings. So you're creating a sterile environment.
(36:18):
You're pushing all energy out of your surrounding. Now, the
reason that I did that, I didn't realize that that
was going to have an effect on my psyche. The
reason I was doing it in prison is because I
knew energy is contagious, you know, like, for example, if
you hang around people who complain all the time, eventually
you're going to find yourself starting to complain. Well, I
was in an environment with people who had, you know,
done things like taken hatchets to old ladies for their
(36:40):
social Security checks, or people who had molested children, people
who had done every vile, foul thing that you can imagine.
I did not want to interact with that energy. So
for me, I was focusing on this practice as a
way of sort of purifying myself. Think of it. It's
almost like saging. That is the main practice that I do,
and what it does that I realize in hindsight looking back.
(37:02):
Think of it, and I'll keep this short. Think of
it like a glass of water. If you just leave
a glass of water sitting somewhere, don't do anything to it,
Eventually it's gonna stagnate, it's going to get a film
on top of it, it's gonna corrode and get disgusting. Well,
if you take that glass of water, turn the faucet
on in the sink and hold that glass under it
and just let it overflow and overflow and overflow, Eventually
you're going to end up with a clean glass of water. Again,
(37:25):
this is what you're doing to your energetic anatomy, to
your psyche, into your consciousness. When you're doing the lesser
banishing ritual of the Pentagram, you're drawing in after you
push the energy out of an area, Nature abhards a vacuum,
So you want to do something that's going to bring fresh,
clean energy into that area so that the foul stuff
doesn't just come back in whenever the barriers start to
(37:45):
break down. You do this in the form of invoking
the easiest way for us And I can never say
this word. Whenever you give something a human form and
throw morphification that we do that in the form of
archangel in magic, so you're working with particular archangels that
you're drawing on the energy of to replace the stagnant
(38:05):
energy that you're pushing out. You're flushing yourself out like
that glass of water. Eventually, what happens is it flushes
you out to the deepest levels of your consciousness and
you experience the disintegration of what we think of as
ego of self. You realize there is no self. You know,
it's almost like it's just the energetic equivalent of a
(38:28):
blood clot. If that doesn't get your psyched up three
more about it, I don't know what will please the
Brandon was called High Magic M A g I c K.
High Magic, A guide to the spiritual practices that saved
my life on death Row. I am continually impressed by
Thank you, the stage insights you've gained about life, Laura,
A very good taste in men that you have been.
(38:52):
I'm gonna say that's true. God, bless you Bell, thank
you so much for having us
I think people don't grasp how often this happens, maybe
as many as one out of every ten people who
are sentenced to death or innocent. Now, if one out
of every ten planes crashed, people would demand that something
be done about it. Nobody would fly anymore. But since
most people don't have anyone in their family or anyone
in their immediate circle that are sentenced to death, that's
(00:22):
being executed. It's just being swept under the rug. Hi,
I'm Dr Oz and this is the Doctor Oz podcast.
I'm six. Three eight year old boys were found murdered, stripped, naked,
and hog tied with their own shoelaces. While there were
no witnesses, DNA evidence, or concrete leads that connected Damien
(00:42):
Echols and his two friends, Jesse ms Kelly Jr. And
Jason Baldwin. It became known as the West Memphis Three
by the way police arrested them anyway, as I'm say,
it was simply because of the way they looked. He
became one of the biggest murder trials of our time
and after being said this to die from lethaland action.
Damian Eccles was released after serving eighteen years on death row.
(01:05):
Today he's here with his wife, Lorie, who married him
while he was still behind bars, speaking out of life
after being sentenced to die, and why he made truly
never be free. So Damian, if you can't paint it
for us, a picture for everybody what life was like
in West Memphis, Arkansas, Describe what your childhood was like. Well,
you know, my family, we lived in a state of
(01:27):
incredible poverty. You know, when I was born, my mother
was fifteen years old, my father was sixteen years old.
In our world, in our life, it's you know, no
one had ambitions, no one was looking down the road
for something better to happen, something bigger to happen. It's
almost like you are just going from day to day
trying to survive, and that's all you have time to
(01:48):
think about. Um. You know, I dropped out of school
when I was in ninth grade, and that's still more
education than anyone else in my family has. You know,
if you look back through my family tree, you're not
gonna find like college degrees or high school diplomas, anything
like that. And my family in that regard was not
anything out of the ordinary at all. You know, we
(02:09):
were like for our world, the people surrounding us, the
other families around us. That was pretty much the way
everyone in that area lived. So in the middle of
all this, these three kids get murdered, and that environment
contributed somewhat. And it's not unique your your personal story.
