Episode 18: "I'm going to kill you, I'm going to rip your eyes out" Damien's attack on a romantic rival in which he attempted to claw out his eyes

From "Blood on Black": "I'm Going to Kill you,  I'M Going to Rip Your eyes out"        In his book “Life After Death,” Damien claimed that the only act of violence he ever committed was a fight at school. Echols minimized the attack as just a typical schoolyard confrontation. Not so.  It was serious enough that, months later, in February 1993,  when the other boy in the fight, Shane Divilbiss, had gone missing,  foul play was suspected because Echols had made threats on Divilbiss’s life.  Eventually Divilbiss turned up unharmed. Divilbiss, 18, gave a statement to West Memphis Detective Mike Allen on June 17: “Alright, I was going to school and met Deanna Holcomb and in turn Damien Echols. Because they were boyfriend, girlfriend at the time, I began to hang around with them.  “I spoke with Damien Echols on several occasions just like friends, then emotional things began to develop between me and Deanna Holcomb. She broke up with Damien and soon went out with me, which led Damien to believe I had stolen Deanna from him. He threatened to kill Deanna, threatened to kill several of my family members, just not my uncle, but several others. He threatened to kill me and then later came up behind me in the hallway while I was at my locker.  “I knew he was back there so I just started to walk. I didn't look at him or anything. He jumped on me from behind draggin’ me down to the ground and clawing at my face with his fingernails. He uh, people was saying he was trying to rip my eyes out and my the scars is what it looked like. When I got up I turn around and I was going to fight but he was being held down by several of the people that were in the hallway witnessing it so I didn't have to.” Echols routinely filed his fingernails into one and a half inch-long points. Echols was suspended while Divilbiss was allowed back in class.   “One of the threats was against my uncle, whom had told him that if he had fought with me that my uncle would jump into (the fight),” said Divilbiss. Echols “threatened him by say if he jumped in, he cut him to pieces and bury him in Deanna’s front yard.” The uncle was 16-year-old Kyle Perkins, also a student at Marion High. “Most of  (the threats) were generally just short, you know, like, I'm going to kill you or you know, like, when he had me down on the ground he said, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to rip your eyes out and all this stuff, you know, generally, you know, just short phrases. There was no long drawn out threats,” said Divilbiss.    Concerning Echols, Divilbiss said, “He was a very imposing person … when he was around ... quote friends he could silence them with just a glance. I mean, he could look at them and they would be quiet. You know, if they were saying something he disagreed with or if they were disagreeing with him, he would just have one look and they would be quiet.  It seemed to me that all his friends feared him including Deanna Holcomb. The way it seemed to me that she was around him because she was afraid that if she left he would kill her. ...” “She did tell me that he scared her, that she thought he was crazy. … She didn't tell me anything about sacrifices or anything but she did tell me that at one time they had sexual intercourse in a room full of people watching them, she told me of, you know, that is the main thing she told me, about like a circle of people were watching them, and that is with candles around and everything like that. .…” Sexual intercourse between ceremonial leaders is a longstanding practice in Wicca, dating back to the witch cult founder Gerald Gardner’s proclivities for flagellation, nudity and exhibitionism.  Divilbiss said Echols was highly intelligent and “he know a lot about things; he knows how to work with a person’s mind; he can manipulate (a person’s) mind to  ... what he believes in.”  Divilbiss described Baldwin and Holcomb as “susceptible to another person’s mind.” Divilbiss said Holcomb “said that he proclaim himself to be the so