three young boys murdered. >> at 9:00 that night, i knew that i would never see him alive again. >> three teenage boys suspected. >> i wanted to bash their head up against the wall, kick his face in. >> three teens demonized. >> that was the first thing that everybody started saying that it was a ritualistic killing, satanic killing. >> three teens convicted. >> guilty of capital murder. >> their accused ring leader sent to death row. >> i'm in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, seven days a week. >> he deserves to be to be chured and punished for the rest of his life for murdering three 8-year-old children! >> it was a crime almost too horrible to imagine. three teens worshipping satan murdering three 8-year-old boys. that happened right here back in 1993. two of the teens got life in prison, a third was judged to be so evil that he was sentenced to die. but after spending 18 years behind bars, a dramatic new development. the so-called west memphis three were abruptly granted their freedom. something that would have been very hard to believe when i first met one of them on death row just last year. >> between the rain and the overcast skies it looks really bleak out here. nothing around but farm lands and small towns, probably for the last 20 miles. penitentiary area, beware of hitchhikers. that suggests that people might actually escape from this place. but this prison is the super max of arkansas, the worst of the worst go to this prison. and at the time of his conviction, no one was considered worse than damien echols. judged as the leader of a grotesque and senseless ritualistic murder spree, a jury of his peers sent him here to be executed. but that was 17 years ago. the once cocky and defiant teenager who horrified and enraged thousands of people is now pushing 40. escorted to our interview, handcuffed and shackled, the damien echols i see appears frail, lonely, and eager to tell his story. >> you know, people are going to be watching you throughout this interview, and they're going to be judging you. >> right. >> how do you think they're going to judge you? >> i don't know. >> you're either innocent and a terrible victim of a justice system gone wrong, or you're a terrible cold-blooded killer of children. >> i think you'll probably have people who think both. >> with prison officials listening to our every word i'm allowed to talk to damien for almost two hours. through a thick glass window, i listen as this obviously intelligent and articulate man describes why he believes the justice system failed him and why there's still one question he never gets used to hearing. >> i'll just ask you the question. did you kill those boys? >> west memphis, arkansas, 1993. a small town, blue-collar, steeped in religion. criss-crossed with truck traffic and interstates. just across the mississippi from graceland and beal street in memphis, tennessee. it's a quiet place most people drive past. but it was home for three 8-year-old boys named stevie branch, christopher byers, and michael moore. >> stevie and michael moore were best buddys. christopher started coming in to be friends i'm going to say about a month or so before they passed away. but it was always stevie and michael moore. >> on may 5, 1993, the three boys went to school, came home, and went out to play. stevie branch's mother pam hobbs remembers it like it was yesterday. >> we wasn't home probably five or ten minutes when michael moore probably came over and asked if stevie could go ride bikes with him. and i was telling him, not today, son. i'm getting ready for work. and i'm cooking and all that. and he and michael just kept begging and begging. please let me go. let me go. so like a lot of parents do, i gave in and i said, okay. >> do you remember the last thing stevie said to you? >> i love you, mama. and went off just as happy as he could be. >> steve branch, christopher byers and michael moore were all last seen right here on this street. and they were doing what 8-year-old boys would normally do, they were playing, having fun, and riding their bikes back in that direction toward where the woods used to be. but that was the last time they were seen alive. and no one is sure what happened next. they never came home. families and neighbors searched frantically through the night as pam hobbs feared the worst. >> you had to be just beside yourself. >> oh, i was. i was going hysterical. my heart was in my stomach. and i knew the worst had taken place. perfect combinations. ♪ i was thinking that i hope this never ends ♪ ♪ yeah, i was just thinking ♪ i hope this will never end everyone has been waiting for -- the dodge durango versus the ford explorer. two titans of the s.u.v. world. which has the strength? which has the power? which has the ability to... oh, geez. 