(02:30):
You're probably poorer than most but the other poor people
in the country, But the environment in West Memphis allowed
the possibility of three turns out innocent men to have
been imprisoned put on death row. How did that come
about and what does that look like for the average American?
That's one of those things I think people don't grasp
how often this happens. You know, We've been talks all
(02:52):
over the country with you know, people involved with the
Innocence Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center, things like this,
Brian Stevenson. These people are now estimating that maybe as
many as one out of every ten people who are
sentenced to death or innocent. Now, if one out of
every ten planes crashed, people would demand that something be
done about it. Nobody would fly anymore. But since most
(03:14):
people don't have anyone in their family or anyone in
their immediate circle that are sentenced to death that's being executed,
it's just sort of slipping under the rug, being swept
under the rug. It's one of those things that happens
all the time. I try to make people understand that
my case was nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. The
only thing that might made my case, uh memorable is
(03:37):
that we were fortunate enough to have a documentary film
crew in the courtroom while the trial was taking place.
Who called the entire thing on film. That is the
only reason that I am not just as dead today
as everyone else at this happens to so not to labor,
but you're in a community where just described to everybody
wearing glasses, I know because of being in a tiny cell,
(04:00):
which we'll get to in a second, in salty confinement
destroyed your ability to deal with light. You've got a beard,
looked like sort of top but a handsome version. I mean,
that's what I think. You're a very handsome man. And
yet if I saw you on the street, I'd I'd
be curious. I'd be trying to figure out what's going on.
You're tattered all over um, and you probably look different
(04:21):
than most of the the people that were on the jury
deciding if you're innocent or not. So when these three
poor little boys get murdered. And part of the reason
I'm so animated about this, Like, I feel terrible that
you were on death row. I feel as angry that
a man who's a murderer and a pedophile walked free. Exactly,
So we didn't protect the other people in West Memphis.
(04:41):
So why would they even come to you? How did
they pick the three of you? You didn't even know
one of the people that well, that was your apparently accomplice.
It's a really long complicated story, to be honest. There
was a Uh, they're not exactly police. They were like
a juvenile task force. Who you know, These were some
incredibly shady people. One of them was eventually forced to
(05:05):
resign whenever he was called molesting teenage boys. Another one
eventually went to prison for stealing from what Why would
they pick you? They could have picked anybody out of
the phone book. It was one of these guys used
to come through our neighborhood and terrorized teenage boys. He
would pick up teenage boys and say, either you give
me a blow job or you're going to jail. We
(05:25):
were constantly at war with these people, like trying to
avoid I'm trying to hide from them trying to stay
out of their reach. I mean, these people were absolutely horrendous, uh,
and they just latched onto us. We were the main
ones that they focused on. We weren't the only ones
they focused on by any stretch of the imagination, but
for some reason, we were the main ones that they
(05:46):
focused on. And what was it like sitting in the
courtroom knowing you're innocent, believing the evidence supports that, and
hearing the judge say that actually was the jury first
saying you're guilty. It's really hard to articulate, just because
you're in such a deep state of shock and trauma.
(06:08):
You know, people who saw the documentaries the actual courtroom
footage always say, you know, whenever they came in and
they read they sentence you to death, not once and
not twice, but three times, and you're just standing there,
you know, not really acting like you're upset about it
in any way. You know, you seem so calm. I
try to make people understand what you're seeing is not calm.
It's shock and trauma. You know, if you've ever been
(06:30):
like severely beaten, if you've ever been punched in the head,
you know that a lot of times it doesn't immediately
register as pain. It's more like, you know, bright flashes
a light, alloud noise. You're really disoriented, almost like you
can't keep your feet up under you. When you are
being sentenced to death, it is like being repeatedly punched
in the head. So you're putting this atry confinement. Just
(06:50):
to be clear, if I wrote this down twelve feet
by nine feet, right, besides destroying your eyesight, what else
did it do to you that has even today yours
since your release still pack you. We didn't realize a
lot of the effects that it was having on me
until after I got out. Uh. You know, keep in
mind that whenever I went into prison, I was still
(07:13):
a teenager. My brain had not even finished forming yet.
