Damien Echols, who along with two friends served nearly two decades in prison for the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, petitioned for new DNA testing in an attempt to identify the children's true killer.
Eddie Munson, played by Joseph Quinn, is based upon Damien Echols, who was one of three metalheads blamed for the murders of three 8-year-old boys in Arkansas in 1993.
Patrick Benca, one of Damien Echols' attorneys, has learned that evidence in the murders of Steve "Stevie" Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore has been either lost or destroyed.
“If they thought they could trust the person who was the actual threat, then that person could get close enough to them to control them so that they couldn't run away," retired FBI Supervisory Agent Jim Clemente says in "The Forgotten West Memphis Three."
Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. were convicted in 1994 of the murder of three 8-year-old boys. Despite their release, following years of maintaining their innocence, they are still technically convicted killers.
A witness named Carlos Seals said he saw the three 8-year-old victims on the day they were murdered riding their bikes into the entrance of Robin Hood Hills.
Investigators theorized the bodies of Stevie Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore had been mutilated in a Satanic ritual, but could they have been torn apart by animals?
"There was something about Damien that resonated with me," said Lorri Davis of watching the "Paradise Lost" documentary, which led her to meet future husband Damien Echols.
The three Arkansas teens interrogated in "True Detective" bear a resemblance to Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley — the trio was arrested in the early '90s in connection with a triple-murder in a small Arkansas town.