09-02-2025, 03:22 AM
I'm back with what will probably be another very verbose post about an unsolved mystery that I find interesting. I can try and trim it down, but I always have so many QUESTIONS about these cases.
This time, we are going back to August 23rd, 1987.
It is before dawn in Alexander, Arkansas as a cargo train barrels down the tracks. At the helm, Engineer Stephen Shroyer.
You already know, we are talking about the murders of Don Henry and Kevin Ives. The boys on the tracks.
I am just going to give you a run down of the basics, this case was covered and updated on Unsolved Mysteries, here is a link to the article on their site:
https://unsolved.com/gallery/don-henry-kevin-ives/
I do feel like this write up from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas is a bit more comprehensive, I have used these and other sources but I do feel like this is a case most are familiar with already.
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entri...nry-12289/
There is a documentary about this case called "Obstruction of Justice" that goes deep into the connections of this case with the drug trafficking stuff in Mena and connections to Clinton and his associates. I am not specifically going to go too much into all of this information, this post is meant to be more about the murders of Don and Kevin, not necessarily the corrupt goings on in Arkansas in the late 80s and early 90s. The Deputy Prosecutor who headed the Drug Taskforce in Saline Co. Arkansas is involved in this documentary so it does have some credibility.
There is a book about this case which I read several years ago, and honestly I can't remember whether or not it was good. So I can't really "recommend" it, but it is titled "The Boys on the Tracks"
I know it was written by Mara Leveritt which can be a mixed bag. She is a great writer, but I DO remember reading her book titled "Devil's Knot" about the May 1993 murders of Stevie Branch, Christopher Beyers, and Michael Moore in West Memphis Arkansas and the book slants heavily toward one of the step-fathers being the culprit and honestly, my opinion, having read the original trial transcripts in their entirety and seeing all the exhibits which are available online for anyone to review, I find my opinion about this case to be that the three men who were convicted of these murders are most definitely guilty. Well. At least two of them are. I won't say which ones............ I could make an entire post about this and go point by point why I think that and there are reasons these men were convicted that go beyond "they wore black and listened to Metallica" That is all I will say about that right now. And that I think there was a lot of PUSH from celebrities who should probably have not gotten involved.
Back to the subject at hand,
On the evening of August 22nd, 1987, Don Henry and Kevin Ives met up with a group of friends at a local hangout spot, leaving around midnight to go to Don's house where they grabbed a rifle and a spotlight to go hunting at night. Don's father said this was around 12:15am on August 23rd.
When they didn't return in the morning, a search was mounted and their bodies were discovered about a mile up the tracks from Don's house.
At this point, I feel the need to pause and give a little background on the Medical Examiner in this case, Dr. Fahmy Malek.
Dr. Malek took over the office of medical examiner in 1981 following the departure of previous medical examiner, Dr. Stephen Marx. Dr. Marx had some of his rulings called into question and it became something of a political scandal. Eventually, Dr. Malek would apparently be caught up in the same type of politically motivated scandal and have many of his rulings called into question as well and ended up leaving office in 1991 at the urging of Bill Clinton, only to be given a role in the health department which was rumored to be a favor from Bill Clinton as then governor of Arkansas. This was controversial at the time, because the news had been reporting about Malek's rulings being in question and how supposedly Malek had a terrible track record and had never been fired by Clinton because he had given a favorable ruling for Clinton's mother in the death of one of her patients.
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007...-20070809/
I don't know, guys. Honestly it could all just be the typical pre-election noise and things the different parties can dig up about each other. I have no opinion one way or another whether Malek did a bad job and was given slack by Clinton because of the situation with his mom, or if he did a good job and this is all just a smear campaign against Clinton. You decide and tell me. All I am saying is that the initial ruling in this particular case of Don Henry and Kevin Ives, was ultimately overturned.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-...story.html
An interesting side note I found when researching this, which is probably not relevant is that there was a medical examiner from Florida who I do not see ever referred to as "Dr." in any articles, but he was said to be a pathologist and medical examiner, so I will call him Dr. Robert McConaghie who had apparently also been embroiled in scandal? It says he had been forced to resign from Medical Examiner in Florida, and had taken a job as assistant medical examiner to Dr. Malek in Arkansas that he was due to start shortly after his resignation [he ended up committing suicide two days before his resignation was to actually take effect] but for the life of me, I can't find any information at all about what rulings he made that had been in question at the time of his resignation or why he would have been forced to resign, in fact, the article I found quotes the State Attorney as saying that it was all McConaghie's decision to resign and that they had only discussed problems with his office. I am frustrated by the vagueness of that statement. it also might just be a rumor that he was forced to resign. A colleague told the press that after his alleged suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. It was said his life was "crumbling" so this could just be a tragic suicide.
