Innocent Death Row Inmate Saw Prisoner Burned Alive And Killed With Napalm
An innocent man who lived on death row for 18 years claimed life was so bad in the prison, he once watched a man get burned alive with homemade napalm.
Damien Echols was sentenced to death in Arkansas, US, along with two other men in 1994 for the murder of three eight-year-old boys - crimes he actually never committed.
The bodies of the three boys Damien was convicted of killing - Christopher Byers, Steve Branch, and Michael Moore - had been found naked and tied in a creek in 1993.
Some suggested during the trial that the event was part of a satanic ritual, according to the Daily Star.
Damien said: "There were so many things that I barely even know where to begin."
His execution date was set as 5 May 1994 when he was aged only 18 but thankfully, he was able to delay the execution date at the Arkansas Supermax facility until he was exonerated in 2011. The true killer is yet to be found.
And looking back on that traumatic time of his life a few years ago, Damien answered a series of questions on Reddit about the reality of living for 18 years on the US's notorious death row.
Damien, who has gone on to release numerous books about his experiences in prison, answered hundreds of questions people posed to him - even those some might deem as a little bit too dark.
He even responded in depth about the grim events he had seen when someone asked him about the most disturbing thing he had experienced.
His response included references to repeated stabbings and a man being set alight with homemade napalm.
He wrote: "A lot of it would be the executions. There were between 25 and 30 executions during the time I was on death row.
"I once saw two men stabbed repeatedly. I've seen men beaten so bad they were unrecognisable.
"I saw a man who had been burned with homemade napalm. The list goes on and on. I saw a lot of things that I'll carry with me to my dying day."
"I didn't believe that I would be executed because I had hope from all of the people who gathered around us and supported us and gave us their time and energy," Damien revealed.
"But I was afraid that I was going to die due to the fact that my body had started to deteriorate very rapidly."
He also explained how death row doesn't provide any psychiatric care for its inmates: "There is no mental health care for inmates on death row, just because they're not going to spend a lot of time and money taking care of someone they plan on killing.
"Over the years I've seen them execute the mentally insane, the mentally handicapped, and even the brain-damaged."
Some death row prisoners remain there for up to 20 years before exoneration or execution, according to DPIC, and half of all executions have taken more than a decade to perform.
According to Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), five people were executed in Arkansas in 1994 alone and four in both 1997 and 1999.
Charlie Metcalfe