title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: During the early 1950s, Jackson briefly performed with his younger brother Luther Jackson in their own blues band The Falcons, playing guitar. Despite their efforts, The Falcons did not get a recording deal and subsequently broke up after one of their members, Thornton "Pookie" Hudson, founded his own band in 1952. That band became a successful doo-wop group named The Spaniels.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: In the early 1960s, Joe Jackson began pushing his sons in a musical direction after they began playing around with his musical instruments while he was at work. He first started working with his three eldest sons Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine. Younger sons Marlon and Michael were eventually put into the band; youngest brother Randy was too young to join at the time. Joseph began enforcing long and intense rehearsals for his sons. At first, the group went under the name The Jackson Brothers. Following the inclusions of Marlon and Michael in the group, their name was changed to The Jackson 5. After a couple of years performing in local talent contests and high school functions, The Jackson 5 got a color TV set after the judges placed them in second place. Joseph booked them in more professional venues, including in Chicago, and they eventually landed a gig at the Apollo Theater in New York City. On November 21, 1967, The Jackson 5 were signed by Joe Jackson to their first record contract with Gordon Keith, owner and first president of Steeltown Records in Gary, Indiana. The group's first single "Big Boy," with Michael as the lead singer, was released by Steeltown on January 31, 1968. "Big Boy" did not become a hit but because the brothers actually had a single released, they became local celebrities in Gary after it received some airplay on local Gary radio stations. Within the year, Jackson helped to land his sons an audition for Motown Records. The Jackson 5 received a record contract with Motown in March 1969.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: Shortly after, Joe Jackson moved his family to the Los Angeles area and sat in on every recording session the group made for Motown. The group received nationwide attention after their first single for Motown, "I Want You Back", hit No. 1 following its release on October 7, 1969, and included on their first album, "Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5", in December 1969. The group saw the release of their first three albums and their first four singles, "I Want You Back" (1969), "ABC" (1970), "The Love You Save" (1970), and "I'll Be There" (1970), reach No. 1 in the US within 10 months. In 1973, wanting to reassert his control, Jackson had his family, including youngest son Randy, and daughters Rebbie, La Toya, and Janet, perform at casinos and resorts in the Las Vegas area, inspired by the success of fellow family act The Osmonds.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: Joseph had also formed his own record label 'Ivory Tower International Records' and signed artists under his management in which they toured internationally with The Jackson 5 as opening acts in 1974. In 1975, the group left Motown Records and signed a contract with Epic Records, with the exception of Jermaine, who remained at Motown as a solo artist. Jermaine was replaced in the group by brother Randy. Michael also had a separate deal with Epic to release solo albums. Unbeknownst to Joe Jackson or the group, Motown president Berry Gordy had copyrighted the group's name "The Jackson 5". This came to light as the group was signing its new contract with Epic Records and Gordy refused to allow them to use the name "The Jackson 5" with their new label. The group renamed themselves "The Jacksons". In 1978, Joseph's youngest son Randy released his solo single "How Can I Be Sure" on Joseph's record label. In 1982, Joseph established Janet Jackson's career as an actress and as a recording artist while managing her. He financed the recording of Janet's first demo and arranged a recording contract for her with A&M Records.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: In his early 20s, while moonlighting in a blues band with his brother Luther, Joe met Katherine Scruse, whom he married in November 1949. This was his second marriage, following a brief marriage that was annulled.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: Joseph was alleged to have had a lasting extramarital affair. Katherine filed for divorce on March 9, 1973, with a Los Angeles County clerk, but she decided to drop the divorce proceedings. The following year, Joseph fathered a daughter with Cheryle Terrell named Joh'Vonnie. This led Joseph and Cheryle to a 25-year-long affair while raising Joh'Vonnie. Katherine attempted once again to divorce her husband in 1982, but again was persuaded to drop the action. Joseph then moved to Las Vegas, with Katherine remaining at the Jackson family home Hayvenhurst in Encino, California. Despite living separately, Katherine and Joe remained legally married until his death in 2018. Katherine denied rumors that she and Joseph were estranged.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: In the late 1980s, Joseph's image as a father became tarnished as the media reported stories told by his children that he was abusive towards them. When he managed his family, he allegedly ordered each of them to call him "Joseph", which contributed to several siblings having been estranged from him. Michael claimed that from a young age he was physically and emotionally abused by his father, enduring incessant rehearsals, whippings and name-calling, but also said that his father's strict discipline played a large part in his success. Michael first spoke openly about his childhood abuse in a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey. He said that during his childhood, he often cried from loneliness. Michael recalled that Joseph sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as Michael and his siblings rehearsed and that "if you didn't do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you." Joseph admitted to whipping his children with switches and belts as punishment, but said he did not do so at random, and claimed never to have used any hard object as he felt was implied by the word "beating."


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: Both Joe and Katherine have denied the characterization of abuse. Katherine said that the whippings and physical punishments were common back then when Michael and his siblings grew up. Other siblings, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon, have denied that their father was abusive. Despite the allegations, Michael honored his father with an annual "Joseph Jackson Day" at Neverland Ranch and ultimately forgave him, noting that Joseph's difficult upbringing in the Great Depression and the Jim Crow South, along with his working-class adulthood, hardened him emotionally and made him push his children to succeed as entertainers.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: Joe was played by Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs in the mini-series "" and by Frederic Tucker in the 2004 VH1 biopic "". He was voiced by Tom Kenny in the 2000 web cartoon "Murry Wilson: Rock N' Roll Dad".


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: In 2011, Jackson was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. In 2014, when his late son Michael was posthumously inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame with a Lifetime Achievement Award, Jackson accepted the award on his behalf. The following year Jackson himself was awarded the organization's Humanitarian Award. In June 2015, Jackson appeared at the BET Awards 2015 with his daughter Janet as she accepted the Ultimate Icon Award.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: On July 27, 2015, Jackson was rushed to a hospital after a stroke and heart arrhythmia while celebrating his 87th birthday in Brazil. He was not stable enough to fly out of the country for further treatment until two weeks later. Upon his arrival to Los Angeles on August 11, he was treated at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to correct his blurred vision following the stroke. In January 2017, Jackson's brother Lawrence died.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: On June 22, 2018, TMZ reported that Jackson was hospitalized in Las Vegas in the final stages of terminal pancreatic cancer. He died at a hospice in Las Vegas at 3:30 a.m. (PDT) on June 27, two days after the ninth anniversary of his son Michael's death and less than a month before his 90th birthday. He was surrounded by his wife and surviving children.


title: Joe Jackson (manager)

