Life After Death by Echols Damien

Author:Echols, Damien [Echols, Damien]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, True Crime
ISBN: 9781922079671
Google: gYVCqwmQJG8C
Publisher: Text Publishing Company
Published: 2012-09-26T05:00:00+00:00

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My mother, father, and Domini came to visit me once a week. We were allowed twenty minutes, and had to talk through bulletproof glass. Domini had been almost five months pregnant when I was arrested, but you still couldn’t tell it by looking at her. In the last three or four months of the pregnancy, she grew at an alarming rate. By July, her body was still the same size it had always been, but her stomach had become huge and tight.

On August 4, I was taken to a pretrial hearing with Jason and Jessie, where all three of us pleaded not guilty. Judge David Burnett, who had been assigned to the case after the first hearing with Rainey, presided. He was a Craighead County judge, his demeanor administrative and assuming—in his eyes, we were already convicted. He was just going through the formalities and paperwork of a trial. He did at this point “sever” Jessie’s trial from mine and Jason’s—Jessie’s lawyers were effective in arguing that the publicity surrounding all of us would damage his own case. In the back room, seated just a few feet from Jessie and Jason, it was impossible to speak. The three of us were shell-shocked. Jessie never lifted his head; he sat staring at his feet. Jason appeared angry, and if we managed to make eye contact, he shook his head at me in sheer bewilderment and disbelief.

I wouldn’t get to be there for the birth of my son. That was one more thing taken from me. A guard stuck her head in the door on the morning of September 9 and told me that I was now a father. So much for a celebration.

We had a boy. Domini gave him my first name, only spelled differently—Damian. I gave him the middle name of Seth, which is what everyone calls him. We gave him a third name, Azariah, just to be certain he’d never have an inferiority complex. I wasn’t there to sign the papers, so he has Domini’s last name. She brought him to see me for twenty minutes every week, but I couldn’t touch him. The only time I was permitted to touch or hold him was during the trial, a few months later; while the cameras were running, the court allowed me to hold my son for the sake of the film.

My father or grandmother would bring me five paperback books from a local secondhand bookstore every week, and I’d usually have read them all by their next visit. I had always loved reading, but at that point those books became my only way to forget about the nightmare of my life. I would hide in them and go someplace else for hours at a time. The other guys were amazed by how much and how quickly I could read. It was a trend that has continued to this day. I’ve read a few thousand books over the time I’ve been locked up. Without books, I would have gone insane long ago.

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