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[ male announcer ] they'll see you...before you see them. cops are cracking down on drinking and riding. drive sober, or get pulled over. discover aveeno positively radiant tinted moisturizers with scientifically proven soy complex and natural minerals. give you sheer coverage instantly, then go on to even skin tone in four weeks. aveeno tinted moisturizers. >>. three little boys, missing in west memphis, arkansas. their families frantically searching the wooded area near their homes. pam hobbs and her husband terri among them. but pam held little hope for her son stevie branch. >> i told terry, i said, he's dead. i said i'll never see him alive again. and i was crying. and he said, no, pam, don't say that. it's going to be all right. we're going to find him. >> terry hobbs was right. they did find stevie. but pam was right, too. she would never see her son alive again. a shoe. two bikes. and stevie branch with his two friends, christopher byers and michael moore. the boys were nude and bound with their own shoe laces. >> i run up there and one look at my husband and i knew it was stevie. and i hit the ground screaming "god, no". >> almost immediately word spread that these murders were the the work of the devil. >> that was the first thing that everybody started saying, that it was a ritualistic killing, satanic killing. i overheard people saying that they've been trying to let the police know that there's been groups of teenagers out there practicing satanic rituals and things like that. >> satanic killing? an idea not so far fetched for the time. this is a community steeped in religion, a church is never far away. and it was a time before the goth look or the notion of a romantic teenage vampire became fashionable. and this was a crime so horrendous it was easy to believe it was committed by a monster. >> when you're hearing all of this, what's going through your mind? >> exactly the same thing that that's what happened, that the devil actually come and got my baby. everybody was a suspect. i would have thought you did it back then. i mean, anybody i looked at i was mad at. i went into a world of my own. and i hated people. >> damien echols tells me he was also in his own world. >> the just beginning, he says, to hear about the three young boys found in west memphis. >> investigators found the children beaten to death. >> do you remember the first time you heard about this murder? >> getting up that morning. i mean, it was everywhere. you couldn't not hear it. it was on every news channel, on every newspaper. they were talking about it on the radios. >> what were you thinking? >> to be honest not a lot. i didn't pay -- it was something that didn't play a big role in my world, you know? i was -- it was people i didn't know, a situation i didn't know. >> he would figure it out very quickly. >> police launched a massive search for the killers. >> he may not have realized it at first, but damien was the prime suspect. >> as soon as they found those bodies they were at my house. >> damien was 18 years old at the time. dirt poor, and troubled. he had had runs in with the law before. >> what was their demeanor? what were their questions? what did they want to know? >> at first they were really friendly. they came in and were saying things like maybe you can hell us. just listen to what you hear on the street. listen to what people are saying. tell us anything you hear. maybe you can help us crack this case. they also took a picture of me, a polaroid picture. and i didn't think anything of it at the time. i found out later that they were taking a picture around town and showing it to different people and already trying to connect me to the crime from that moment. >> so from the very first day, they were treating you lie like a suspect and you didn't know it. >> exactly. exactly. >> when was the first time that someone asked you if you had killed those boys? >> maybe two or three days later. >> police kept their eyes on damien and two other teenage boys. his best friend jason baldwin and another, jesse miss kelly. there was no physical evidence linking them to the crime scene. but there was something investigators didn't like about them. especially damien. >> damien was kind of a smart aass. and he was a big reader. >> mara leveret is a writer and author of "devil's knot". she's known damien and his story for years. >> he would say things to jerry driver, the juvenile officer, that played against driver's own concerns about the occult and the satanic activity in the area. and damien thought that he knew more because he was reading about these things. >> the community was terrified. everyone was talking about an occult killer. witchcraft and devil worship. >> people were staying inside because they were afraid. >> and they were keeping their children inside because they were afraid. the reputation of the police as protecters was on the line. >> they had to get somebody. >> they were under a lot of pressure to do that, yes. >> and all the authorities there. i mean, that's what we pay our authorities to do is protect us. >> three 8-year-old boys murdered, dumped in a gully, a community stricken with fear of the unknown and police under the gun. for misfits like damien and his two friends it was the perfect storm for a presumption of guilt. [ male announcer ] this...is the network -- a network of possibilities. in here, the planned combination of at&t and t-mobile would deliver our next generation mobile broadband experience to 55 million more americans, many in small towns and rural communities, giving them a new choice. we'll deliver better service, with thousands of new cell sites... for greater access to all the things you want, whenever you want them. it's the at&t network... and what's possible in here is almost impossible to say. you've been stuck in the garage, while my sneezing and my itchy eyes took refuge from the dust in here and the pollen outside. but with 24-hour zyrtec®, i get prescription strength relief from my worst allergy symptoms. it's the brand allergists recommend most. ♪ lily and i are back on the road again. where we belong. with zyrtec®, i can love the air®. i'm isha sesay with a 360 bulletin. two u.s. officials say libyan leader muammar gadhafi may be getting ready