The team reinvestigate the horrific 1994 murder of three young boys when one of the two men who was convicted of the crime committed suicide in prison.
Tropes:
- Acquitted Too Late: Only one of the two wrongfully convicted defendants lives to see the day the real culprit, the father of one of the victims, is caught.
- Attention Whore: Heidi, who lied about having cancer to get attention, then helps spread the idea that Dillon and Teddy committed the triple murder. Dylan even uses the expression "attention whore" to describe her.
- Bittersweet Ending: Henry is arrested for the murders while Dylan and Teddy are exonerated. However, Mrs. Raymes has to live with the fact that she knew her husband killed the children for years but did nothing, and is left to grieve her son all over again. Also, Teddy is still dead, and his mother and Dylan have no one now but each other.
- Break the Cutie: The two misfit teens were wrongly convicted and jailed for the murders, and Teddy, the quieter of the two, decided to take his own life on his 30th birthday.
- Crazy Homeless People: Job is a homeless man who saw Dylan standing over the bodies of the three boys. He thought Dylan was Satan.
- Distant Finale: Dylan is released from prison some time later and meets Teddy's mom, Myrna.
- The Ghost: Present day Teddy is never seen. He is only remembered as a teen.
- Hard Truth Aesop: The graffiti message first states "Evil triumphs" but Dylan lets the investigation team know it's incomplete, the finished message is "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing".
- In addition, Lilly only gets the truth by very harshly confronting the mother of one of the victims on her cowardice.
- Like a Son to Me: Myrna picks up Dylan from prison. His parents abandoned him long ago so she is the only one left for him.
- Never Learned to Read: A note confessing to the triple murder was sent to Teddy in prison. The police thought that he wrote it but his mother said that he never learned to write.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Based on the West Memphis Three
, who were only released after 18 years in prison. - Then Let Me Be Evil: The two wrongfully convicted defendants decide to act out for the cameras, after realizing that the police extracted a false confession, used a lying witness, and they face a lifetime stay in prison.
- Toxic Friend Influence: While Jack Raymes was the most innocent of the three boys, his friends George and Sean were shown to be very mean and and bullied Jack into doing things. They were even shown laughing in the final flashback, when they turned off the basement light to scare Jack's dad Henry. Which causes him to kill them in a state of rage.
- Troll: Henry Raymes jeered Teddy and Dylan outside the courthouse after they were sentenced to life for the murders that he committed. He then sent Teddy a note confessing to the murders.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: Dylan says he and Teddy were convicted because someone had to pay and people from the wrong side of the tracks are the perfect scapegoats.