But he was given the role in Arkansas only 9 or 10 months before Dr. Malek would be urged to resign by Clinton and for some reason, that seems hinky to me. I wish there was more information available about McConaghie and what his connections may have been to any political players in the late 80s and early 90s.
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1990/02...s-himself/
I think it is kind of a weird coincidence given the circumstance both then with the Franklin Scandal and now with Epstein is that one of the cases I did find when looking into McConaghie was a case of a girl supposedly dying from being scalded by hot water in the shower, she went to a special school and lived in dorms there. Without going off on a tangent, I will say there are odd things and questions with this death, suffice it to say that the story is that this nine year old girl had been helped by a staff member to the toilet. Then the staff member stepped away because the girl was disabled and had been learning to use the toilet on her own, so there are no actual witnesses to what happened to this girl, but apparently she vomited on herself while on the toilet, as determined by vomit on her body and in the shower, despite not being sick earlier in the day, and had decided just to shower herself. Normally she was helped in the shower due to her disability, but she apparently just only turned the knob to hot and the 130 degree water gave her 2nd degree burns over 90 percent of her body which resulted in her death. This was ruled accidental.
In the background, the school this girl had been at had been the subject of a scandal involving staff members molesting students. I am going to put a quote here from an Orlando Sentinel article about this case,
"A former dorm parent, Charles D. Johnston, 22, was arrested last spring and charged in July with 27 counts of sexual molestation after 19 boys levied complaints against him. Johnston has pleaded not guilty and his trial is set for November.
Johnston was the fifth school employee arrested on charges involving juveniles since late 1986. Three other dorm parents and one teacher pleaded guilty or no contest to charges that included child abuse, battery, attempted lewd and lascivious assault on a minor and solicitation of sexual activity, according to court and school records. The school fired all five."
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/1988/10/...ndicapped/
Let's return to Arkansas now, though.
The boys had been found laying across the tracks parallel to each other, arms straight down and covered with a green tarp. Don's rifle lay next to them. Their bodies had been badly mangled by the train and ultimately the conclusion Medical Examiner Dr. Malek came to was that the boys had ingested a large amount of marijuana and laid down and fell asleep on the tracks. Such a deep sleep, in fact that the loud blaring of the train horn as Engineer Shroyer attempted to stop the train didn't even make them flinch.
This was a controversial ruling, for obvious reasons and the boys' parents weren't buying it.
Four months later, with a new prosecutor at the helm, the investigation was re-opened and the boys' bodies were exhumed and re-examined. This second autopsy determined that they had not smoked an estimated 20 marijuana cigarettes as stated in the original autopsy by Dr. Malek, but more like one to three, and that there was evidence one of the boys was already dead and the other was unconscious when the train went over them. The new prosecutor also had big questions about the tarp, which had been described by all the witnesses on the train as covering the boys, but police who had searched the scene claimed there was no tarp at all.
What a discrepancy! The prosecutor wanted to know who covered these boys with this tarp, and I want to know what motivation the police had to apparently claim this tarp never existed.
The tarp did not belong to either of the boys and was not related to them, so where did it come from?
An item of interest to investigators was also an encounter by police officer Danny Allen with a man wearing military fatigues near the tracks about a week before the murders. He seemed suspicious and opened fire on officer Allen when he stopped to question him and then ran off, never to be found despite searches.
A man in military fatigues [could it be the same man?] was also spotted the night of the murders, about 200 yards from the spot where the bodies were found. He was never found to be questioned either.