text: On July 2, 2018, Jackson was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale near Los Angeles, the same Southern California cemetery as his son Michael, who was buried there in 2009.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: "Kingdom Hearts" is a crossover of various Disney properties based in an original fictional universe. The series centers on the main character, Sora, and his journey and experiences with various Disney and Pixar characters, as well as some from Square Enix properties, such as "Final Fantasy", "The World Ends With You" and "Einhänder", in addition to original characters and locations created specifically for the series. The primary plotline of the series sees the protagonists clash against the multiple incarnations of Xehanort, the primary antagonist for phase 1 while phase 2 focuses on the Masters.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The series consists of thirteen games available for multiple platforms and future games are planned. Most of the games in the series have been positively received and commercially successful. As of March 2022, the "Kingdom Hearts" series has shipped more than 36 million copies worldwide. A wide variety of related merchandise has been released along with the games, including soundtracks, figurines, companion books, light novels, a collectible card game, and a manga series.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: "Kingdom Hearts" features a mixture of familiar Disney and Square Enix characters, as well as several new characters designed and created by Nomura. In addition to original locations, the "Kingdom Hearts" series features many worlds from Disney films. Sora must visit these worlds and interact with various Disney characters to protect them from enemies. Often, his actions in these worlds closely follow the storylines of their respective Disney films. The main characters try not to interfere with the affairs of other worlds, as it could negatively affect the universe's order. Various "Final Fantasy" characters also make appearances within several worlds throughout the series. This includes Moogles, small creatures who are another common element in the games. They provide the player with a synthesis shop in order to create and purchase items used in the game. The main cast from "The World Ends with You" also makes an appearance in the series in "Dream Drop Distance", and "Kingdom Hearts III" features characters from Pixar films such as the "Toy Story" series and "Monsters, Inc.", as well as Schwarzgeist, one of the bosses from "Einhänder". Nevertheless, the usage of Disney characters is not without restrictions. For example, Nomura had requested the use of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in "Kingdom Hearts III", but the response from Disney was that the character would be "too difficult" to use, with no further clarification or details from Disney.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The series starts with "Kingdom Hearts", where a 14-year-old boy named Sora is separated from his friends Riku and Kairi when their home Destiny Islands is consumed in darkness. At that moment Sora obtained a weapon called the Keyblade that allows him to fight the Heartless, creatures that originate from the Realm of Darkness, before ending up in another world, Traverse Town, where he meets Donald Duck and Goofy, two emissaries from Disney Castle sent to find the Keyblade wielder under orders from their missing king, Mickey Mouse. As the three band together and travel to save various worlds from the Heartless while searching for their companions, encounter a group of Disney villains whose ability to control the Heartless was given to them by Maleficent, who enlists Riku's aid in seeking seven maidens called the Princesses of Heart whose power would open the way to Kingdom Hearts, the heart of all worlds. Though eventually defeating Maleficent and reunited with Kairi after sacrificing himself to restore her heart to her body, Sora learns that Maleficent was manipulated by a sentient Heartless who possesses Riku and claims himself as the Heartless researcher Ansem. Though Sora defeats Ansem, he is forced to trap Riku and Mickey in the Realm of Darkness after sealing the door and resolute to find them while Kairi remains at the Destiny Islands for their return.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: In "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories", Sora's search for Riku and Mickey leads his group to Castle Oblivion, a fortress controlled by a mysterious group of non-existent "Nobodies" called Organization XIII, the castle's overseer Marluxia using the power of a girl named Naminé to alter the group's memories for his agenda. After Marluxia's defeat, the three are placed in a year-long sleep by Naminé to restore their original memories while losing their experience in Castle Oblivion. At the same time Sora ventured through Castle Oblivion, Riku ended up in the basement levels and ascends to the ground floor with Mickey's aid while dealing with a Replica of himself that fought Sora. Finding the comatose Sora while joining forces with the mysterious DiZ, Riku helps Naminé keep his friend safe until he is awoken. In "Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days", a snag in the plan over the year forces Riku to capture Roxas—Sora's Nobody and Organization XIII member that came into being when Sora briefly became a Heartless in the first game-after he was forced to defeat and absorb Xion, a Replica of Sora in Kairi's image.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: In "Kingdom Hearts II", after Roxas was integrated back into him, an awakened Sora and his friends resume their search for Riku and King Mickey, the latter's mentor Yen Sid re-familiarizing the trio with the Nobodies and Organization XIII's remaining members whom they deal alongside Maleficent and her right hand Pete. The three reunite with King Mickey and encounter Organization XIII's leader Xemnas, him and the Heartless Ansem revealed to the splintered halves of the real Ansem's apprentice Xehanort. The Organization's plan is also revealed: regaining their lost hearts by using Keyblade users to create an artificial Kingdom Hearts from slain Emblem Heartless. Axel, a rogue Organization member who is Roxas' friend and first encountered Sora in Castle Oblivion, abducts Kairi in an attempt to see Roxas. Axel's action only give Saix, his former friend and Xemnas' enforcer, leverage to force Sora into finishing what Roxas and Xion began. Axel sacrifices himself to help Sora's group reach The World That Never Was (Organization XIII's headquarters) and, after defeating Xemnas's right hand Xigbar, reunite with Riku and Kairi. DiZ, revealed to be the real Ansem, attempts dissipating some of the artificial Kingdom Hearts before being engulfed in an explosion when his extraction device self-destructs and is sent to the Realm of Darkness. Sora and his friends then battle Xemnas. After Sora and Riku defeat Xemnas, they get trapped in the Realm of Darkness, but a letter from Kairi summons a gateway for them, and the two are reunited with their friends at their home. Sometime after his first adventure in Disney Castle, Sora discovered a portal at Disney Castle, and ventured through it to find a mysterious armour referred to as 'Lingering Will'. During their exchange, it mistook Sora for Xehanort, after which Sora fought the mysterious armour. Sora won the battle, and the Lingering Will merely knelt down after this, saying that he once felt the power Sora possessed.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: Sometime later after the events of the game, Sora, Riku, and Kairi receive a letter from King Mickey. The letter, written by Mickey during the events of "Kingdom Hearts Coded", describes the parts of their past that Naminé learned while restoring Sora's memory. As they read the letter, they learn of Xehanort's true identity as a Keyblade Master who sought the secrets of the Keyblade War which created their current reality and the fates that befall the apprentices of his friend Eraqus during the events of "Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep": Terra having ended up possessed by Xehanort and made into the original being of Xehanort's Heartless and Xemnas were split from; Ventus sacrificing his heart by fighting his dark counterpart Vanitas while to prevent Xehanort from recreating the legendary χ-blade which allows the user to control Kingdom Hearts and hiding within four-year-old Sora's heart; and new Keyblade Master Aqua trapped within the Realm of Darkness while an amnesic Xehanort ended up Ansem's apprentice alongside his accomplice Braig (Xigbar's original self). King Mickey also discovers that the destruction of "Ansem" and Xemnas has led to Xehanort's restoration. To combat the new threat Xehanort poses, Sora and Riku take an exam to attain the Mark of Mastery that will allow them to become Keyblade Masters themselves.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: During the test in "Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance", Sora and Riku enter the Realm of Sleep where they encounter a young version of Xehanort who can travel through time. The two Keyblade wielders also learn how Xehanort has long manipulated events since "Birth by Sleep" with Organization XIII's true purpose in providing thirteens vessels for him to inhabit and use against seven hearts of pure light in an ultimate battle to recreate the χ-blade. But Sora's interference forced Xehanort to retrieve his alternate selves, Marluxia, Larxene, Demyx, Luxord, Vantias, and Xion from across time in Replica bodies to form his ideal Organization XIII with Xigbar, Saix, and Vexen. Sora is narrowly saved from being Xehanort's final vessel with the aid of Lea (Axel's original self) and Riku learns about data that Ansem the Wise had implanted within Sora during his year-long sleep, which may be used to save those connected to Sora. At the end of the exam, Riku is declared a Keyblade Master; in "Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue", Sora embarks on another journey to regain his "Power of Waking" while Riku helps Mickey find Aqua, Yen Sid training Kairi and Lea so they can help in the final battle against Xehanort and keep him from the Princesses of Heart.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: In "Kingdom Hearts III", Sora regains his "Power of Waking" in his group's travels while Riku and Mickey retrace Aqua's steps to find her and Terra. Sora later discovers Eraqus's Keyblade on the beach and uses it to open a door to the Realm of Darkness, finding Aqua who has been consumed by darkness after Ansem was abducted by Xehanort's Heartless. Once Aqua is purified by Sora and Riku, she leads them to Castle Oblivion which she restores to its true form as the Land of Departure to revive Ventus despite Vanitas' interference. The group are joined by Kairi and Lea as they face Xehanort and his followers, with a Riku Replica completing the group, at the Keyblade Graveyard. After initially losing the fight, Sora once again uses the "Power of Waking" to restore the guardians and call upon the "Lingering Will" armour, to assist in the fight. Afterwards it is revealed that Saix and Vexen sabotaged the Organization's plan by restoring Roxas as Sora's group manage to defeat all of Xehanort's remaining selves while freeing Xion and Terra from his control. Xehanort kills Kairi to force Sora to manifest the χ-blade, revealing his true plan is to use the true Kingdom Hearts to wipe the slate on reality clean before finally being defeated. Xehanort departs with Eraqus's spirit into the light as Sora closes Kingdom Hearts. Sora also sacrifices himself by using the "Power of Waking" once more to revive Kairi. Sometime later, all the guardians, including their close friends and allies, celebrate victory at Destiny Islands. Xigbar, revealed to be the current incarnation of the ancient Keyblade Master Luxu from the time of the Keyblade War, summons the Foretellers, his fellow Keyblade Masters, to the present for the next phase of his mission. A year later, all attempts to find a clue to Sora's current whereabouts have proven to be futile until Riku and Kairi, with the help of the Fairy Godmother, find clues that lead them to believe that Sora has been transported outside of their reality. Riku embarks on a search for him after opening a portal to another reality in the Final World. Elsewhere, Sora meets Yozora, a supposedly fictional character from a video game. During their exchange Yozora claims that he is tasked to "save Sora" and the world is transported into Shibuya. Sora is challenged to a fight by Yozora, whom he defeats. Yozora fades away as Sora returns to The Final World. Both Sora and Yozora wonder if their meeting was real, with neither character making sense of it.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The "Kingdom Hearts" games contain elements of action role-playing video games with hack-and-slash elements. The games are driven by a linear progression from one story event to the next, usually shown in the form of a cutscene, though there are numerous side quests available that provide bonus benefits to the characters. In most games, the player primarily controls the principal protagonist of the series, Sora. Sora is usually accompanied by Donald Duck and Goofy, who are artificial intelligence-controlled non-playable characters that aid Sora in battle. In the first and third game, their behavior can be altered to suit different combat objectives. The games feature real-time combat that incorporates physical attacks, magic, and summonings, though each game handles battles differently. The game also allows for items to be used on the field of battle to heal oneself or one's party members.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: Gummi Ships are another common element of the series, which serve as the main mode of transportation between worlds in the games. The gameplay for the Gummi Ship sections is more akin to a rail shooter. Because it received negative criticism in the first game, it was modified in the third game. Most games also feature a journal which is accessible from the main menu. This journal keeps track of information regarding the story, characters, enemies, and locations. In "Kingdom Hearts", "Chain of Memories", "Kingdom Hearts II", and "Kingdom Hearts III", the journal is kept by Jiminy Cricket, who was appointed by Queen Minnie as the royal chronicler. In "358/2 Days", "Birth by Sleep", and "Dream Drop Distance", the main characters write their own journal entries.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The games are influenced by their parent franchise, "Final Fantasy", and carry its gameplay elements over into their own action-based, hack-and-slash system. Like many traditional role-playing games, "Kingdom Hearts" features an experience point system which determines character development. As enemies are defeated, the player gains experience which culminates in a "level-up", where the characters grow stronger and gain access to new abilities. The amount of experience is shared with all party members and each character grows stronger as experience is gained.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The music for the series has been primarily composed by Yoko Shimomura. Kaoru Wada works as the arranger for orchestral music, including orchestral renditions of the main vocal themes and the ending themes. The orchestral music was performed by the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Soundtracks were released for the first and third installments following the release of their respective games. A compilation soundtrack was later released that included soundtracks for the entire series, including reworked tracks for the re-released "Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories".