When you're in there in that environment, your brain does
not form in the same way that people out here's
brain has an opportunity to form. So, for example, we
did not know until I got out that things like
facial recognition, voice recognition had all been damaged. Uh. It
was almost the only way that I can compare. You know,
(07:35):
people think that going to prison is like this devastating thing,
and it was, but honest to God, when I got out,
it was equally devastating. The day I walked out of prison.
It screwed me up just as bad as going to
prison did, because I was not equipped to deal with
what people out here think of his regular life. It
(07:57):
has taken me a long time to try to learn
things that people out here take for granted. It was
there ever a moment sitting in that cells, staring at
the ceiling at three in the morning, because you probably
couldn't tell what time was anyway, that you just said
I'm done, I can't do it. Yeah. Yeah, But it's
not like you're making a choice to give up. It's
(08:19):
more like you I feel like you don't have any
choice but to give up. You know. It's it's it's
it's not like saying I'm not gonna run another mile.
It's like when your body says you cannot run another
mile and you collapse. There were several times when I
would experience stuff like that, and it happens on different levels.
(08:40):
You know. Sometimes it's on an emotional level where you
just feel completely and absolutely emotionally crippled, devastated, so you
feel like you can't go on in that way. Other
times it was physical, you know, not just stuff like, um,
being confined in a cell with no daylight, uh, no
fresh air, but you're also eating absolute garbage in there.
(09:02):
When you try to explain to people what you eat
in prison, it's not anything that people out here understand.
You know, it's not something that you will ever go
into a store and find. Like if you tell people
like they'll say, what did you have for lunch today?
And you say box meal? That's that's the name of
a food like substance that you eat in prison. So
you suffer extreme uh nutritional deficiencies. Um, it's it takes
(09:27):
a toll on you in every way that it can
possibly take a toll on you. It destroys you. There's
lots more. Will we come back? What one reason you
should all be listening carefully to this is you stop
the audience down when you said this on the show,
that nine nine point nine nine people are not going
to die in prison exactly. And so when we do
(09:50):
this to our prisoners, it's not why they're good or
people are bad people. The fact that menage a come
back out. So I'd rather spend my money to get
people to be a better match for society than release sociopaths.
Who is so damaged, partly because of what we may
have done to them, partly by because what they were
before they went there. They caused more issues for society.
And yes, it's one of The prison is a really
big business in the US. You know, it is a
(10:12):
very big source of income. They call it now the
prison industrial complex. Where we know that certain things lead
to lower rates of resettivism, and we know that certain
things lead to higher rates of resettivism. We give lip
service to, you know, rehabilitating people, keeping them out of prison,
but in actuality, the prison system is built on making
people come back. You know. One example is we know
(10:35):
now that the more connections a person has imprisoned with
people outside the prison, family, friends, support systems, the less
likely they are to come back. The prison system is
designed to try to destroy those connections. They want you
to come back into prison because that's more money they make. Well,
speaking of connections, your wife Flora is here. How did
you hear about Damien and what how how did you
(11:00):
connect with him? And at what point in how long
have you been in jail when Laurie found you? I
was living here in the city and um an absolute
I love film and UM I always went to film
series at MoMA cut new director's new film, Momo's Museum
of Modern Art, and in actuality, the documentary Paradise Lost
(11:27):
was being premiered at that festival, and how long ago
was that would have been get just from Jim was
on the same page. I know this story so well,
but I don't want to skip up in Paradise Loss
was the documentary they were shooting right when Damian was
being tried and convicted. Right, so you've been in jail
for about three years, so the so and I didn't
(11:47):
want to see the film. I had no interest in
true crime or any I just it's just not a
genre I'm interested in. So I just a friend of
mine wanted to see it, and I'm not at all
interested in seeing that movie. But as things happened in
this world, something instinctually at the last minute said go
see that film. Who knows, But I ended up sitting
in a rainy theater on a Monday night seeing a
(12:10):
almost three hour long documentary and I was just floored
after I mean, sitting there, the whole audience was But
I'm from the South and was raised in a fundamentalist
Christian home, so I understood what was going on with
the um community down there, with the you know, the
(12:32):
Satanic scare, and my heart just went out to Damien
because I was kind of like a different person actually
explain that, because that still happens, I think today. It's
a very Christian community Baptist mostly. Yeah, and you're not
so describe what you are because you talk about it
(12:52):
in the book. By the way, part of the reason
I wanted I don't want to be clear this this
book is beautifully written. It's called High Magic with a
K at the end of the magic, and it's just
up that was a guide to the spiritual practices that
saved my life on death Row, which we're gonna get
into a second, but you know, this is what we're
starting with. And if I'm a Baptist growing up in
West Memphis and I see this guy walking around, how
(13:14):
about you what to make out of them? We'll keep
in mind in that kind of community too. Like when
I grew up, I can remember, you know, like preachers
just like railing against things like yoga. You know this
is back in the really early nineties, like eighties when
they were saying yoga is satanic. You know this is
a kind of mindset in this community where if you
are a Buddhist or a Hindu, you're a Satanist. You
(13:36):
just don't know that you're a Satanist. You're being misled
by demons into thinking there's something else. You know, they're
taking you to this state of enlightenment, but in reality,
they're leading you down this path towards hell. They literally
believe this. So when you're talking about things like ceremonial magic,
you know that takes it to a whole Another is
because I'm only asking because I have friends who were
(14:00):
in cults, so to speak, and there was a Satanic element.