At this point, a grand jury re-classified the deaths from "accidental" to "probable homicide"
I am going to go out there a bit with this one, but I feel like people who are doing shady things they don't want discovered in the woods may or may not wear fatigues or camouflage of some sort to try and avoid detection.
Or it could have just been your run of the mill homeless guy riding the rails. We don't know. We will probably never know, though stranger things have happened. It also isn't ever mentioned who witnessed this man on the night of the murders, and how they are sure they aren't confused about the night or location they saw this guy.
The update in the unsolved mysteries episode talks about how the shirt of Don Ives was further examined and found to have cut marks in it that were not caused by the train, suggesting he had been stabbed before being placed on the tracks, which was enough to get a grand jury to again re-classify the deaths from "probable homicide" to just plain "homicide"
That is just the basics of the case and some background on one key person, Dr. Malek and his appointment and the Clinton related "scandal" he found himself in.
Now we can get to the theory espoused by Prosecutor Garrett at the time he re-opened the investigation. The boys “saw something they shouldn’t have seen and it had to do with drugs.”
It seems the web of political corruption ran pretty deep in Arkansas at that time. It might not, but let me tell you some interesting tidbits about the course of this re-opened investigation.
THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE A POST ABOUT BILL CLINTON, ROGER CLINTON, BARRY SEAL OR ANYONE ELSE, other than people directly and factually documented to be involved in this specific case. I am not going to go into the weeds about Mena Airport and Sharlene Wilson, Vince Foster/Rose Law Firm/Hillary or Jerry Parks. I might make a sequel to this post about Jerry Parks' murder, but I feel like it is already getting too long.
First, Sheriff Steed had refused to allow any funding for the investigation, according to the write up on Encyclopedia of Arkansas' website. I don't know if Sheriffs actually control the budgeting like that so I am not stating that as fact. It is apparently claimed in Mara Leveritt's book. Then the Sheriff supposedly lied about sending the boys' clothing to the FBI for further examination, instead sending them to the Arkansas Crime Lab, which would have been a huge conflict of interest since this is supposedly an open investigation with many possible outcomes, one of them being a pretty high-level government cover-up possibly tied to the actual Governor of the state. It should not have been investigated by State level authorities. I don't even know if the FBI could properly investigate this, if the conspiracy is as far reaching as some people claim.
Then several witnesses who had been preparing to be called to testify in the grand jury conveniently died before they were able to share their info.
There had been rumors in the area of low flying planes near the area of the tracks and the theory arose that drug drops were transpiring there and the boys had stumbled upon someone who murdered them to keep the drug smuggling a secret.
Dan Harmon, who was a defense attorney closely tied to Deputy Prosecutor Garrett is an interesting character who had developed a relationship with Kevin Ives family and sort of vowed to them that he and Garrett would solve these murders. At the time, the Ives had "heard rumors" that Harmon had been on the tracks the night of the murders, but ignored that because they couldn't fathom someone would hurt their child and then befriend them. They trusted Harmon until another deputy prosecutor, Jean Duffey who was leading a drug task force in Saline County had informed her that there was actually evidence tying Harmon to the murders.
What that evidence is? Your guess is as good as mine.
As far as I'm concerned this is in the rumor category, because I haven't been able to find any concrete evidence that links Harmon to the tracks that night or to this murder. It is eyebrow raising though, for someone described as a "defense attorney" to have SO many drug trafficking related charges. He was convicted of everything from racketeering and extortion to conspiracy, all drug related in 1997, which is a decade after the murders of Don and Kevin, but just interesting to note. It is also interesting that even after nearly 10 years behind bars, Harmon still had his finger on the pulse of goings on in the outside world, because he was released early when he helped prosecutors with information on a murder in 2006 while behind bars.
The witnesses who died before they could testify are also interesting characters, but first I want to let you guys know, that Harmon was appointed "special prosecutor" to investigate this case. Are we witnessing corruption? I don't know. You decide.
Keith Coney, who was rumored to have actually been with the boys that night told his family that law enforcement was responsible for the murders. He died following a high speed chase when the vehicle he was driving impacted the back of a semi-truck.