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: While the themes for some of the Disney-based worlds are taken directly from their Disney film counterparts, most of them are given entirely original musical scores. In addition to each world having unique background music, each is given its own battle theme rather than having a common theme to cover all fights. Several of the main characters have themes, and the final boss of each game has several themes played in the various phases of those fights. The fights with Sephiroth feature a modified version of Nobuo Uematsu's "One-Winged Angel" from "Final Fantasy VII".


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The main theme songs for the "Kingdom Hearts" games were written and performed by Japanese pop star, Hikaru Utada. The three main themes are "Hikari", originally from "Kingdom Hearts", "Passion", from "Kingdom Hearts II", and "Oath" from "Kingdom Hearts III". Each song has an English counterpart, "Simple and Clean", "Sanctuary", and "Don't Think Twice" respectively, for the North American and European releases. Utada was the only singer Tetsuya Nomura had in mind for the first "Kingdom Hearts" theme song. This marked the first time Utada had produced a song for a video game. Both of the first two theme songs reached notable popularity; on weekly Oricon charts, "Hikari" reached No. 1 in 2002 and "Passion" reached No. 4 in 2005.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The initial idea for "Kingdom Hearts" began with a discussion between Shinji Hashimoto and Hironobu Sakaguchi about "Super Mario 64". They were planning to make a game with freedom of movement in three dimensions like "Super Mario 64" but lamented that only characters as popular as Disney's could rival a "Mario" game. Tetsuya Nomura, overhearing their conversation, volunteered to lead the project and the two producers agreed to let him direct. A chance meeting between Hashimoto and a Disney executive in an elevator (Square and Disney had previously worked in the same building in Japan) allowed Hashimoto to pitch the idea directly to Disney. Development began in February 2000 with Nomura as director and Hashimoto as producer. While Nomura had done previous work in the "Final Fantasy" series as monster designer and graphic director, he did not gain widespread recognition until he was the lead character designer for "Final Fantasy VII". "Kingdom Hearts" marked his transition into a directorial position, though he also served as the game's character designer. Scenarios were provided by Kazushige Nojima who was a scenario writer for Square from "Final Fantasy VII" until he left in 2003. Originally the development focused on the gameplay with a simple story to appeal to Disney's target age range. After "Kingdom Hearts" executive producer Hironobu Sakaguchi told Nomura the game would be a failure if it did not aim for the same level as the "Final Fantasy" series, he began to develop the story further. In June 2013, Nomura stated the name of the game came from him thinking about Disney Theme Parks, especially Animal Kingdom. However, Nomura could not get the IP with just "Kingdom", so the development team began to think about "heart" as a core part of the story, so they decided to combine the two to form "Kingdom Hearts".


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: Nomura placed a secret trailer in "Kingdom Hearts" in hopes that fans would want a sequel. He was unsure if fans would want a sequel and felt that if they did not, then it would be best to leave certain events in the first game unexplained. After "Kingdom Hearts Final Mix" was completed, development for "Kingdom Hearts II" began. There were several obstacles to clear before development could begin on a sequel. One was the development team's desire to showcase Mickey Mouse more; Mickey's inclusion in the first game was restricted to a very small role. Nomura had planned for the sequel to take place a year after the first and originally intended for the events of that year to be left unexplained. To bridge the gap between the two games, "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories" was developed. Nomura was hesitant about releasing a game on the Game Boy Advance because he felt the 3D graphics of the original game would not translate well into 2D. He changed his position after hearing that children wanted to play "Kingdom Hearts" on the handheld system.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: Though Disney gave Nomura freedom in the characters and worlds used for the games, he and his staff tried to stay within the established roles of characters and boundaries of the worlds. Nomura has stated that though many of the Disney characters are not normally dark and serious, there were not many challenges making them so for the story and despite this, their personalities shine because they maintain their own characteristics. He also felt managing and keeping multiple worlds was problematic. When deciding which worlds to include in the game, the development staff tried to take into account worlds with Disney characters that would be interesting and made an effort to minimize any overlap in the overall look and feel of each world.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The inclusion of specific "Final Fantasy" characters was based on the opinions of both fans and staff. Another criterion for inclusion was whether the staff felt the characters would fit into the storyline and in the "Kingdom Hearts" universe. Initially, Nomura was hesitant to use characters he did not design, because he was unfamiliar with the backstory of such characters. For "Kingdom Hearts II", he changed his mind after receiving pressure from his staff. Throughout the development of the games, Nomura has often left certain events and connections between characters unexplained until the release of future games. Nomura does this because he feels that games should have room for fans to speculate and use their imagination. He has stated that with speculation, even though a game gets old, people can still be happy with it.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The first "Kingdom Hearts" was announced at E3 in May 2001. Initial details were that it would be a collaboration between Square and Disney Interactive, and would feature worlds developed by both companies and Disney characters. New characters were designed by Nomura and include Sora, Riku, Kairi, and the Heartless. On May 14, 2002, a press release announced a list of the English voice actors. The list included Haley Joel Osment, David Gallagher, and Hayden Panettiere as the three new characters introduced into the game. It was also announced that many of the Disney characters would be voiced by the official voice actors from their respective Disney films.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: A secret trailer in the first "Kingdom Hearts" and "Kingdom Hearts Final Mix" hinted at the possibility of a sequel. Rumors for a sequel on the PlayStation 2 were spurred in Japan when a Japanese video game site, Quiter, stated that "an internal (and anonymous) source at Square Japan" confirmed that development of "Kingdom Hearts II" had begun. It was not until "Kingdom Hearts II" was announced, along with "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories", at the Tokyo Game Show in September 2003 that rumors were confirmed. Initial details were that it would take place some time after "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories", which takes place directly after the first game. Other details included the return of Sora, Donald, and Goofy, as well as new costumes. At the 2004 Square Enix E3 press conference, the producer, Shinji Hashimoto, stated that many mysteries of the first game would be answered.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: To help market the games, websites were set up for each game and demos were on display at gaming events. Each game in the main series was also re-released in Japan with additional content and served as canonical updates to the series. The additional content foreshadowed later plot elements in the series. The rereleases of the main series games had the term "Final Mix" added after the title, while "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories" and "Kingdom Hearts Coded" were re-released as "Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories" and "Kingdom Hearts Re:coded" and released on the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS, respectively, with 3D graphics, voice overs during some cutscenes, and new game content.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The "Kingdom Hearts" series has been critically and commercially successful. As of March 2014, the series has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. The three main games in the series all met with positive sales at the time of their releases. In the first two months since the North American release of "Kingdom Hearts", it was one of the top three highest-selling video games. "Chain of Memories" sold 104,000 units in 48 hours in Japan, a record for a Game Boy Advance game at the time. Its positive debut sales placed it in the top spot of sales charts in Japan. In the first month of its North American release, it was ranked 1st on GameSpot's ChartSpot for portable systems and 6th for all consoles. Within three days of the "Kingdom Hearts II" release in Japan, it shipped 1 million copies, selling through within a month. By the end of March 2006, the NPD Group reported that "Kingdom Hearts II" was the highest-selling console game in North America, with 614,000 copies. In the month after its release in North America, "Kingdom Hearts II" sold an estimated 1 million copies. As of February 2019, the "Kingdom Hearts" series has shipped more than 30 million copies worldwide. This number reached to over 35 million copies shipped by October 2021. On April 11, 2022, "Kingdom Hearts III" was revealed to reach a total of 6.7 million units as of September 2021 surpassing "Kingdom Hearts" 6 million units to become the current best selling title in the series. As of March 2022, the "Kingdom Hearts" series has shipped more than 36 million copies worldwide.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The games have also received high ratings and positive comments from reviewers. All of the main games in the series have scored a 36 out of 40 or higher from the Japanese gaming magazine "Famitsu", known for its harsh grading. All six games have been praised for their visuals. "Game Informer" considers the series the eleventh "must-play PlayStation 2" series. The individual games have also won several awards. GameSpot commented that the concept of mixing the serious elements of "Final Fantasy" with the lighter elements of Disney seemed impossible, but was pulled off quite well. Because of that they awarded "Kingdom Hearts" "Best Crossover Since "Capcom vs. SNK"" in their 2002 Best and Worst of the Year awards. IGN named "Kingdom Hearts" "Best Art Style/Direction" in their 2003 list of "Best Looking Games on PS2". G4 awarded it "Best Story" at their 2003 "G-Phoria" awards show. "Electronic Gaming Monthly" awarded "Kingdom Hearts II" "Best Sequel" of 2006. It tied with "Resident Evil 4" as "Famitsu's" Game of the Year 2005. The manga series has also been well received. Several of the manga volumes were listed on "USA Today"s "Top 150 best sellers". The highest ranked volume was "Kingdom Hearts" volume 4 at #73. Every volume listed stayed on the list for at least two weeks; "Kingdom Hearts" volume 4 stayed the longest at four weeks.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: Both Square Enix and Disney have released a wide variety of "Kingdom Hearts" merchandise including toys, figurines, clothing, and jewelry. Two of the games, "Kingdom Hearts" and "Kingdom Hearts II", had a soundtrack released to coincide with the video games. These were followed by a nine CD complete set which featured both soundtracks and unreleased tracks. "Kingdom Hearts" has been adapted as a trading card game by the Tomy corporation of Japan. An English version of the game was released in November 2007 by Fantasy Flight Games. The video games have also been adapted into manga and novel series.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: Like the "Final Fantasy" games, a series of "Ultimania" books were released in Japan for many of the games. These books include game walkthroughs, interviews, and extra information from the developers. "Kingdom Hearts -Another Report-" was released along with "Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+" and features game information, visuals by Shiro Amano, and a director interview. In North America, Brady Games released strategy guides for each game. For "Kingdom Hearts II", they released two versions, a standard version and a limited edition version. The limited edition was available in four different covers and included a copy of Jiminy's Journal along with 400 stickers.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: Sora has made guest appearances in other video games, including "World of Final Fantasy" and "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate".


