14. The West Memphis Three
The story of the controversial case started on May 5, 1993, when three local eight-year-old boys disappeared while out playing near their homes in West Memphis. A disappearance like this was extremely uncommon as it was a very small town where everyone knew each other and felt comfortable letting their children play outside.
Their parents reported them missing almost immediately and police dispatched search teams the next morning. The search had not on long when later that afternoon, the dead bodies of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers – the missing local eight-year-old boys- were discovered in a muddy drainage ditch, in a gruesome state of being naked and hog-tied.
Echols was about to share what he had experienced with the world, unintentionally.