Why was he being pursued? We don't know.
Keith McKaskle, who Sharlene Wilson claimed was at the tracks that night gave the information he had to Garrett and Harmon, then planned his own funeral, told his family goodbye and was found stabbed 113 times only a few days later.
Did he think he signed his own death warrant by telling Garrett and Harmon what he knew? It is interesting that he is claimed to have planned his own funeral and told his family goodbye. Of course it's just more rumor, but being stabbed 113 times doesn't really indicate suicide to me. It also doesn't scream drug related hit to me, but I am not an investigator. Apparently, no one on this case is an investigator though or it would have been solved, so I don't think it's a problem for me to speculate some things.
Greg Collins, shot in the head before being able to give his testimony to the Grand Jury.
Boonie Bearden, a friend of Collins and Coney was supposed to testify, but went missing beforehand and all that was ever recovered was his shirt, so we can't really determine whether or not he is even actually dead, but I will make that assumption.
Jeff Rhodes told his family he was worried for his life because he knew too much about not only Ives and Henry's murders, but also McKaskle's. His body was found in the dump in Little Rock, having been shot twice in the head and set on fire.
Just, bear with me here because I do have a question about this scenario of Garrett being "partnered" with Harmon in investigating this case, and also supposedly participating in a cover up of high-level drug trafficking. Why on earth would Garrett appear on unsolved mysteries at the time and come right out and say that he felt they had seen something drug related they shouldn't have and were murdered because of it. Why would he say that? He had to have credibility at that time, because public sentiment about this case was that it had been a cover-up from the beginning, so his willingness to try and get it re-classified and re-opened must have given him a lot of credibility amongst the family members but also the general public, and he does seem very credible and very concerned about this case in his unsolved mysteries appearance so that is all kind of interesting if he is a knowing participant in a cover-up.
I really do not think Garrett was involved in purposely covering this up, if anything, Harmon was a "handler" of sorts, maybe an inside man. Someone who could steer the investigation in certain directions or away from certain people, but also know every new development and witness and piece of evidence.
I don't know what happened to Don Henry and Kevin Ives. We know they didn't fall asleep on the train tracks accidentally. We know they were murdered. We just don't know by who, and there are so many players and associates of associates even those marginally connected to this case that it could be anyone, or multiple people.
Heck, I'll throw out there it could have even been Vince Foster and Jerry Parks, on one of their little trips. You know, the ones where Parks would come home with a whole wad of cash in his trunk and tell his wife "not to worry about it"
Could have. Probably not though, right? I mean that's crazy.
What do you guys think? Are you a fringe lunatic who really believes the 2nd autopsy is wrong and Don and Kevin were double-fisting doobies in the woods, got sleepy and curled up for a nap on the train tracks under a green tarp? Or even more unbelievably, that they committed suicide by train? Both of them, at the same time?
Was Harmon involved? If so how? Was he actually involved in the murders, or just an inside man after the fact giving information on the investigation's status to the people in charge of the whole operation?
Was it a deranged person or persons riding the rails who saw the boys and randomly decided to murder them in two different manners? One via some type of blunt force trauma and the other stabbed? Then leave them covered by a tarp on the tracks?
What was the purpose of the tarp? Obviously to hide the bodies, maybe to make those on the train think at first that it was a sofa or something similar but the Engineer said he could see that it was two boys, side by side on the tracks covered by the tarps.
What relation, if any do the sightings of the man in military fatigues near the area have to the murders? Was he involved? Was it even the same person both times?
Is it all just a big coincidence that so many people who were slated to testify in front of the grand jury investigating these deaths ended up dead themselves, usually from obvious murder?
Do you believe both Garrett and Harmon were participating in some sort of cover-up or just one of them, or neither? Do you believe that the investigation was a hundred percent above board once Garrett and Harmon took over?
Do you also think it is kind of strange that Harmon has those drug trafficking related convictions and does it make you wonder whether there are any connections between Harmon and other, higher level players in this case?