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: A manga based on the "Kingdom Hearts" storyline has been released in Japan and the United States. The story and art are done by Shiro Amano, who is also known for his manga adaptation of the "Legend of Mana" video game. The story follows the events that took place in the video games with differences to account for the loss of interactivity a video game provides. The manga was originally serialized in Japan by Square Enix's "Monthly Shōnen Gangan" and eventually released in tankōbon format. The first tankōbon was released in Japan in October 2003. The manga was released in the US by Tokyopop two years later in October 2005. Yen Press now holds the rights to publish the books for the USA market. The first series, "Kingdom Hearts", consists of four volumes, while the second series, "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories", has two volumes. The third series, "Kingdom Hearts II", has ten volumes total, taking a hiatus to publish a fourth series based on "Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days" which has five volumes total, after which Kingdom Hearts II resumed. As of April 2019, a fifth series based on "Kingdom Hearts III" has been serialised monthly in Gangan Online with Amano returning to do story and artwork. Yen Press also licensed the series and published it online in English on apps such as Comixology and BookWalker alongside the Japanese release. This series will soon have two volumes published in tankōbon format.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: The games have also been adapted as a light novel series, written by Tomoco Kanemaki and illustrated by Shiro Amano. Like the manga series, it is divided into separate series based on the games. "Kingdom Hearts" is divided into two volumes; "The First Door" and "Darkness Within". "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories" is divided into two volumes. "Kingdom Hearts II" is divided into four volumes; "Roxas—Seven Days", "The Destruction of Hollow Bastion", "Tears of Nobody", and "Anthem—Meet Again/Axel Last Stand".


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: A pilot for a television adaptation of the first "Kingdom Hearts" game was commissioned in 2003 for the Disney Channel, but did not go forward as a series. In October 2022, the pilot's director, Seth Kearsley, uploaded the pilot animatic to his personal YouTube channel and shared more details on the production. The cast of the games reprised their roles for the pilot with the exception of Haley Joel Osment, who was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts and was replaced with Bobby Edner. According to Kearsley, the pilot tested well with their test audiences, but the decision was made not to go further into production due to the franchise's expansion and the difficulty of maintaining consistency with the ongoing game series. The animatic was later taken down by Kearsley at Disney's request.


title: Kingdom Hearts

text: On May 27, 2020, It was reported that a TV series based on the franchise was in development for Disney+.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An atheist, he is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene", which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term "meme". With his book "The Extended Phenotype" (1982), he introduced into evolutionary biology the influential concept that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, for example, when a beaver builds a dam. His 2004 The Ancestor's Tale set out to make understanding evolution simple for the general public, by tracing common ancestors back from humans to the origins of life.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Over time, numerous religious people challenged the science of evolution during Dawkins's lectures, and in print. In response, Dawkins wrote "The Blind Watchmaker" in 1986, arguing against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a "blind" watchmaker, in that reproduction, mutation, and selection are unguided by any sentient designer.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: The debate intensified, and Dawkins's atheist stances grew to attract significant controversy and antagonism. In 2006, Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and published "The God Delusion", contending that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion. In 2011 he co-founded The Clergy Project.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has won academic and writing awards, and he makes television, radio, and internet appearances, predominantly discussing his books, atheism, and his ideas and opinions as a public intellectual.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Clinton Richard Dawkins was born on 26 March 1941 in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya during British colonial rule. Dawkins later dropped Clinton from his name by deed poll. He is the son of Jean Mary Vyvyan ("née" Ladner; 1916–2019) and Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), an agricultural civil servant in the British Colonial Service in Nyasaland (present-day Malawi), of an Oxfordshire landed gentry family. His father was called up into the King's African Rifles during the Second World War and returned to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited a country estate, Over Norton Park in Oxfordshire, which he farmed commercially. Dawkins lives in Oxford, England. He has a younger sister, Sarah.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: His parents were interested in natural sciences, and they answered Dawkins's questions in scientific terms. Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". He embraced Christianity until halfway through his teenage years, at which point he concluded that the theory of evolution alone was a better explanation for life's complexity, and ceased believing in a god. Dawkins states: "The main residual reason why I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life and feeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realised that Darwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under the argument of design. And that left me with nothing." This understanding of atheism combined with his western cultural background, informs Dawkins as he describes himself in several interviews as a "cultural Christian" and a "cultural Anglican".


title: Richard Dawkins

text: On his return to England from Nyasaland in 1949, at the age of eight, Dawkins joined Chafyn Grove School, in Wiltshire, and after that from 1954 to 1959 attended Oundle School in Northamptonshire, an English public school with a Church of England ethos, where he was in Laundimer House. While at Oundle, Dawkins read Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not a Christian" for the first time. He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1962; while there, he was tutored by Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen. He graduated with upper-class second honours.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins continued as a research student under Tinbergen's supervision, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy degree by 1966, and remained a research assistant for another year. Tinbergen was a pioneer in the study of animal behaviour, particularly in the areas of instinct, learning, and choice; Dawkins's research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making. He was awarded a DSc by Oxford in 1989.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: From 1967 to 1969, Dawkins was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities. He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 as a lecturer. In 1990, he became a reader in zoology. In 1995, he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field", and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins. He held that professorship from 1995 until 2008.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Since 1970, he has been a fellow of New College, Oxford, and he is now an emeritus fellow. He has delivered many lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), the first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), the Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), the T. H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), the Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), the Tinbergen Lecture (2004), and the Tanner Lectures (2003). In 1991, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children on "Growing Up in the Universe". He also has edited several journals, and has acted as an editorial advisor to the "Encarta Encyclopedia" and the "Encyclopedia of Evolution". He is listed as a senior editor and a columnist of the Council for Secular Humanism's "Free Inquiry" magazine, and has been a member of the editorial board of "Skeptic" magazine since its foundation.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards, and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2004, Balliol College, Oxford, instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities". In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in 'anti-scientific' fairytales."