I mean, they did practice animal sacrifice, and is that
not part of your ritual? Magic? Is not an element
at that That's an entirely Christian concept, and these are practices.
Ceremonial magic goes all the way back to ancient summer.
There are two ways of understanding mythology, you know. And
(14:24):
by mythology, I mean the Bible, I mean the Torah,
I mean the Koran, I mean the ancient Sumerian tablets.
There are two levels on which these things can be read.
What we think of as front speech and what we
think of as backspeech. Front speech would be to read
them straightforward, the way people in religions read them straightforward.
You know, they take these things, at least to some
(14:44):
extent literally, you know, like, for example, if you're a Christian,
then you literally believe that this guy named Jesus was
the son of God who came to save people from sin,
take them to heaven. All this sort of thing. Front
speech becomes religion. That's like for the masses who don't
want who don't actually you know, spend their lives, dedicate
their lives to understanding what these techniques and practices are. Backspeech,
(15:07):
on the other hand, was sort of for the priest,
the like higher cast of society, the people who would
be related to the king. Backspeech is understanding that what
you're reading, when you're reading these things are encoded techniques.
What magic is, what ceremonial magic is, is the Western
path to enlightenment. It starts off an ancient summer and
(15:28):
would eventually spread throughout every culture in the world. It
would become every religion that we know today. You know,
for example, the three major what we call gods of
ancient summer would be Um, a New and Lil and Inky.
When they are transported to India, they become Brahma, Vishnu,
and Shiva, you know, the Holy Trinity. We think of
(15:50):
the Trinity as like a Christian concept, and it's not.
It has existed since the very dawn of human civilization.
Ceremonial magic is about understanding the backstory, the back speech
behind these things and doing the actual practices, you know,
not believing the stuff like um anything from animal sacrifice
on one hand, to you know, stories like Noah and
(16:11):
the Ark on the other. You know, it's it's about
knowing that this story is not actually about a man
who put a bunch of animals on a boat to
save them from a flood. What that's referring to. You know,
just this one example, and I won't go on about
this forever, but just this one example of of knowing
the Ark. All of these practices deal with UM star systems. Essentially,
(16:32):
it's what you're you're looking at, you know, for example, uh,
humanity has sort of progressed through this evolution of going
from polytheism to monotheism over time. Well, when you're looking
at like ancient summer that starts off with polytheism, all
of these stories lead one into the next. From polytheism,
you go into Judaism. Judaism is like a very thinly
(16:52):
veiled version of the Sumerian stories. You know. For example,
in in sumer the moon god Sin. When you get
to Judaism, he becomes Moses. It's like we what we
think of as a dispensation. All of this is based
on the sun, the astrological signs. You know. For example,
in sumer Um, the sun would have risen when it
(17:16):
would have risen on the spring equinox, it would have
been in the sign of Taurus during the age of Judaism.
That's why I insumer when you see the kings, the
gods are all wearing these helmets with bullhorns on them,
because it's the age of Taurus. When it then progresses
to Judaism, you're talking about the time whenever, whenever the
sun would have risen for that two thousand one years,
(17:37):
it would have risen in the sign of Aries, which
is why you hear all the stuff. It's symbolism about
the Jews sacrificing rams goats, the scapegoat they blow, the
horn made out of a rams horn, all of this
sort of stuff. All it is is you're you're changing
religion based on the sun signs. You go from Judaism
into Christianity, which would have been the next two I
(18:00):
was in one d years, which would be the age
of Pisces, which was why Christ was represented by fish.
