(A dead dog mutilated by serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer when he was a teenager.)
According to Jason Baldwin’s cousin, Joe Bartoush, about less than 8 months prior to the murders, on October 27, 1992, he and Damien Echols had found a dog, described as a Great Dane, which appeared to be sick. Echols, according to Bartoush killed the dog and was apparently going to keep it’s skull, because he was keeping a collection of animal skulls in his room.
“On 10-27-92 I was at Lakeshore Trailer Park with Damien Echols when he killed a Black Great Dane. The dog was already sick and he hit the dog in the back of the head. He pulled the intestines out of the dog and started stomping the dog until blood came out of his mouth. He was going to come back later with battery acid so that he could burn the hair and skin off of the dog’s head. He had two cat skulls, a dog skull and a rat skull that I already knew about. He kept these skulls in his bedroom at Jack Echols house in Lakeshore. He was trying to make the eyeballs of the dog he killed pop out when he was stomping. Damien had a camoflouge survival knife to cut the guts out of the dog with. This statement was written by Det. Ridge at my request.”
Damien Echols at trial, testifying about knives he had. In the context of his statement he was denying that he ever owned or had possession of the alleged murder weapon, a large black handled survival knife, known as the “Lake Knife”.
I had one sort of like that, but mine didn’t have a black handle. The handle on mine was camouflaged, and it had the camouflage case and everything. The blade on mine was black. It wasn’t silver like that.
Just like in Joe Bartoush’s statement, Echols said he owned a camouflage survival knife, seeming to provide some substantiation to Bartoush’s story.
This story is also corroborated by another teenager by the name of Timothy Blaine Hodge.
“there was a big black Great Dane Dog at lakeshore that I saw on the trail over the Bridge to the right as you go over the bridge it was Dead It’s intestines was strung out of his butt A boy named Adam told me he heard Damien did it. Adam’s last name is Phillips he lives in lakeshore”
(Timothy Blaine Hodge’s written statement to police from June 22, 1993.)
An account from Jason Baldwin’s girlfriend, Heather Cliett also described a conversation with Damien, in which he told her about how he mutilated a dog before. A police report describes what he told her:
“At the skating rink Damien told her he stuck a stick in a dogs eye and then jumped on it and then burned it.”
(Heather Cliett police report from June 7, 1993.)
Damien Echols in his own words from the book, “Almost Home,” an autobiography of sorts, which Echols wrote while in Prison, states in detail how he used to roam Lakeshore Trailer Park, and play with dead animals, both cats and dogs, just like Joe Bartoush had stated.
“Almost Home”, page 81:
“It sounds kind of odd to have a skull collection, but it’s easily explainable. There’s a hard-packed dirt path behind Lakeshore that the local youth wandered on. It doesn’t go anywhere specific, just sort of meanders around a small lake and a few fields. For some reason I always found odd pieces of skeletons that had died out there–possums, raccoons, squirrels, birds, and even the occasional dog or cat. I began collecting them because my teenage mind thought they ‘looked cool.’ I’ve never denied having questionable taste when it comes to interior decorating. The oddest thing we ever found was a beer bottle with two tiny skulls inside. The problem was that they were slightly too large to get out of the bottle. We spent hours trying to figure out how they got in the bottle in the first place.”
A document from a report on Damien’s 1992 arrest describes items removed by police from his room…
(Police report detailing items in Damien’s room from his initial 1992 arrest.)
The underlined portions describe a dog skull, which the police recovered from Damien’s room. As to how he obtained this skull, there were two different accounts.
His mother Pamela Hutchison stated in an interview on May 12, 1993, that Damien had one day brought home a dog skull that he found on the side of the road in Lakeshore.
RIDGE: OKAY, HAS HE ATTEMPTED TO GET YOU TO UNDERSTANDING HIS RELIGION?
HUTCHISON: YES, HE HAS
RIDGE: AND, IN THE EXPLAINING OF THIS, I UNDERSTAND FROM OTHER PEOPLE THAT HE MAY HAVE ANIMAL SKULLS OR SOMETHING SYMBOLISM IN THIS?