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In 2011, Dawkins joined the professoriate of the New College of the Humanities, a private university in London established by A. C. Grayling, which opened in September 2012.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene as the principal unit of selection in evolution; this view is most clearly set out in two of his books:


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin) and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Altruism appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own chances for survival, or "fitness". Previously, many had interpreted altruism as an aspect of group selection, suggesting that individuals are doing what is best for the survival of the population or species as a whole. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton used gene-frequency analysis in his inclusive fitness theory to show how hereditary altruistic traits can evolve if there is sufficient genetic similarity between actors and recipients of such altruism, including close relatives. Hamilton's inclusive fitness has since been successfully applied to a wide range of organisms, including humans. Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation. Dawkins popularised these ideas in "The Selfish Gene", and developed them in his own work.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In June 2012, Dawkins was highly critical of fellow biologist E. O. Wilson's 2012 book "The Social Conquest of Earth" as misunderstanding Hamilton's theory of kin selection. Dawkins has also been strongly critical of the Gaia hypothesis of the independent scientist James Lovelock.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Critics of Dawkins's biological approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of "selection" (a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce) is misleading. The gene could be better described, they say, as a unit of "evolution" (the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population). In "The Selfish Gene", Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams's definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency". Another common objection is that a gene cannot survive alone, but must cooperate with other genes to build an individual, and therefore a gene cannot be an independent "unit". In "The Extended Phenotype", Dawkins suggests that from an individual gene's viewpoint, all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Advocates for higher levels of selection (such as Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, and Elliott Sober) suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning "The Selfish Gene", has criticised gene selection, memetics, and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist; she has suggested that the popularity of Dawkins's work is due to factors in the Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades. Besides, other, more recent views and analysis on his popular science works also exist.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (what has been called 'The Darwin Wars'), one faction is often named after Dawkins, while the other faction is named after the American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of the pertinent ideas. In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical. A typical example of Dawkins's position is his scathing review of "Not in Our Genes" by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin, and Richard C. Lewontin. Two other thinkers who are often considered to be allied with Dawkins on the subject are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology. Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book "A Devil's Chaplain" posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: When asked if Darwinism informs his everyday apprehension of life, Dawkins says, "In one way it does. My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. That's never far from my thoughts, that sense of amazement. On the other hand, I certainly don't allow Darwinism to influence my feelings about human social life," implying that he feels that individual human beings can opt out of the survival machine of Darwinism since they are freed by the consciousness of self.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In his book "The Selfish Gene", Dawkins coined the word "meme" (the behavioural equivalent of a gene) as a way to encourage readers to think about how Darwinian principles might be extended beyond the realm of genes. It was intended as an extension of his "replicators" argument, but it took on a life of its own in the hands of other authors, such as Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. These popularisations then led to the emergence of memetics, a field from which Dawkins has distanced himself.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins's "meme" refers to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or set of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through communication and contact with humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Because memes are not always copied perfectly, they might become refined, combined, or otherwise modified with other ideas; this results in new memes, which may themselves prove more or less efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution based on memes, a notion that is analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Although Dawkins invented the term "meme", he has not claimed that the idea was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon. Semon regarded "mneme" as the collective set of neural memory traces (conscious or subconscious) that were inherited, although such view would be considered as Lamarckian by modern biologists. Laurent also found the use of the term "mneme" in Maurice Maeterlinck's "The Life of the White Ant" (1926), and Maeterlinck himself stated that he obtained the phrase from Semon's work. In his own work, Maeterlinck tried to explain memory in termites and ants by claiming that neural memory traces were added "upon the individual mneme". Nonetheless, James Gleick describes Dawkins's concept of the meme as "his most famous memorable invention, far more influential than his selfish genes or his later proselytising against religiosity".


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In 2006, Dawkins founded the "Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science" ("RDFRS"), a non-profit organisation. RDFRS financed research on the psychology of belief and religion, financed scientific education programs and materials, and publicised and supported charitable organisations that are secular in nature. In January 2016, it was announced that the foundation was merging with the Center for Inquiry, with Dawkins becoming a member of the new organization's board of directors.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins was confirmed into the Church of England at the age of 13, but began to grow sceptical of the beliefs. He said that his understanding of science and evolutionary processes led him to question how adults in positions of leadership in a civilised world could still be so uneducated in biology, and is puzzled by how belief in God could remain among individuals who are sophisticated in science. Dawkins notes that some physicists use 'God' as a metaphor for the general awe-inspiring mysteries of the universe, which causes confusion and misunderstanding among people who incorrectly think they are talking about a mystical being who forgives sins, transubstantiates wine, or makes people live after they die.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) and suggests that the existence of God should be treated as a scientific hypothesis like any other. Dawkins became a prominent critic of religion and has stated his opposition to religion as twofold: religion is both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence. He considers faith—belief that is not based on evidence—as "one of the world's great evils".


title: Richard Dawkins

text: On his spectrum of theistic probability, which has seven levels between 1 (100% certainty that a God or gods exist) and 7 (100% certainty that a God or gods do not exist), Dawkins has said he is a 6.9, which represents a "de facto atheist" who thinks "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there." When asked about his slight uncertainty, Dawkins quips, "I am agnostic to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden." In May 2014, at the Hay Festival in Wales, Dawkins explained that while he does not believe in the supernatural elements of the Christian faith, he still has nostalgia for the ceremonial side of religion. In addition to beliefs in deities, Dawkins has criticized religious beliefs as irrational, such as that Jesus turned water into wine, that an embryo starts as a blob, that magic underwear will protect you, that Jesus was resurrected, that semen comes from the spine, that Jesus walked on water, that the sun sets in a marsh, that the Garden of Eden existed in Adam-ondi-Ahman, Missouri, that Jesus' mother was a virgin, that Muhammad split the moon, and that Lazarus was raised from the dead.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has risen to prominence in public debates concerning science and religion since the publication of his most popular book, "The God Delusion", in 2006, which became an international bestseller. As of 2015, more than three million copies have been sold and the book has been translated into over 30 languages. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist and has also been identified with the rise of New Atheism. In the book, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—"a fixed false belief". In his February 2002 TED talk entitled "Militant atheism", Dawkins urged all atheists to openly state their position and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. On 30 September 2007, Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett met at Hitchens's residence for a private, unmoderated discussion that lasted two hours. The event was videotaped and entitled "The Four Horsemen".


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination. These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term "bright" as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a naturalistic worldview. He has given support to the idea of a free-thinking school, which would not "indoctrinate children" but would instead teach children to ask for evidence and be skeptical, critical, and open-minded. Such a school, says Dawkins, should "teach comparative religion, and teach it properly without any bias towards particular religions, and including historically important but dead religions, such as those of ancient Greece and the Norse gods, if only because these, like the Abrahamic scriptures, are important for understanding English literature and European history." Inspired by the consciousness-raising successes of feminists in arousing widespread embarrassment at the routine use of "he" instead of "she", Dawkins similarly suggests that phrases such as "Catholic child" and "Muslim child" should be considered as socially absurd as, for instance, "Marxist child", as he believes that children should not be classified based on the ideological or religious beliefs of their parents.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: While some critics, such as writer Christopher Hitchens, psychologist Steven Pinker and Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto, James D. Watson, and Steven Weinberg have defended Dawkins's stance on religion and praised his work, others, including Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, astrophysicist Martin Rees, philosopher of science Michael Ruse, literary critic Terry Eagleton, philosopher Roger Scruton, academic and social critic Camille Paglia, atheist philosopher Daniel Came and theologian Alister McGrath, have criticised Dawkins on various grounds, including the assertion that his work simply serves as an atheist counterpart to religious fundamentalism rather than a productive critique of it, and that he has fundamentally misapprehended the foundations of the theological positions he claims to refute. Rees and Higgs, in particular, have both rejected Dawkins's confrontational stance toward religion as narrow and "embarrassing", with Higgs going as far as to equate Dawkins with the religious fundamentalists he criticises. Atheist philosopher John Gray has denounced Dawkins as an "anti-religious missionary", whose assertions are "in no sense novel or original," suggesting that "transfixed in wonderment at the workings of his own mind, Dawkins misses much that is of importance in human beings." Gray has also criticised Dawkins's perceived allegiance to Darwin, stating that if "science, for Darwin, was a method of inquiry that enabled him to edge tentatively and humbly toward the truth, for Dawkins, science is an unquestioned view of the world." A 2016 study found that many British scientists held an unfavourable view of Dawkins and his attitude towards religion.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In response to his critics, Dawkins maintains that theologians are no better than scientists in addressing deep cosmological questions and that he is not a fundamentalist, as he is willing to change his mind in the face of new evidence.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has faced backlash over some of his public comments about Islam. In 2013, Dawkins tweeted that "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though." In 2016, Dawkins' invitation to speak at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism was withdrawn over his sharing of what was characterized as a "highly offensive video" satirically showing cartoon feminist and Islamist characters singing about the things they hold in common. In issuing the tweet, Dawkins stated that it "Obviously doesn’t apply to vast majority of feminists, among whom I count myself. But the minority are pernicious."