Whenever he goes to feed the masses, how does he
feed them with two fish? The sign of Pisces. Christ
and the twelve Disciples represent represent the Sun and the
twelve signs of the zodiac. When you're talking about something,
going back to the story of Noah for a second,
Noah taking these animals onto an arc. Anytime you hear
(18:21):
about animals in the Bible and the Torah, any of
these religions, what you are hearing about are coded symbols
for the zodiac, star systems, constellations. Noah taking these animals
onto the arc represents someone preserving these teachings so that
they will be passed on to future generations in the world,
that they won't be lost due to tumultuous, turbulent times
(18:44):
in human history civilizations, that this will be a continued lineage.
And that's what high magic is. It is a current
of energy and teachings that extend from modern day all
the way back through Christianity, all the way back through Judaism,
all the way back through the ancient traditions of Sumeria.
I just I gotta say I'm at a bit of
bias here. I was so blown away on the show.
(19:06):
But how areadite you are? How thoughtful you are, like
just the words that you pick. And how does a
kid growing up the son of a fifteen year old mother,
sixty year old child, and desperate poverty, quitting school in
ninth grade? How did you put all these pieces together?
I think it's it's really two things. One was I
had almost twenty years to do a lot of reading,
(19:29):
so I read a lot. You know, I'm working on now.
I'm already in the editing process for the book that
will come after this. This is my fourth book. I
think you cannot write unless you read a lot. I
learned how to write from reading. When I was in prison.
I would average, you know, anywhere from three to five
books a week. The other half of the equation, I believe,
and I honestly believe, this is ceremonial magic. You know,
(19:53):
we know now we're learning in science about like different
brain states, you know, like alpha and these different states
that your brain goes into Well, what we're learning now
is that whenever you reach the really high end of
this frequency and the really low end of this frequency,
what sort of happens is the two hemispheres of your
brain start to function as one. You know, it's not
(20:14):
like two different things anymore. I believe whenever that happens,
it enhances your ability to learn and remember. And honestly,
it's what allowed me to get over like the tremendous
post traumatic stress disorder that I was experiencing whenever I
first got out things of that nature. So you know,
I really do think it is from reading a lot
and a lot of it is from the practices of
(20:35):
ceremonial magic, and you basically became a monk. I mean that,
if there's any silver lining about what what happened to you,
you're you're tossed in a century deprivation chamber, but not
the good kindly. That's exactly what I what happened. When
I first walked into prison. I would see a lot
(20:56):
of people in there that would start to stagnate to generate,
you know, ten years down the road there the exact
same person they were when they walked into the door,
or in a worse condition, you know, mental illness starts
to set in all sorts of things going on. A
guy told me whenever I first went in, like within
two or three days of walking into the doors of
death Row, he said, you're going to do one of
two things in this cell. You're going to either sit
(21:17):
in that cell and go insane, or you can turn
the cell into a monastery and keep trying to improve yourself,
growing something. And that's what I tried to do to
the absolute best of my ability. So let me pick
up the story that we Laurie's part. But you know,
I'm also curious about when when you found him. You
come from a traditional Christian background, but there are a
(21:38):
lot of things that you talk about that are very
threatening to a traditional Christian theology. Well, how did you
do with that? I mean, yes, he's very handsome, compelling
that the lead comment, I think it probably was like
the lead like, whoa, this is really interesting and I
could and handsome, um, but I help him, I can
(21:59):
save him. But but there are some things that might
have been off putting given where you were from as well. No, absolutely,
and I think that there are still some questions being
asked and around my family, um, because they are very
it's a very you know, I grew up in a
very as you say, traditional Christian home and we're talking
(22:21):
no Southern Baptists, very literal in their understanding of the Bible. UM.
And I'm very unrespectful of people. I mean, certainly my
family and everyone. It's I'm just respectful whatever anyone believes.
But by that time, by the time I met Damian,
I had already left those teachings and beliefs behind and
(22:44):
was kind of charting my own path. I hadn't. I mean,
I'm grateful Damien's taught me a great deal, so I
practice magic too. Um. But we started started out. When
I first met him, he was sitting umse in and
so I found a local Buddhist um center and I
(23:05):
started sitting because it was just something that I knew
was going to help me because I was in a
very stressful situation when I got to Arkansas. So, yes,
answer your question very threatening to a lot of people
because it threatens they're very the foundation of their belief system.