HUTCHISON: THIS ANIMAL SKULLS THAT HE HAD, WHEN I LIVED AT LAKESHORE, WAS JUST A SKULL THAT HAD BEEN FOUND LAYING ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD. IT HAD BEEN THERE FOR I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG, AND HE PICKED IT UP.
RIDGE: OF COURSE I AM NOT SAYING THAT IT IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT EITHER, BECAUSE I’VE SEEN SOME BEAUTIFUL ART WORK ON ANIMALS SKULLS, I’VE SEEN AT TRUCK STOPS, SO I AM NOT CONDEMNING OR SAYING THAT THERE IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH IT. BUT WHAT, HOW DOES HE PERCEIVE IT. SOMETHING PRETTY, OR JUST SEEM TO THINK THAT IT IS SOME KIND OF POWER?
HUTCHISON: NAW, I THINK THAT IT IS JUST INTERESTING THAN ANYTHING.
In an interview on September 10, 1993 with Deputy Prosecutor, John Fogleman, she described the events surrounding the skull in more detail:
FOGLEMAN- ALRIGHT. DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT DAMION HAVING CAT SKULLS AND CARRYING THEM AROUND?
PAM- IT WASN’T A CAT SKULL. IT WAS A DOG SKULL.
FOGLEMAN- ALRIGHT. WHERE WAS THAT?
PAM- IT WAS HANGING ON MY CLOTHES LINE IN THE BACK YARD WHERE I MADE HIM LEAVE IT OUT THERE TO DRY BEFORE HE CARRIES IT TO SCHOOL.
FOGLEMAN- OKAY. LEAVE IT OUT THERE TO DRY. WHAT HAD HE DONE TO IT?
PAM- HE FOUND IT ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.
FOGLEMAN- OKAY, BUT I MEAN, WHAT DID IT NEEDED DRY FROM?
PAM- IT JUST SMELLED BAD AND I MADE HIM HAND IT OUT THERE IN THE SUN.
FOGLEMAN- OKAY. AND YOU DON’T KNOW OF HIM CARRYING A CAT SKULL AT SCHOOL.
PAM- NO.
FOGLEMAN- OKAY. DO YOU KNOW OF HIM HAVING ANY OTHER SKULLS?
PAM- NO.
FOGLEMAN- OKAY. DO YOU KNOW WHY HE CARRIED A DOG SKULL TO SCHOOL?
PAM- UM, HE HAD TOLD ME THAT HE WAS GOING TO CARRY IT TO SCHOOL FOR, SOMETHING LIKE THEY HAD SHOW AND TELL. OR SOME TYPE OF SCIENCE PROJECT.
FOGLEMAN- OKAY.
PAM- AND HE ONLY CARRIED IT THE ONE DAY.
During Damien’s trial testimony, he himself changed the story on how he obtained the skull, instead of saying he found it, it was now his step-dad, Jack Echols who found the skull.
Q: In addition, there was a skull of some kind – it looks like an animal skull – State’s Exhibit 116. Are you familiar with this?
A: Yes, I am.
Q: What is that?
A: It was a skull me and my step-dad, Jack Echols, had found and I just thought it was kind of cool. And before he gave it to me, he bleached it out and everything to make sure there wasn’t any germs or anything on it. It was a decoration for my room.
Damien, in his own words and actions described himself partaking in actions most common of serial killers, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, who had a fascination with death. Bartoush’s statement was corroborated by Timothy Blaine Hodge, and Damien himself admitted having a camouflage survival knife like the one Bartoush stated he saw. And he himself stated in Almost Home to playing with dead animals and their skulls, which he found in Lakeshore Trailer Park, much like Bartoush said he did. And in 1992, when he and Deanna Holcomb were arrested, the police found a dog skull in his possession, again verifying Bartoush’s claims that Echols collected skulls from dead animals.
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