Episode 18: Covenant of the Divine Light

<p>In this episode of Crooked Tree, hosts Kristin Rich and Paul Day turn their focus to Murray Farris, an 18-year-old West Memphis resident whose name appears on Jerry Driver’s list of possible occult-linked individuals. On the evening of May 9, 1993—hours after Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin were questioned—Farris walks into the West Memphis Police Department.<br /><br />What follows is a revealing interview. Farris describes his involvement in a small group identified as the Covenant of the Divine Light, a personal blend of Wiccan practice, biblical study, and protective symbolism including a pentagram medallion bearing the Tetragrammaton. He names associates, downplays any sinister intent, and, almost as an afterthought, offers a detailed description of a heavyset, blonde, bespectacled man in his late 30s known as “Lucifer”—leader of an “evil cult,” driver of a cream-colored van, and resident near Earle, Arkansas.<br /><br />The next day brings more: a tip from a local Baptist youth counselor confirming that Farris and Chris Littrell were at a church youth night the evening the three boys vanished, followed by a lengthy fax from NYPD cult expert Detective Marcos Quinones outlining classic signs of occult crime scenes—missing organs, nine-foot circles, candle wax, inverted crosses, pentagrams, and more.<br /><br />Kristin and Paul examine how this information lands with investigators already primed by the era’s Satanic Panic, how it intersects with Damien Echols’s circle, and why the police’s growing interest in ritualistic motives begins to take sharper shape—even as the physical evidence at the crime scene fails to match many of the classic markers Quinones describes.<br /><br />A pivotal look at the investigation’s early pivot toward the occult, the people drawn into its orbit, and the cultural climate that shaped what detectives chose to see.</p>