Overall, I'm interested in what opinions you guys have of this case, and whether or not you agree with me that we may not know the WHO, but we definitely know the WHY in this case.
This time, we are going back to August 23rd, 1987.
It is before dawn in Alexander, Arkansas as a cargo train barrels down the tracks. At the helm, Engineer Stephen Shroyer.
You already know, we are talking about the murders of Don Henry and Kevin Ives. The boys on the tracks.
I am just going to give you a run down of the basics, this case was covered and updated on Unsolved Mysteries, here is a link to the article on their site:
https://unsolved.com/gallery/don-henry-kevin-ives/
I do feel like this write up from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas is a bit more comprehensive, I have used these and other sources but I do feel like this is a case most are familiar with already.
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entri...nry-12289/
There is a documentary about this case called "Obstruction of Justice" that goes deep into the connections of this case with the drug trafficking stuff in Mena and connections to Clinton and his associates. I am not specifically going to go too much into all of this information, this post is meant to be more about the murders of Don and Kevin, not necessarily the corrupt goings on in Arkansas in the late 80s and early 90s. The Deputy Prosecutor who headed the Drug Taskforce in Saline Co. Arkansas is involved in this documentary so it does have some credibility.
There is a book about this case which I read several years ago, and honestly I can't remember whether or not it was good. So I can't really "recommend" it, but it is titled "The Boys on the Tracks"
I know it was written by Mara Leveritt which can be a mixed bag. She is a great writer, but I DO remember reading her book titled "Devil's Knot" about the May 1993 murders of Stevie Branch, Christopher Beyers, and Michael Moore in West Memphis Arkansas and the book slants heavily toward one of the step-fathers being the culprit and honestly, my opinion, having read the original trial transcripts in their entirety and seeing all the exhibits which are available online for anyone to review, I find my opinion about this case to be that the three men who were convicted of these murders are most definitely guilty. Well. At least two of them are. I won't say which ones............ I could make an entire post about this and go point by point why I think that and there are reasons these men were convicted that go beyond "they wore black and listened to Metallica" That is all I will say about that right now. And that I think there was a lot of PUSH from celebrities who should probably have not gotten involved.
Back to the subject at hand,
On the evening of August 22nd, 1987, Don Henry and Kevin Ives met up with a group of friends at a local hangout spot, leaving around midnight to go to Don's house where they grabbed a rifle and a spotlight to go hunting at night. Don's father said this was around 12:15am on August 23rd.
When they didn't return in the morning, a search was mounted and their bodies were discovered about a mile up the tracks from Don's house.
At this point, I feel the need to pause and give a little background on the Medical Examiner in this case, Dr. Fahmy Malek.
Dr. Malek took over the office of medical examiner in 1981 following the departure of previous medical examiner, Dr. Stephen Marx. Dr. Marx had some of his rulings called into question and it became something of a political scandal. Eventually, Dr. Malek would apparently be caught up in the same type of politically motivated scandal and have many of his rulings called into question as well and ended up leaving office in 1991 at the urging of Bill Clinton, only to be given a role in the health department which was rumored to be a favor from Bill Clinton as then governor of Arkansas. This was controversial at the time, because the news had been reporting about Malek's rulings being in question and how supposedly Malek had a terrible track record and had never been fired by Clinton because he had given a favorable ruling for Clinton's mother in the death of one of her patients.
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007...-20070809/
I don't know, guys. Honestly it could all just be the typical pre-election noise and things the different parties can dig up about each other. I have no opinion one way or another whether Malek did a bad job and was given slack by Clinton because of the situation with his mom, or if he did a good job and this is all just a smear campaign against Clinton. You decide and tell me. All I am saying is that the initial ruling in this particular case of Don Henry and Kevin Ives, was ultimately overturned.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-...story.html
An interesting side note I found when researching this, which is probably not relevant is that there was a medical examiner from Florida who I do not see ever referred to as "Dr." in any articles, but he was said to be a pathologist and medical examiner, so I will call him Dr. Robert McConaghie who had apparently also been embroiled in scandal? It says he had been forced to resign from Medical Examiner in Florida, and had taken a job as assistant medical examiner to Dr. Malek in Arkansas that he was due to start shortly after his resignation [he ended up committing suicide two days before his resignation was to actually take effect] but for the life of me, I can't find any information at all about what rulings he made that had been in question at the time of his resignation or why he would have been forced to resign, in fact, the article I found quotes the State Attorney as saying that it was all McConaghie's decision to resign and that they had only discussed problems with his office. I am frustrated by the vagueness of that statement. it also might just be a rumor that he was forced to resign. A colleague told the press that after his alleged suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. It was said his life was "crumbling" so this could just be a tragic suicide.
