Mystery of ‘Revelations’: The Truth or Pay-to-Say?

No one will ever accuse their films of being drab or uneventful.

After the remarkable PBS documentary, “Brother’s Keeper,” Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky gave us HBO’s “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills,” a twisting, stunning 1996 account of three weird-behaving teenagers being tried and perhaps unjustly convicted in the grisly slayings of three 8-year-olds in West Memphis, Ark., a serene town of 28,000 along the Mississippi River.

Now comes the disturbing HBO sequel, “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations,” which raises as many questions about the filmmakers--including their monetary payment to John Mark Byers, a key subject in the documentary--as about the bizarre case they update here. It’s one that sent Damien Wayne Echols, now 24, to death row, and Jason Baldwin, now 21, and Jessie Misskelley, now 23, to prison for life.

Although the original documentary left open their guilt or innocence--while ominously darkening Byers, stepfather of one of the murdered boys--the new one zealously crusades on behalf of the accused killers, who were stamped as Satanists in this Bible-thumping community because of their passions for heavy metal music and black clothing. Nor did it help that Damien was also the name of the antichrist in those popular “Omen” movies about devilish evil.

Coming across as demonic in “Revelations,” though, is the wild-preaching Byers, a frightening, Bunyanesque mountain of a man who lectures in Scripturese and spews tirades at the camera like a mad prophet. On trial in the film also are the authorities who still insist--despite apparent potholes in the evidence--that the convicted trio slew second-graders Christopher Byers, Steven Branch and Michael Moore in 1993.

The nude, rigid bodies of these little Huck Finns were found beside a shallow creek in Robin Hood Hills, a clump of woods along a busy interstate. They had been mutilated, persuading authorities that a ritual sacrifice had occurred and that presumed devil worshipers Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley should be scooped up. Then Misskelley, said to have an IQ of just 72, made a confession to police, which he later repudiated.

Berlinger and Sinofsky are superb storytellers as they use “Revelations” to probe the triple-murder’s inky corners and attempt to cast more doubt on the prosecution’s original case. They again omit narration and seamlessly converge verite sequences and interviews into an account that also monitors Echols’ attorney and a “criminal profiler” preparing for a legal appeal that may determine whether lethal injection is ahead for their client.

Echols is hardly recognizable here in his scholarly spectacles, these days looking and sounding more like a serious law student than the preening, almost-girlish narcissist viewers met in the first film when he wore his dark hair swooped to one side and titled himself “the West Memphis boogeyman.”

Yet Byers has hardly changed, even though his wife, Melissa, has since died, and the cause of her death remains murky. She died of a “broke heart,” Byers says.

One immediately wonders why--after being strongly suggested as a heavy in the first film--Byers agreed to an encore for “Revelations.” Is he a masochist? One of those 15-minutes-of-fame-at-any-price guys?

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The answer may come about midway through the documentary, when viewers are informed in a printed message that not only were families on both side of the case paid “equal honorariums” for the first film--something not publicized at the time--but that Byers received another “honorarium” for participating in “Revelations.”

In effect, that makes him a paid performer and taints the film’s credibility. And perform he does, time after time, as if cued by the camera’s red light. If the filmmakers wanted a Lucifer, they got one in Byers, whose menacing TV-tailored rants are the emotional center of this documentary that also finds him taking a polygraph test whose circumstances are never fully clarified.

Nor is why the camera inevitably is present for Byers’ venomous monologues. Does he decide on his own to visit his wife’s grave and place red roses there in front of the lens, for example, or is it the filmmakers’ idea? Just how involved are Berlinger and Sinofsky in shaping the story they’re supposed to be observing? There were rumblings about manipulation in the first film, and one wonders if they ratcheted that up in “Revelations.”

In any case, the graveside visit produces, with Byers telling his dead wife: “Those animals killed you! They’re evil animals and they killed you!” Facing the camera, he adds: “And for you morons, infidels and fools who think I had anything to do with it, go to hell! Go to hell!”

A skeptic might suspect staging. That would include having Byers always present to clash with Free the Memphis Three, a Los Angeles-based group that believes in the innocence of Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley, and arrives in town for the court hearing that may determine Echols’ fate.

A member notes that Byers is nice to the group until filming begins, and wonders: “Why are you being so mean to us now that the cameras are rolling?” Viewers can draw their own conclusions.

* “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations” can be seen tonight at 10 on HBO. The network has rated it TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17).

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com