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism, a religious belief that humanity, life, and the universe were created by a deity without recourse to evolution. He has described the young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood". His 1986 book, "The Blind Watchmaker", contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argues against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the eighteenth-century English theologian William Paley via his book "Natural Theology", in which Paley argues that just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things—with their far greater complexity—be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, unguided by any designer, nonintelligent, "blind" watchmaker.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In 1986, Dawkins and biologist John Maynard Smith participated in an Oxford Union debate against A. E. Wilder-Smith (a Young Earth creationist) and Edgar Andrews (president of the Biblical Creation Society). In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of "engaging" with them at all". He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public." In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know." When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word "theory", Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English."


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one". He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler", a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and whose work Dawkins has described as an "educational scandal". He plans to subsidise schools through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science with the delivery of books, DVDs, and pamphlets that counteract their work.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and a supporter of various atheist, secular, and humanist organisations, including Humanists UK and the Brights movement. Dawkins suggests that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, stressing that atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. He hopes that the more atheists identify themselves, the more the public will become aware of just how many people are nonbelievers, thereby reducing the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority. Inspired by the gay rights movement, he endorsed the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly. He supported a UK atheist advertising initiative, the Atheist Bus Campaign in 2008 and 2009, which aimed to raise funds to place atheist advertisements on buses in the London area.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the human population and about the matter of overpopulation. In "The Selfish Gene", he briefly mentions population growth, giving the example of Latin America, whose population, at the time the book was written, was doubling every 40 years. He is critical of Roman Catholic attitudes to family planning and population control, stating that leaders who forbid contraception and "express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation" will get just such a method in the form of starvation.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: As a supporter of the Great Ape Project—a movement to extend certain moral and legal rights to all great apes—Dawkins contributed the article 'Gaps in the Mind' to the "Great Ape Project" book edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer. In this essay, he criticises contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous, speciesist imperative".


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and blogs on contemporary political questions and is a frequent contributor to the online science and culture digest "3 Quarks Daily". His opinions include opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the British nuclear deterrent, the actions of then-US President George W. Bush, and the ethics of designer babies. Several such articles were included in "A Devil's Chaplain", an anthology of writings about science, religion, and politics. He is also a supporter of Republic's campaign to replace the British monarchy with a democratically elected president. Dawkins has described himself as a Labour voter in the 1970s and voter for the Liberal Democrats since the party's creation. In 2009, he spoke at the party's conference in opposition to blasphemy laws, alternative medicine, and faith schools. In the UK general election of 2010, Dawkins officially endorsed the Liberal Democrats, in support of their campaign for electoral reform and for their "refusal to pander to 'faith. In the run up to the 2017 general election, Dawkins once again endorsed the Liberal Democrats and urged voters to join the party.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In April 2021, Dawkins said on Twitter that "Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss." After receiving criticism for this tweet, Dawkins responded by saying that "I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic "Discuss" question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue."


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has voiced his support for the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation that campaigns for democratic reform in the United Nations, and the creation of a more accountable international political system.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In 1998, in a book review published in "Nature", Dawkins expressed his appreciation for two books connected with the Sokal affair, "" by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt and "Intellectual Impostures" by Sokal and Jean Bricmont. These books are famous for their criticism of postmodernism in U.S. universities (namely in the departments of literary studies, anthropology, and other cultural studies).


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Echoing many critics, Dawkins holds that postmodernism uses obscurantist language to hide its lack of meaningful content. As an example he quotes the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari: "We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis." This is explained, Dawkins maintains, by certain intellectuals' academic ambitions. Figures like Guattari or Lacan, according to Dawkins, have nothing to say but want to reap the benefits of reputation and fame that derive from a successful academic career: "Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content."


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In his role as professor for public understanding of science, Dawkins has been a critic of pseudoscience and alternative medicine. His 1998 book "Unweaving the Rainbow" considers John Keats's accusation that by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton diminished its beauty; Dawkins argues for the opposite conclusion. He suggests that deep space, the billions of years of life's evolution, and the microscopic workings of biology and heredity contain more beauty and wonder than do "myths" and "pseudoscience". For John Diamond's posthumously published "Snake Oil", a book devoted to debunking alternative medicine, Dawkins wrote a foreword in which he asserts that alternative medicine is harmful, if only because it distracts patients from more successful conventional treatments and gives people false hopes. Dawkins states that "There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work." In his 2007 Channel 4 TV film "The Enemies of Reason", Dawkins concluded that Britain is gripped by "an epidemic of superstitious thinking".


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Continuing a long-standing partnership with Channel 4, Dawkins participated in a five-part television series, "Genius of Britain", along with fellow scientists Stephen Hawking, James Dyson, Paul Nurse, and Jim Al-Khalili. The series was first broadcast in June 2010, and focuses on major, British, scientific achievements throughout history.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: He holds honorary doctorates in science from the University of Huddersfield, University of Westminster, Durham University, the University of Hull, the University of Antwerp, the University of Oslo, the University of Aberdeen, Open University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the University of Valencia. He also holds honorary doctorates of letters from the University of St Andrews and the Australian National University (HonLittD, 1996), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2001. He is one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In 1987, Dawkins received a Royal Society of Literature award and a "Los Angeles Times" Literary Prize for his book "The Blind Watchmaker". In the same year, he received a Sci. Tech Prize for Best Television Documentary Science Programme of the Year for his work on the BBC's "Horizon" episode "The Blind Watchmaker".


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In 1996, the American Humanist Association gave him their Humanist of the Year Award, but the award was withdrawn in 2021, with the statement that he "demean[ed] marginalized groups", including transgender people, using "the guise of scientific discourse".


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Other awards include the Zoological Society of London's Silver Medal (1989), the Finlay Innovation Award (1990), the Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize (1994), the fifth International Cosmos Prize (1997), the Kistler Prize (2001), the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (2001), the 2001 and 2012 Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (2002), the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (2006), and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (2009). He was awarded the Deschner Award, named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSICOP) has awarded Dawkins their highest award "In Praise of Reason" (1992).


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins topped "Prospect" magazine's 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up. He was shortlisted as a candidate in their 2008 follow-up poll. In a poll held by "Prospect" in 2013, Dawkins was voted the world's top thinker based on 65 names chosen by a largely US and UK-based expert panel.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In 2005, the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded him its Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his "concise and accessible presentation of scientific knowledge". He won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2006, as well as the Galaxy British Book Awards's Author of the Year Award for 2007. In the same year, he was listed by "Time" magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and was ranked 20th in "The Daily Telegraph" 2007 list of 100 greatest living geniuses.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done the most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year; it is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins's own efforts. In February 2010, Dawkins was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: In 2012, a Sri Lankan team of ichthyologists headed by Rohan Pethiyagoda named a new genus of freshwater fish, "Dawkinsia", in Dawkins's honor. (Members of this genus were formerly members of the genus "Puntius").