for a last stand in tripoli. the officials say the plan could include a final military offensive against civilians. earlier this week gadhafi went on state television and told supporters to be ready to fight. the u.s. officials say if the last stand happens there's no clear picture of what it might look like in aruba after days of silence, the man being held in connection with the disappearance of a 35-year-old american robyn gardner is starting to cooperate slightly more with police. but gary giordano is still being described as belligerent and refusing to answer any questions that he has already answered. giordano took out $1.5 million travel insurance policies for both himself and robyn gardner, but authorities aren't saying who the beneficiary of her policy is. wall street ends an awful week with another awful day. the dow jones tumbled losing 1.6% of its value. the nasdaq and s & p 500 reported steep declines as well, all due to fierce about the u.s. economy and europe's debt crisis a court hearing today over a lawsuit filed by the trustee appointed to recover billions of dollars from bernard madoff's upon ponzi scheme. the trustee suing the -- new york mets. they argued they knew nothing about it. there's other headlines. now back to "presumed guilty, murder in west memphis". i came from an extremely dirt-poor family. >> damien echols grew up here in marion, arkansas, a mile or two from west memphis. his best friend jason baldwin lived nearby, and so did a boy named jesse misskelley. jesse misskelley sr. is jesse's father. >> i met him ate his home on a cold winter day to learn more about his son. >> everybody loved him. the little kids called him uncle jesse. >> jesse's father says he had a good heart. but his son struggled in school, and he didn't make it past the ninth grade. >> at the time, he was 17 years old. he came from a family that was a big family. he was a rough kid. he was low functioning in school. he had been in special ed from the time he started school. >> low functioning. >> iq i think at 72 is what he's been measured at. >> and what does that mean? how does he compare to a normal student? >> well, if the normal student is 100, then a 72 in our state i believe that a 70 is the cutoff for mental retardation legally. and so he was just above that. and he had been in special ed until he'd finally dropped out in high school when he was 16, a year earlier than this. >> jesse knew damien echols and jason baldwin, but not have well. they lived in a neighborhood close by. >> what was your world? what was your day like? what was your life like? >> poor white trash. and i think that's one of the things that made it so easy for them to put this off on us is because we were expendable, our lives didn't matter. >> whether that was true or not, the police were struggling to solve a crime with very few leads. >> what kind of pressure were police under at time? >> business was suffering. people were not going out. life was not going on as normal. >> and they weren't getting crucial information from the state crime lab. three weeks after the murders a police inspector pleaded for answers about the young victims. time of death. cause of death. were the kids sod opized? we need information from the crime lab desperately, the inspector says. our hands are tide. >> police had all these theories, but what did jesse misskelley do for them in terms of confirming what they were suspecting? >> he gave them something they could run with. he gave them something that they could use. >> almost exactly one month after the murders, jesse misskelley told police he saw what happened in a tape-recorded statement. >> where did you go? >> we went up to robin hood. >> what occurred while you were there? >> when i was there i saw damien hit this one -- hit this one boy real bad. and then he started screwing him and stuff. >> jesse said he watched damien echols and jason baldwin tie up the 8-year-old, beat them, cut them, and sodomize them. >> so you saw damien strike chris byers in the head? >> right. >> what did he hit him with? >> he hit him with his fist. >> jesse misskelley' confession gave the police the break they needed so badly. but with that statement he had sealed his own fate and that of damien echols and jason baldwin. his confession itself was full of tonight dictions and inconsistencies. but once it was out, almost no one would believe jesse would have admitted to doing something he hadn't done. >> in this so-called confession, he got a lot of the key points wrong. that the evidence could not back up. >> and the police knew it. >> and they ran with his confession. >> and so did the prosecutors. >> despite the inconsistencies, jesse's statement still seems so convincing at the time that even his own father briefly believed he was guilty. >> when they first had him in court, i heard the evidence, you know, and everything. somehow i thought he done it. >> i hadn't ever heard you say that about -- you were sitting in the courtroom. >> i was there. >> you were hearing what they were saying about him. >> yes. >> and you actually thought -- >> i actually thought he was guilty. until i talked to him. >> that must have been a terrible thing for a father to think about a son. >> it was. i can't tell you. >> but things were about to get even worse for jesse sr., his son, and the other two boys accused in the murders. i want to focus on innovation. but my data is doubling. my servers are maxed out. i need to think about something else when i run. 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