Damien Echols
member of the West Memphis Three
Damien Wayne Echols (born Michael Wayne Hutchison; December 11, 1974) is an American author who first became known as one of three teenagers, the West Memphis Three, convicted of a triple murder in 1994 despite the lack of physical evidence connecting them to the crime and the dubious nature of the other evidence. Upon his release from death row in 2011 under an Alford plea, Echols authored several autobiographical and spiritual books. He has been featured in multiple books, documentaries, and podcasts about his spiritual works and the West Memphis Three case.
Biography
Early life
Damien Wayne Echols was born Michael Wayne Hutchison on December 11, 1974. He lived with his mother and father until their divorce, when he was 8. The family frequently moved and Echols would attend eight schools before the age of ten.
At the age of 13, he took a new name, with the last name of his stepfather Jack Echols.
The family settled in West Memphis, Arkansas, where Echols attended school. He was still in the ninth grade at the age of 17.
Echols, with his habit of dressing year round in a long black trenchcoat and an interest in witchcraft, was considered a misfit within the local community.
“Damien Echols” enters the record as member of the West Memphis Three. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Damien, Echols and member can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16515042. VIAF identifies the subject as 46347317. The Library of Congress control number is no95040819. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974, 1994 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Damien Echols” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.