But he was given the role in Arkansas only 9 or 10 months before Dr. Malek would be urged to resign by Clinton and for some reason, that seems hinky to me. I wish there was more information available about McConaghie and what his connections may have been to any political players in the late 80s and early 90s.
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1990/02...s-himself/
I think it is kind of a weird coincidence given the circumstance both then with the Franklin Scandal and now with Epstein is that one of the cases I did find when looking into McConaghie was a case of a girl supposedly dying from being scalded by hot water in the shower, she went to a special school and lived in dorms there. Without going off on a tangent, I will say there are odd things and questions with this death, suffice it to say that the story is that this nine year old girl had been helped by a staff member to the toilet. Then the staff member stepped away because the girl was disabled and had been learning to use the toilet on her own, so there are no actual witnesses to what happened to this girl, but apparently she vomited on herself while on the toilet, as determined by vomit on her body and in the shower, despite not being sick earlier in the day, and had decided just to shower herself. Normally she was helped in the shower due to her disability, but she apparently just only turned the knob to hot and the 130 degree water gave her 2nd degree burns over 90 percent of her body which resulted in her death. This was ruled accidental.
In the background, the school this girl had been at had been the subject of a scandal involving staff members molesting students. I am going to put a quote here from an Orlando Sentinel article about this case,
"A former dorm parent, Charles D. Johnston, 22, was arrested last spring and charged in July with 27 counts of sexual molestation after 19 boys levied complaints against him. Johnston has pleaded not guilty and his trial is set for November.
Johnston was the fifth school employee arrested on charges involving juveniles since late 1986. Three other dorm parents and one teacher pleaded guilty or no contest to charges that included child abuse, battery, attempted lewd and lascivious assault on a minor and solicitation of sexual activity, according to court and school records. The school fired all five."
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/1988/10/...ndicapped/
Let's return to Arkansas now, though.
The boys had been found laying across the tracks parallel to each other, arms straight down and covered with a green tarp. Don's rifle lay next to them. Their bodies had been badly mangled by the train and ultimately the conclusion Medical Examiner Dr. Malek came to was that the boys had ingested a large amount of marijuana and laid down and fell asleep on the tracks. Such a deep sleep, in fact that the loud blaring of the train horn as Engineer Shroyer attempted to stop the train didn't even make them flinch.
This was a controversial ruling, for obvious reasons and the boys' parents weren't buying it.
Four months later, with a new prosecutor at the helm, the investigation was re-opened and the boys' bodies were exhumed and re-examined. This second autopsy determined that they had not smoked an estimated 20 marijuana cigarettes as stated in the original autopsy by Dr. Malek, but more like one to three, and that there was evidence one of the boys was already dead and the other was unconscious when the train went over them. The new prosecutor also had big questions about the tarp, which had been described by all the witnesses on the train as covering the boys, but police who had searched the scene claimed there was no tarp at all.
What a discrepancy! The prosecutor wanted to know who covered these boys with this tarp, and I want to know what motivation the police had to apparently claim this tarp never existed.
The tarp did not belong to either of the boys and was not related to them, so where did it come from?
An item of interest to investigators was also an encounter by police officer Danny Allen with a man wearing military fatigues near the tracks about a week before the murders. He seemed suspicious and opened fire on officer Allen when he stopped to question him and then ran off, never to be found despite searches.
A man in military fatigues [could it be the same man?] was also spotted the night of the murders, about 200 yards from the spot where the bodies were found. He was never found to be questioned either.