And that's that's so You've got Johnny Depp, Peter Jackson,
(23:27):
a bunch of folks get behind Damien because they see
the documentary to your point that otherwise woulout have known
about it, although there are many Damians probably in prison
right now and there's no DNA of it, just thinking you. Uh.
So they start to get behind you and started the lobby,
and in the middle of all the story, you start
moving from being an advocate for reevaluating this too falling
(23:50):
in love with them. Yeah. That wasn't really in my
long range plan, huh, Lawyer. I was a landscape architect,
So how would a landscape landscape architect be able to
get someone out of prison with a lot of help
from people who knew what they were doing? But that
(24:12):
what happened was when when I went to Arkansas, he
had a pro bono attorney, and which meant, I mean,
I love pro bono attorneys, but they don't have a
lot of time to work on the case. So I
realized what we needed to do was race funds to
hire attorneys and investigators and all of the expertise that
we were going to need. But I had no idea
(24:33):
what I was doing. Slowly people would come on board,
um and actually fran wash and Peter Jackson, their knowledge
was unbelievable they're in the middle of making King Kong.
For heaven's sakes, I'm getting twenty emails a day from
fran Wash Go see this forensic pathologists call this person,
drive up to this courthouse in a Missouri and look
(24:55):
through there, which is what I was doing. They would
give so much direction and why I know about this stuff? Idea.
But they were great, And then we eventually got some
really amazing attorneys and investigators, forensic scientists. We just built
a huge team. But it cost, I mean, it was
very expensive. Back to the love part, getting deaths, happily married.
(25:19):
Now we're talking about a magic so I mean, I mean,
what do you call you mom? Mom? I'm I'm getting married.
Did you manifest her while you're sitting in somebody? Did it?
Was we started. I wrote to him after I saw
the film. I wanted. All I knew was I wanted
to help in some way I didn't know. I felt
(25:40):
very I felt a connection to him just because of
I understood, like I said, because of the community. So
I wrote to him and asked what I could do
to help. Maybe sin Books. I mean I was here
in Manhattan, he was in Arkansas, he wrote back. We
started writing and his letters were incredible. I mean you
hear him speak. His letters were just so thoughtful and
(26:02):
um beautifully written and for you know what, We're righting
all the time every day and then he starts calling me,
and you know, within not too long, I realized there's
something very very special here. And at the same time,
there was a great deal of fear for me. I mean,
it's but it's almost like I didn't have time for
(26:22):
the fear. It just I felt like I just got
into this river and started going and things just started
happening and before you knew it, and I never looked back,
And yes I did. I fell in love with them.
We fell in love with each other. And it was
intense and it was there's something about, of course, the
situation that just made it even more emotional because of
(26:43):
what was at stake. Um, but we're both very I think,
intense people, so no matter what was going to happen,
it was going to be we're gonna hit hit us hard.
And it did. More questions after the break. So as
you're going through this trying to get him off, you
get married while he's still in prison. Damn it, you
(27:05):
meet me while are you know the worst thing possible
was to give someone hope and then take it away
from them again. Yes, you know so if you described earlier,
it's sort of a challenge away. What was your relationship
like with the other inmates? And I know there's a
story if you don't mind sharing with everybody about a
pecan pie. Yeah, I mean, you don't develop friends in
(27:27):
prison the way people out here think of the word
in prison. The best you're gonna hope for is that
you find someone that you have this agreement and that
you can count on, where you know that no matter what,
I'm gonna watch your back and you're gonna watch mine.
And I was fortunate enough to develop friends like that
through the years that I was in prison. But it's
it's also very difficult when when I first got to prison,
(27:50):
for probably the first three years that I was there,
I kept waiting for some person to walk through the
door that I can actually have a conversation with, like
a like a normal conversation, not talking about even you know,
about like magic or religion or anything else, just like
a normal conversation. And it did not happen. And then
finally after about three years, it hit me, it's not
going to happen because normal people don't kill people. You know,
(28:14):
your average i Q of people on death row is
about eighty five. And that's average. You've got a lot
that are below that. Uh, you know, one the example
won't take people in less than eighty two. Yes, because
it's too dangerous to train them. Yes. And and you
know you would have people that like the example that
you just gave. The guy with the pecan pie. This
(28:35):
is a man that whenever they get ready to execute him,
he had shot himself and effectively given himself a lobotomy,
shot himself in the head, but survived. They still take
him to trial, sentence him to death. When it comes
time to execute him, they asked him what he wants
for his last meal. He says, pecan pie. He eats
half of the pie. Whenever they come to get him
to execute him, he wraps the other half of the
(28:55):
pie up and says he's gonna say that until afterwards.
