During the recent Toronto International Film Festival, FANGORIA caught WEST OF MEMPHIS, Amy Berg’s riveting documentary about the West Memphis Three (see our review here). Since then, I had the unique chance to talk with one of those trio of victims of the tragic miscarriage of justice: Damien Echols (also a MEMPHIS co-producer), a kid who—like all of us outsider horror fans—just loved monsters, dark fantasy, weird music and antiestablishment culture…and, through a terrible stroke of circumstance, paid dearly for it.

Echols, along with fellow West Memphis, Arkansas teens Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., spent 18 years in prison for a sickening crime they did not commit. Now free men (though due to a technicality, guilt still stains their records), the three have ventured their separate ways to heal the past and find their futures. And Echols, whose new autobiography LIFE AFTER DEATH was just published by Blue Rider Press, not only never gave up on the hope of freedom despite seemingly impossible odds, but never lost his love for the strange, fantastic and macabre. In fact, his love of all things odd stems from a childhood interest in our very periodical, FANGORIA.

Below is an exclusive audio clip from that interview; pick up FANGORIA #319 (on sale in December) to read the entire chat with Echols, which doesn’t dwell on the horrors of his life in prison but rather on that very affection for the arcane that he never, ever let go of.

---

News - Latest