At this point, a grand jury re-classified the deaths from "accidental" to "probable homicide"
I am going to go out there a bit with this one, but I feel like people who are doing shady things they don't want discovered in the woods may or may not wear fatigues or camouflage of some sort to try and avoid detection.
Or it could have just been your run of the mill homeless guy riding the rails. We don't know. We will probably never know, though stranger things have happened. It also isn't ever mentioned who witnessed this man on the night of the murders, and how they are sure they aren't confused about the night or location they saw this guy.
The update in the unsolved mysteries episode talks about how the shirt of Don Ives was further examined and found to have cut marks in it that were not caused by the train, suggesting he had been stabbed before being placed on the tracks, which was enough to get a grand jury to again re-classify the deaths from "probable homicide" to just plain "homicide"
That is just the basics of the case and some background on one key person, Dr. Malek and his appointment and the Clinton related "scandal" he found himself in.
Now we can get to the theory espoused by Prosecutor Garrett at the time he re-opened the investigation. The boys “saw something they shouldn’t have seen and it had to do with drugs.”
It seems the web of political corruption ran pretty deep in Arkansas at that time. It might not, but let me tell you some interesting tidbits about the course of this re-opened investigation.
THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE A POST ABOUT BILL CLINTON, ROGER CLINTON, BARRY SEAL OR ANYONE ELSE, other than people directly and factually documented to be involved in this specific case. I am not going to go into the weeds about Mena Airport and Sharlene Wilson, Vince Foster/Rose Law Firm/Hillary or Jerry Parks. I might make a sequel to this post about Jerry Parks' murder, but I feel like it is already getting too long.
First, Sheriff Steed had refused to allow any funding for the investigation, according to the write up on Encyclopedia of Arkansas' website. I don't know if Sheriffs actually control the budgeting like that so I am not stating that as fact. It is apparently claimed in Mara Leveritt's book. Then the Sheriff supposedly lied about sending the boys' clothing to the FBI for further examination, instead sending them to the Arkansas Crime Lab, which would have been a huge conflict of interest since this is supposedly an open investigation with many possible outcomes, one of them being a pretty high-level government cover-up possibly tied to the actual Governor of the state. It should not have been investigated by State level authorities. I don't even know if the FBI could properly investigate this, if the conspiracy is as far reaching as some people claim.
Then several witnesses who had been preparing to be called to testify in the grand jury conveniently died before they were able to share their info.
There had been rumors in the area of low flying planes near the area of the tracks and the theory arose that drug drops were transpiring there and the boys had stumbled upon someone who murdered them to keep the drug smuggling a secret.
Dan Harmon, who was a defense attorney closely tied to Deputy Prosecutor Garrett is an interesting character who had developed a relationship with Kevin Ives family and sort of vowed to them that he and Garrett would solve these murders. At the time, the Ives had "heard rumors" that Harmon had been on the tracks the night of the murders, but ignored that because they couldn't fathom someone would hurt their child and then befriend them. They trusted Harmon until another deputy prosecutor, Jean Duffey who was leading a drug task force in Saline County had informed her that there was actually evidence tying Harmon to the murders.
What that evidence is? Your guess is as good as mine.
As far as I'm concerned this is in the rumor category, because I haven't been able to find any concrete evidence that links Harmon to the tracks that night or to this murder. It is eyebrow raising though, for someone described as a "defense attorney" to have SO many drug trafficking related charges. He was convicted of everything from racketeering and extortion to conspiracy, all drug related in 1997, which is a decade after the murders of Don and Kevin, but just interesting to note. It is also interesting that even after nearly 10 years behind bars, Harmon still had his finger on the pulse of goings on in the outside world, because he was released early when he helped prosecutors with information on a murder in 2006 while behind bars.
The witnesses who died before they could testify are also interesting characters, but first I want to let you guys know, that Harmon was appointed "special prosecutor" to investigate this case. Are we witnessing corruption? I don't know. You decide.
Keith Coney, who was rumored to have actually been with the boys that night told his family that law enforcement was responsible for the murders. He died following a high speed chase when the vehicle he was driving impacted the back of a semi-truck.
