Johnny Depp, wrongly convicted Damien Echols share tattoos

This image released by Starpix shows Damien Echols, one of the West Memphis Three, left, and actor Johnny Depp at a press conference for the film “West of Memphis” at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Saturday, Sept. 8, 2012. AP/Starpix, Marion Curtis

TORONTO – Actor Johnny Depp said Saturday he and Damien Echols, one of three men who claimed to have been wrongly convicted for 1993 satanic ritual murders, got tattoos to mark their special bond after Echols was released from prison last year.

“There was an instant connection, some brotherly kind of love there,” Depp told a press conference at the world premiere in Toronto of Amy Berg’s film “West of Memphis,” which chronicles the miscarriage of justice that sent three purportedly innocent men to jail.

“It was instant,” he said. “To finally see Damien arrive at my house, on my doorstep, was moving and it was a celebration. It was beautiful. We had Tater Tots and tacos. And things took their natural course and we ended up at the tattoo parlor.”

Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin were tried and convicted in 1994 of the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Prosecutors alleged the children were killed as part of a satanic ritual.

But new forensic evidence presented in 2011 led them to reach a deal with prosecutors which allowed them to assert their innocence while acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them.

They were released after having spent 18 years in prison.

A number of documentaries have been based on the so-called “West Memphis 3” case, and several celebrities have held fundraisers in the belief that they are innocent.