He cannot even grab the fact that these people are
about to kill him. Oh my goodness. So you get
through this and uh, there's that moment when you find
out he's actually getting out. I mean, how does that
hit you? Well, he said something before, which was exactly
(29:19):
the same for me. I just went into shock because
the conditions of his release were uh an offered plea
and they had all of these and and and so
what the state had asked of us wasn't We couldn't
tell anyone he was getting out. So in order to prepare,
(29:39):
I had no way to prepare, wed no place to live.
I didn't know where we're going to live. I didn't
you know, we had no money because everything I had
had gone into the case. So I mean, it's just
this sort of free falling suddenly and trying to prepare
for this release, and then it ended up getting delayed.
We thought it was three days and end up being
seven days or nine days, I can't remember it does
(30:02):
and just trying to figure out how we were going
to live and this and it did feel like a
bomb just went off because I had to just leave.
We had to just leave Arkansas, and thankfully fran Wash
and Peter Jackson gave us a place to live here
in the city four years, so we had a place
to live, and slowly, you know, things started falling into place.
(30:23):
But I was faced with the knowledge that I had
I didn't know how to take care of him. I mean,
we're talking about someone who's extremely in deep trauma and
I'm not prepared. I don't know what to do. I mean,
to this day, I look back on it and it's
heartbreaking to me because he suffered and I didn't know
(30:45):
how to take care of him, and it's did you
find someone who could help you? We were thrown into
this media circus, and so we were for two years.
He had a book on the New York Times bestseller list,
we had a film that came out at Sundance and
then went into you know, major distributions. So for two
years we're touring and on planes and he's literally had
(31:08):
had two nervous breakdowns that we didn't have him hospitalized.
He didn't want to be. We didn't know what I
didn't know what I was doing, basically, So I'm curious.
My idea of magic is always a way of I've
seen as a way of changing the natural plane, so
manipulating reality. For lack of a better way of describing it,
(31:31):
how did you use magic to deal with your psyche
when you're having these nervous breakdowns? Well, a lot of it.
I think what you're describing is the aspect of magic
that most people are familiar with. That's the aspect that
people think of when they think of magic, and that
could be from anything from you know, like old stories
of wizards doing this or that all the way up
until modern times, stuff like uh, the secret or um,
(31:56):
the law of attraction, things of that nature. So that's
the stuff that people are becoming more familiar with now
and realizing that, yes, we can have an effect on
ourselves and uh to some extents on our environment and
everything else due to this. But that is like a
side effect of magic. And by side effect, I'll give
you one example of what made me, Like Laurie said,
while Ago, I used to sit zos in meditation when
(32:18):
I was on death row, I actually received or nation
in the rens eyes Japan, the Renzi tradition of Japanese Buddhism,
which was what used to train the samurai in ancient Japan.
I had his en master that would come from Japan
to the prison to teach me I sent as. I
was in for probably three to four hours a day
cross legged. Um. Usually if you're doing the traditional Japanese style,
(32:39):
you're sitting almost on your knees instead of cross legged
you're sitting what they call Caesar position. Um, but I
did that for hours a day and trying to experience
some of the things that I had read you were
supposed to experience with this kind of meditation, you know,
like being more in the present moment, uh, feeling less
stress and anxiety, or or feeling less anger and resentment
(33:01):
at your situation circumstances. And I felt like I never
was really getting that. So at a certain point I
realized that, Okay, I'm gonna stop doing this and I'm
going to go back to the Western method of obtaining
these same results. Now, I did not at the time.
