Three US men convicted as teenagers of kidnapping, torturing and mutilating three eight-year-old Cub Scouts were set free yesterday after serving nearly 20 years in jail.

The “West Memphis Three” – Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley – were convicted in a 1994 trial marked by local hysteria over allegations that the grisly killings were part of a Satanic ritual.

The three boys – Steve Branch, Chris Byers, and Michael Moore –were found in a ditch, stripped naked and hog-tied. Byers had bled to death after his penis was cut off and the other two had drowned in the muddy water.

The three convicts have always maintained their innocence, however, and a 1996 documentary questioning the conviction led actors Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder and Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder to embrace their cause.

Investigators found no physical evidence to connect the three to the murders, and recent DNA testing – which did not exist at the time – found only inconclusive evidence pointing to two completely different individuals, leading the Arkansas state supreme court to set yesterday’s hearing.

The 1996 documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills presented the teenagers as having been unfairly singled out because they were non-conformists and raised questions about the trial.