Why was he being pursued? We don't know.
Keith McKaskle, who Sharlene Wilson claimed was at the tracks that night gave the information he had to Garrett and Harmon, then planned his own funeral, told his family goodbye and was found stabbed 113 times only a few days later.
Did he think he signed his own death warrant by telling Garrett and Harmon what he knew? It is interesting that he is claimed to have planned his own funeral and told his family goodbye. Of course it's just more rumor, but being stabbed 113 times doesn't really indicate suicide to me. It also doesn't scream drug related hit to me, but I am not an investigator. Apparently, no one on this case is an investigator though or it would have been solved, so I don't think it's a problem for me to speculate some things.
Greg Collins, shot in the head before being able to give his testimony to the Grand Jury.
Boonie Bearden, a friend of Collins and Coney was supposed to testify, but went missing beforehand and all that was ever recovered was his shirt, so we can't really determine whether or not he is even actually dead, but I will make that assumption.
Jeff Rhodes told his family he was worried for his life because he knew too much about not only Ives and Henry's murders, but also McKaskle's. His body was found in the dump in Little Rock, having been shot twice in the head and set on fire.
Just, bear with me here because I do have a question about this scenario of Garrett being "partnered" with Harmon in investigating this case, and also supposedly participating in a cover up of high-level drug trafficking. Why on earth would Garrett appear on unsolved mysteries at the time and come right out and say that he felt they had seen something drug related they shouldn't have and were murdered because of it. Why would he say that? He had to have credibility at that time, because public sentiment about this case was that it had been a cover-up from the beginning, so his willingness to try and get it re-classified and re-opened must have given him a lot of credibility amongst the family members but also the general public, and he does seem very credible and very concerned about this case in his unsolved mysteries appearance so that is all kind of interesting if he is a knowing participant in a cover-up.
I really do not think Garrett was involved in purposely covering this up, if anything, Harmon was a "handler" of sorts, maybe an inside man. Someone who could steer the investigation in certain directions or away from certain people, but also know every new development and witness and piece of evidence.
I don't know what happened to Don Henry and Kevin Ives. We know they didn't fall asleep on the train tracks accidentally. We know they were murdered. We just don't know by who, and there are so many players and associates of associates even those marginally connected to this case that it could be anyone, or multiple people.
Heck, I'll throw out there it could have even been Vince Foster and Jerry Parks, on one of their little trips. You know, the ones where Parks would come home with a whole wad of cash in his trunk and tell his wife "not to worry about it"
Could have. Probably not though, right? I mean that's crazy.
What do you guys think? Are you a fringe lunatic who really believes the 2nd autopsy is wrong and Don and Kevin were double-fisting doobies in the woods, got sleepy and curled up for a nap on the train tracks under a green tarp? Or even more unbelievably, that they committed suicide by train? Both of them, at the same time?
Was Harmon involved? If so how? Was he actually involved in the murders, or just an inside man after the fact giving information on the investigation's status to the people in charge of the whole operation?
Was it a deranged person or persons riding the rails who saw the boys and randomly decided to murder them in two different manners? One via some type of blunt force trauma and the other stabbed? Then leave them covered by a tarp on the tracks?
What was the purpose of the tarp? Obviously to hide the bodies, maybe to make those on the train think at first that it was a sofa or something similar but the Engineer said he could see that it was two boys, side by side on the tracks covered by the tarps.
What relation, if any do the sightings of the man in military fatigues near the area have to the murders? Was he involved? Was it even the same person both times?
Is it all just a big coincidence that so many people who were slated to testify in front of the grand jury investigating these deaths ended up dead themselves, usually from obvious murder?
Do you believe both Garrett and Harmon were participating in some sort of cover-up or just one of them, or neither? Do you believe that the investigation was a hundred percent above board once Garrett and Harmon took over?
Do you also think it is kind of strange that Harmon has those drug trafficking related convictions and does it make you wonder whether there are any connections between Harmon and other, higher level players in this case?
Overall, I'm interested in what opinions you guys have of this case, and whether or not you agree with me that we may not know the WHO, but we definitely know the WHY in this case.