I thought magic was exactly what you just said. I
didn't realize there was in higher aspect to it. I
(33:22):
thought it was about changing your reality. Uh. What happened
one day is Laurie came to see me, and I
sat on the bed and reached over to put my
shoes on, and it was like a bomb went off
inside my head. I realized, for the first time in
my entire existence, I was actually in the present moment,
(33:46):
something that I had not experienced with years of zas
in practice. Of course, you know, the second you realize
that it's it's shattered and you're right back to conceptual
thinking things like that. But I saw for the first
time what was possible, you know, I saw that I
wasn't even trying to experience that. I was just doing
the regular practices of magic. And that happened as a
(34:07):
side effect. It felt to me, you know, to to
someone else, it might sound like a small, insignificant thing,
but to me it was absolutely life changing. I realized
that doing these practices has a tremendous effect on our
psyche and on our conscious. Give us one practice, just
(34:28):
one concrete thing for the listening, because I want to
actually get the book and you know you'll you'll get
some insights and some motivation from that. But just an
example of tell me that you do right now. Well,
the main thing that I focus on and I still
to this day, just because of what was done to
me and like from people who sort of had that
exts to grind against magic and didn't understand what it is.
You hear the word pentagram and people automatically freak out,
(34:50):
you know, they think that's something dark or satanic or whatever.
It was one of the very first symbols of divinity
in the world. There is nothing remotely dark or anything
else about it. The main practice that I do now,
and I think that had the biggest effect on me,
is what in magic we call the lesser banishing ritual
of the pentagram. Now, when you would first less banishing
(35:11):
ritual of the peddical exactly when you would first go
to a magical order, a lodge, whatever, and you would
say I want to learn magic, and they would say, well,
that's great, here, take this, go do this for a year,
and then come back and talk to us if you
still want to learn more. Most people aren't going to
do it for a year, you know. Most people think
that magic is like a shortcut to money and sex
or whatever the hell it is they want to manifest.
(35:33):
If you do this practice, this is the thing you
don't have. Some people say I don't believe in magic.
I always think that that's not really what they mean.
What they mean is they have never tried it for
any exterior in extended period of time. Because if you
do this it will have a certain effects. But what
you do. You have the pantagram in front of it,
you meditate like a mandala who you use um the
(35:55):
same energy that people are using in other practices like reiki,
che gung uh g. You are using an energy that
we have a name for in every single culture in
the world except ours, you know, like the Chinese call itch,
the Japanese call energy. You use that to push energy
out of your surroundings. So you're creating a sterile environment.
(36:18):
You're pushing all energy out of your surrounding. Now, the
reason that I did that, I didn't realize that that
was going to have an effect on my psyche. The
reason I was doing it in prison is because I
knew energy is contagious, you know, like, for example, if
you hang around people who complain all the time, eventually
you're going to find yourself starting to complain. Well, I
was in an environment with people who had, you know,
done things like taken hatchets to old ladies for their
(36:40):
social Security checks, or people who had molested children, people
who had done every vile, foul thing that you can imagine.
I did not want to interact with that energy. So
for me, I was focusing on this practice as a
way of sort of purifying myself. Think of it. It's
almost like saging. That is the main practice that I do,
and what it does that I realize in hindsight looking back.
(37:02):
Think of it, and I'll keep this short. Think of
it like a glass of water. If you just leave
a glass of water sitting somewhere, don't do anything to it,
Eventually it's gonna stagnate, it's going to get a film
on top of it, it's gonna corrode and get disgusting. Well,
if you take that glass of water, turn the faucet
on in the sink and hold that glass under it
and just let it overflow and overflow and overflow, Eventually
you're going to end up with a clean glass of water. Again,
(37:25):
this is what you're doing to your energetic anatomy, to
your psyche, into your consciousness. When you're doing the lesser
banishing ritual of the Pentagram, you're drawing in after you
push the energy out of an area, Nature abhards a vacuum,
So you want to do something that's going to bring fresh,
clean energy into that area so that the foul stuff
doesn't just come back in whenever the barriers start to
(37:45):
break down. You do this in the form of invoking
the easiest way for us And I can never say
this word. Whenever you give something a human form and
throw morphification that we do that in the form of
archangel in magic, so you're working with particular archangels that
you're drawing on the energy of to replace the stagnant
(38:05):
energy that you're pushing out. You're flushing yourself out like
that glass of water. Eventually, what happens is it flushes
you out to the deepest levels of your consciousness and
you experience the disintegration of what we think of as
ego of self. You realize there is no self. You know,
it's almost like it's just the energetic equivalent of a
(38:28):
blood clot. If that doesn't get your psyched up three
more about it, I don't know what will please the
Brandon was called High Magic M A g I c K.
High Magic, A guide to the spiritual practices that saved
my life on death Row. I am continually impressed by
Thank you, the stage insights you've gained about life, Laura,
A very good taste in men that you have been.
(38:52):
I'm gonna say that's true. God, bless you Bell, thank
you so much for having us
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