Who Was Mr. Bojangles?

H Allegra Lansing
23 min readApr 8, 2021

The mystery suspect in the West Memphis Three killings

In 1994, three teenagers were convicted of the murder of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Those convictions were successful largely based on the admissions of one of those teens, Jessie Misskelley. Misskelley admitted to helping kill the boys and told police that he saw Damien Echols, the eldest teen, sexually assault one of the children. Jessie also identified Echols’ friend Jason Baldwin, as being present during the murders.

Jason, 16 at the time of the crime, was sentenced to life in prison. Jessie, 17 years, was sentenced to life imprisonment plus two 20-year sentences. Damien, who was 18, was sentenced to the death penalty.

But seventeen years later all three men were released from prison on a legal plea bargain. DNA evidence proved that the teens were not at the crime scene and they were freed, with time served.

This means that someone else committed the brutal murders of Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore. However Arkansas will never investigate the real killer or killers. They have no interest in solving the case, continuing to claim that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were the sole killers despite a lack of forensic or other evidence.

Maybe the real suspect was the man known as Mr. Bojangles.

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