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has been married three times and has a daughter. On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married ethologist Marian Stamp in the Protestant church in Annestown, County Waterford, Ireland; they divorced in 1984. On 1 June 1984, he married Eve Barham (1951–1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford). Dawkins and Barham divorced. In 1992, he married actress Lalla Ward in Kensington and Chelsea, London. Dawkins met her through their mutual friend Douglas Adams, who had worked with her on the BBC's "Doctor Who". Dawkins and Ward separated in 2016 and they later described the separation as "entirely amicable". He identifies as an atheist who is a "cultural Anglican," associated with the Church of England, and a "secular Christian".


title: Richard Dawkins

text: On 6 February 2016, Dawkins suffered a minor haemorrhagic stroke while at home. Dawkins reported later that same year that he had almost completely recovered.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: Dawkins has made many television appearances on news shows providing his political opinions and especially his views as an atheist. He has been interviewed on the radio, often as part of his book tours. He has debated many religious figures. He has made many university speaking appearances, again often in coordination with his book tours. As of 2016, he has over 60 credits in the Internet Movie Database where he appeared as himself.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: a. W. D. Hamilton influenced Dawkins and the influence can be seen throughout Dawkins's book "The Selfish Gene". They became friends at Oxford and following Hamilton's death in 2000, Dawkins wrote his obituary and organised a secular memorial service.


title: Richard Dawkins

text: b. The debate ended with the motion "That the doctrine of creation is more valid than the theory of evolution" being defeated by 198 votes to 115.


title: West Memphis Three

text: The West Memphis Three are three men convicted as teenagers in 1994 of the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, United States. Damien Echols was sentenced to death, Jessie Misskelley Jr. to life imprisonment plus two 20-year sentences, and Jason Baldwin to life imprisonment. During the trial, the prosecution asserted that the juveniles killed the children as part of a Satanic ritual.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Due to the dubious nature of the evidence as well as the suspected presence of emotional bias in court, the case generated widespread controversy and was the subject of several documentaries. Celebrities and musicians held fundraisers to support efforts to free the men.


title: West Memphis Three

text: In July 2007, new forensic evidence was presented. A report jointly issued by the state and the defense team stated, "Although most of the genetic material recovered from the scene was attributable to the victims of the offenses, some of it cannot be attributed to either the victims or the defendants."


title: West Memphis Three

text: Following a 2010 decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court regarding newly produced DNA evidence and potential juror misconduct, the West Memphis Three negotiated a plea bargain with prosecutors. On August 19, 2011, they entered Alford pleas, which allowed them to assert their innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict them. Judge David Laser accepted the pleas and sentenced the three to time served. They were released with 10-year suspended sentences, having served 18 years.


title: West Memphis Three

text: On May 5, 1993, three eight-year-old boys (Steve Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers) were reported missing in West Memphis, Arkansas. The first report to the police was made by Byers' adoptive father, John Mark Byers, around 7:00 pm. The boys were allegedly last seen together by three neighbors, who in affidavits told of seeing them playing together around 6:30 pm the evening they disappeared and seeing Terry Hobbs, Steve Branch's stepfather, calling them to come home. Initial police searches made that night were limited. Friends and neighbors also conducted a search that night, which included a cursory visit to the location where the bodies were later found.


title: West Memphis Three

text: A more thorough police search for the children began around 8:00 am on May 6, led by the Crittenden County Search and Rescue personnel. Searchers canvassed all of West Memphis but focused primarily on Robin Hood Hills, where the boys were reported last seen. Despite a shoulder-to-shoulder search of Robin Hood Hills by a human chain, searchers found no sign of the missing boys.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Around 1:45 pm, juvenile Parole Officer Steve Jones spotted a boy's black shoe floating in a muddy creek that led to a major drainage canal in Robin Hood Hills. A subsequent search of the ditch revealed the bodies of three boys. They had been stripped naked and were hogtied with their own shoelaces, their right ankles tied to their right wrists behind their backs, the same with their left arms and legs. Their clothing was found in the creek, some of it twisted around sticks that had been thrust into the muddy ditch bed. The clothing was mostly turned inside-out; two pairs of the boys' underwear were never recovered. Christopher Byers had lacerations to various parts of his body and mutilation of his scrotum and penis.


title: West Memphis Three

text: The autopsies by forensic pathologist Frank J. Peretti indicated that Byers died of "multiple injuries", while Moore and Branch died of "multiple injuries with drowning".


title: West Memphis Three

text: Police initially suspected the boys had been raped; however, later expert testimony disputed this finding. Trace amounts of sperm DNA were found on a pair of pants recovered from the scene. Prosecution experts claim Byers' wounds were the results of a knife attack and that he had been purposely castrated by the murderer; defense experts claim the injuries were most likely the result of post-mortem animal predation. Police believed the boys were assaulted and killed at the location where they were found; critics argued that the assault, at least, was unlikely to have occurred at the creek.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Byers was the only victim with drugs in his system; he was prescribed Ritalin (methylphenidate) in January 1993 as part of treatment of an attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The initial autopsy report describes the drug as Carbamazepine and the dosage at a sub-therapeutic level. His father said Byers may not have taken his prescription on May 5, 1993.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Steve Edward Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore were all second graders at Weaver Elementary School. Each had achieved the rank of "Wolf" in the local Cub Scout pack and were best friends.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Steve Branch was the son of Steven and Pamela Branch, who divorced when he was an infant. His mother was awarded custody and later married Terry Hobbs. Branch was eight years old, 4 ft. 2 tall, weighed 65 lbs, and had blond hair. He was last seen wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt, and riding a black and red bicycle. He was an honor student. He lived with his mother, Pamela Hobbs, his stepfather, Terry Hobbs, and a four-year-old half-sister, Amanda. Steve Edward Branch is buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Steele, Missouri.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Christopher Byers was born to Melissa DeFir and Ricky Murray. His parents divorced when he was four years old & shortly afterward his mother married John Mark Byers, who adopted the boy. Byers was eight years old, 4 ft. tall, weighed 52 lbs, and had light brown hair. He was last seen wearing blue jeans, dark shoes, and a white long-sleeved shirt. He lived with his mother, Sharon Melissa Byers, his adoptive father, John Mark Byers, and his stepbrother, Shawn Ryan Clark, aged 13. According to his mother, Christopher was a typical eight-year-old. "He still believed in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus". Christopher Mark Byers is buried in Forest Hill Cemetery East in Memphis, Tennessee.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Michael Moore was the son of Todd and Dana Moore. He was eight years old, 4 ft. 2 tall, weighed 55 lbs, and had brown hair. He was last seen wearing blue pants, a blue Boy Scouts of America shirt, and an orange and blue Boy Scout hat, and riding a light green bicycle. Moore enjoyed wearing his scout uniform even when he was not at meetings. He was considered the leader of the three. He lived with his parents and his nine-year-old sister, Dawn. James Michael Moore is buried in Crittenden Memorial Park Cemetery in Marion, Arkansas.


title: West Memphis Three

text: In 1994, a memorial was erected for the three murder victims. The memorial is located in the playground of Weaver Elementary School in West Memphis, where all three victims were second graders at the time of the crime. In May 2013, for the 20th anniversary of the slayings, Weaver Elementary School principal Sheila Grissom raised funds to refurbish the memorial.


title: West Memphis Three

text: At the time of their arrests, Jessie Misskelley, Jr. was 17 years old, Jason Baldwin was 16 years old, and Damien Echols was 18 years old.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Baldwin and Echols had been previously arrested for vandalism and shoplifting respectively, and Misskelley had a reputation for his temper and for engaging in fistfights with other teenagers at school. Misskelley and Echols had dropped out of high school; however, Baldwin earned high grades and demonstrated a talent for drawing and sketching, and was encouraged by one of his teachers to study graphic design in college. Echols and Baldwin were close friends, and bonded over their similar tastes in music and fiction, and over their shared distaste for the prevailing cultural climate of West Memphis, situated in the Bible Belt. Baldwin and Echols were acquainted with Misskelley from school, but were not close friends with him.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Echols' family was poor, received frequent visits from social workers and he rarely attended school. He and a girlfriend had run off and later broken into a trailer during a rain storm; they were arrested, though only Echols was charged with burglary.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Echols spent several months in a mental institution in Arkansas and afterward received "full disability" status from the Social Security Administration. During Echols' trial, Dr. George W. Woods testified (for the defense) that Echols suffered from:


title: West Memphis Three

text: serious mental illness characterized by grandiose and persecutory delusions, auditory and visual hallucinations, disordered thought processes, substantial lack of insight, and chronic, incapacitating mood swings.


title: West Memphis Three

text: At his death penalty sentencing hearing, Echols' psychologist reported that months before the murders, Echols had claimed that he obtained super powers by drinking human blood. At the time of his arrest, Echols was working part-time with a roofing company and expecting a child with his girlfriend, Domini Teer.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Early in the investigation, the WMPD briefly regarded two West Memphis teenagers as suspects. Chris Morgan and Brian Holland, both with drug offense histories, had abruptly departed for Oceanside, California, four days after the bodies were discovered. Morgan was presumed to be at least casually familiar with all three murdered boys, having previously driven an ice cream truck route in their neighborhood.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Arrested in Oceanside on May 17, 1993, Morgan and Holland both took polygraph exams administered by California police. Examiners reported that both men's charts indicated deception when they denied involvement in the murders. During subsequent questioning, Morgan claimed a long history of drug and alcohol use, along with blackouts and memory lapses. He claimed that he "might have" killed the victims but quickly recanted this part of his statement.


title: West Memphis Three

text: California police sent blood and urine samples from Morgan and Holland to the WMPD, but there is no indication WMPD investigated Morgan or Holland as suspects following their arrest in California. The relevance of Morgan's recanted statement would later be debated in trial, but it was eventually barred from admission as evidence.


title: West Memphis Three

text: The citing of a black male as a possible alternate suspect was implied during the beginning of the Misskelley trial. According to local West Memphis police officers, on the evening of May 5, 1993, at 8:42 pm, workers in the Bojangles' restaurant located about a mile from the crime scene in Robin Hood Hills reported seeing a black male who seemed "mentally disoriented" inside the restaurant's ladies' room. The man was bleeding and had brushed against the restroom walls. Officer Regina Meeks responded to the call, taking the restaurant manager's report through the eatery's drive-through window. By then, the man had left, and police did not enter the restroom on that date.


title: West Memphis Three

text: The day after the victims' bodies were found, Bojangles' manager Marty King, thinking there was a possible connection to the bleeding man found in the bathroom, reported the incident to police officers who then inspected the ladies' room. The man reportedly wore a "blue cast type brace on his arm that had white Velcro on it", which would have made it difficult to tie up and murder three young boys. King gave the officers a pair of sunglasses he thought the man had left behind, and the detectives took some blood samples from the walls and tiles of the restroom. Police detective Bryn Ridge testified that he later lost those blood scrapings. A hair identified as belonging to a black male was later recovered from a sheet wrapped around one of the victims.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Police officers James Sudbury and Steve Jones felt that the crime had "cult" overtones, and that Damien Echols might be a suspect because he had an interest in occultism, and Jones felt Echols was capable of murdering children. The police interviewed Echols on May 7, two days after the bodies were discovered. During a polygraph examination, he denied any involvement. The polygraph examiner claimed that Echols' chart indicated deception. On May 9, during a formal interview by Detective Bryn Ridge, Echols mentioned that one of the victims had wounds to the genitals; law enforcement viewed this knowledge as incriminating.


title: West Memphis Three

text: After a month had passed with little progress in the case, police continued to focus their investigation upon Echols, interrogating him more frequently than any other person. Nonetheless, they claimed he was not regarded as a direct suspect but a source of information.


title: West Memphis Three

text: On June 3, the police interrogated Jessie Misskelley, Jr. Despite his reported IQ of 72 (categorizing him as borderline intellectual functioning) and his status as a minor, Miskelley was questioned alone; his parents were not present during the interrogation. Misskelley's father gave permission for Misskelley to go with police but did not explicitly give permission for his son to be questioned or interrogated. Misskelley was questioned for roughly 12 hours. Only two segments, totaling 46 minutes, were recorded. Misskelley quickly recanted his confession, citing intimidation, coercion, fatigue, and veiled threats from police. Misskelley specifically said he was "scared of the police" during this confession.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Though he was informed of his Miranda rights, Misskelley later claimed he did not fully understand them. In 1996, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that Misskelley's confession was voluntary and that he did, in fact, understand the Miranda warning and its consequences. Portions of Misskelley's statements to the police were leaked to the press and reported on the front page of the Memphis "Commercial Appeal" before any of the trials began.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Shortly after Misskelley's first confession, police arrested Echols and his close friend Baldwin. Eight months after his original confession, on February 17, 1994, Misskelley made another statement to police. His lawyer, Dan Stidham, remained in the room and continually advised Misskelley not to say anything. Misskelley ignored this advice and went on to detail how the boys were abused and murdered. Stidham, who was later elected to a municipal judgeship, has written a detailed critique of what he asserts are major police errors and misconceptions during their investigation. Stidham made similar comments during a radio show interview in May 2010.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Vicki Hutcheson, a new resident of West Memphis, would play an important role in the investigation, though she would later recant her testimony, claiming her statements were fabricated due in part to coercion from police.


title: West Memphis Three

text: On May 6, 1993 (before the victims were found later the same day), Hutcheson took a polygraph exam by Detective Don Bray at the Marion Police Department, to determine whether or not she had stolen money from her West Memphis employer. Hutcheson's young son, Aaron, was also present, and proved such a distraction that Bray was unable to administer the polygraph. Aaron, a playmate of the murdered boys', mentioned to Bray that the boys had been killed at "the playhouse." When the bodies proved to have been discovered near where Aaron indicated, Bray asked Aaron for further details, and Aaron claimed that he had witnessed the murders committed by Satanists who spoke Spanish. Aaron's further statements were wildly inconsistent, and he was unable to identify Baldwin, Echols, or Misskelley from photo line-ups, and there was no "playhouse" at the location Aaron indicated. A police officer leaked portions of Aaron's statements to the press contributing to the growing belief that the murders were part of a Satanic rite.


title: West Memphis Three

text: On or about June 1, 1993, Hutcheson agreed to police suggestions to place hidden microphones in her home during an encounter with Echols. Misskelley agreed to introduce Hutcheson to Echols. During their conversation, Hutcheson reported that Echols made no incriminating statements. Police said the recording was "inaudible", but Hutcheson claimed the recording was audible. On June 2, 1993, Hutcheson told police that about two weeks after the murders were committed, she, Echols, and Misskelley attended a Wiccan meeting in Turrell, Arkansas. Hutcheson claimed that, at the Wiccan meeting, a drunken Echols openly bragged about killing the three boys. Misskelley was first questioned on June 3, 1993, a day after Hutcheson's purported confession. Hutcheson was unable to recall the Wiccan meeting location and did not name any other participants in the purported meeting. Hutcheson was never charged with theft. She claimed she had implicated Echols and Misskelley to avoid facing criminal charges, and to obtain a reward for the discovery of the murderers.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Misskelley was tried separately, and Echols and Baldwin were tried together in 1994. Under the ""Bruton" rule", Misskelley's confession could not be admitted against his co-defendants; thus he was tried separately. All three defendants pleaded not guilty.


title: West Memphis Three

text: During Misskelley's trial, Richard Ofshe, an expert on false confessions and police coercion, and Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, testified that the brief recording of Misskelley's interrogation was a "classic example" of police coercion. Critics have also stated that Misskelley's various "confessions" were in many respects inconsistent with each other, as well as with the particulars of the crime scene and murder victims, including (for example) an "admission" that Misskelley watched Damien rape one of the boys. Police had initially suspected that the victims had been raped because their anuses were dilated. However, there was no forensic evidence indicating that the murdered boys had been raped. Dilation of the anus is a normal post-mortem condition.


title: West Memphis Three

text: On February 5, 1994, Misskelley was convicted by a jury of one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder. The court sentenced him to life plus 40 years in prison. His conviction was appealed, but the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the conviction.


title: West Memphis Three

text: Three weeks later, Echols and Baldwin went on trial. The prosecution accused the three young men of committing a Satanic murder. The prosecution called Dale W. Griffis, a graduate of the unaccredited Columbia Pacific University, as an expert in the occult to testify the murders were a Satanic ritual. On March 19, 1994, Echols and Baldwin were found guilty on three counts of murder. The court sentenced Echols to death and Baldwin to life in prison.


title: West Memphis Three

text: At trial, the defense team argued that news articles from the time could have been the source for Echols' knowledge about the genital mutilation, and Echols said his knowledge was limited to what was "on TV".


title: West Memphis Three

text: The prosecution claimed that Echols' knowledge was nonetheless too close to the facts, since there was no public reporting of drowning or that one victim had been mutilated more than the others. Echols testified that Detective Ridge's description of their earlier conversation (which was not recorded) regarding those particular details was inaccurate (and indeed that some other claims by Ridge were "lies"). Mara Leveritt, an investigative journalist and the author of "Devil's Knot", argues that Echols' information may have come from police leaks, such as Detective Gitchell's comments to Mark Byers, that circulated amongst the local public. The defense team objected when the prosecution attempted to question Echols about his past violent behaviors, but the defense objections were overruled.