The Boys on the Tracks

5 a.m. I'm up with a crisp Celsius energy drink running 12 miles today grab a

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local retailer or locate now at Celsius dot com if someone you loved was

brutally murdered how far would you go to find the truth and what if the

people that were there to help you the people you thought you could trust what

if they were in on it in 1987 two teenage boys disappeared to the Arkansas

woods only to appear later brutalized on the railroad tracks a mile from where

they were last seen welcome to crime scene the show where we tell the stories

behind the world's most unforgettable crimes in this case has baffled

investigators and the public alike it's a story that begins in what appears to be

a freak accident but quickly escalates into a terrifying conspiracy perhaps the

most egregious in our nation's history this week on the show the story of

Don Henry and Kevin Ives from Sony podcast in the binge this is the story of the

boys on the tracks

hey everyone and welcome to crime scene I'm Jonathan Hirsch and I'm Cooper

Maul okay so before we get started on boys on the tracks one of the things

that I love about the story is the fact that it plays in a very complex world

of conspiracies so the way I've been thinking about this is there's sort of

like two different kinds of conspiracies right there's like mob stuff yeah yeah

mob stuff right yeah exactly like lowercase see conspiracies those are the cases

where people are part of some kind of criminal network then there's like a

upper case see conspiracy yeah like the 5G towers and lizard people deep state

kind of stuff yeah exactly yeah like who were where were you on the grassy

old that day or you know is 9-11 and inside job those type of conspiracies

and I think that this story is one of the only ones that I'm aware of where

both of those things are at play at the same time

coming up after the break the story of the boys on the tracks

okay so our story starts on August 22nd 1987 in Saline County, Arkansas

which like sort of encompasses the area around Little Rock but it's kind of rural

backwards like there's a lot of you know sort of country out beyond the city

and Kevin ives and Don Henry are set to hang out with each other their best friends

Kevin is 17 Don is 16 and they were both about to be seniors at Bryant High School in Arkansas

peak teenage time of your life right yeah through the kind of teenagers who like sort of

would hang out at night you know like drive around the country roads but they also liked

to hunt and on this Saturday night that was sort of the plan they were out to do this thing

called spotlighting I'm not from the country so you have never heard of that from the south

from Northern California so I had never heard of this so it was kind of fascinating to me you know

that like people would go out into the woods at night and hunt the way that they would do it they

do this thing called lamp lighting or spotlighting where they would take you know like a rifle with

them that would also have like an overhead light or like a spotlight and you know they would shine

a light across the woods as they were going through looking for the eyes of an animal like a deer

if they were hunting for deer and it would sort of stun the deer and that would be how you catch it

so this is like a step further from cow tipping like it does like like different type of

country high jinks yeah this is definitely like a little bit more hardcore than cow tipping or maybe

I don't know I've never cow you tell me okay all right okay so we'll leave that for another time

confirmed or denied but yeah so this is like you know the kind of thing that these guys would do

um on the weekends if they were hanging out together they would go hunting and they would do the

spotlighting and I just found it so unnerving because in a way like the goal of spotlighting is to

shine a light into the woods and find your target and in a way here they are wandering through the

woods and they themselves become a target so this was like a normal thing for them to be doing right

like they're going to go out into the woods on on you know a weekend night and and go hunting so

they meet up with a couple of friends beforehand and they hang out I think they smoke some dough

there's a lot of people used to hang out in real life for madness because this is before

is that what people do yeah I haven't done that in a decade but yes so they're going out together

and that was the last time anybody saw them their parents their friends they left out on this

hunting trip and that was sort of a normal thing they expected like oh well duh they're going to

hunting in the middle of the night they're going to be out all night we may not hear from them

yeah this is before cell phones and yeah all the tagging and find my and all of that exactly yeah

nobody was like you know checking in on like their geolocators uh for for their friends when

they're out there in the woods in the middle of the night in 1987 the next time that somebody does see

these boys is that around dawn when a union pacific freight train moves through the woods

around where they're hunting and these trains are massive I live on sort of the outskirts of

Los Angeles and the union pacific train still run uh just by our house and it the massive they're

loud like check check check check check check check look here they hear them for miles and they're fast and

it's like just six tons of steel in a bucket barreling down the road so this freight train was going

at about 50 miles an hour when it rounds a corner and it sees in the distance what appears to be

two bodies. At first it looks like debris but then they recognize quickly that those are bodies

lined up next to each other parallel on the tracks. And they're just getting like closer and

closer in view. Yeah, but these people are sort of trained to sort of spot something like this and

try to put the brakes on. I think that is just the... So try to like put the brakes on

the tracks as they're making as if they recognize something in the distance that needs to be

that they need to stop for. But they notice these boys that are like lying in the tracks

covered by what appears to be like a green tarp. Weird. Yeah, we'll get to that in a second because

it is sort of weird. But they try their best to pump on the brakes as much as they can.

But they do not get there in time. It's just the train is moving too fast. It's too big. They

can't stop the trains momentum fast enough. But these boys don't appear to move or flinch

at all as they're lying there on the tracks covered by this tarp. And of course the train runs

right over them. That's gotta be so traumatic knowing there's just nothing you can do.

There's nothing to keep going. Yeah, the conductor said he replayed that moment in his mind

for like years. How could you not? Yeah, because he was like if I had moved faster or done something,

you know, he just couldn't get there in time. And something that you don't really think about which

later as the investigation into this case began is, you know, if something runs over you like that,

it's not like you like running over a bottle in your car. The time that we had placed a train

into an emergency position and laid down on the horn. I would estimate about three to five seconds

to impact. And that may not sound like very long period time, but when you're bearing down a

couple of children, it's an eternity, honestly. It's like the debris from that impact scattered

a quarter of a mile across the world. You practically combust. Yeah, just everything flies everywhere.

So there's bits and pieces of body on the track, but like the actual, you know, the actual evidence

from what would become a scene of investigation is not, it's not like easy to assemble all of it.

Yeah, how do they begin to recover all of that? Yeah, exactly. So the impact happens and the

train stops and they come out and they're sort of, you know, law enforcement is called in the police

arrive on the scene to sort of document it. And they also cover, they recover something else on the

tracks that was with them, which is what appears to be sort of a shattered rifle, which would make sense,

right? Like they were out. Yeah, they were out spotlighting. Yeah, they were doing this spotlighting

thing, which of course, yeah, naturally, you know, we all know what's spotlighting. But

there's a shattered rifle near the bodies. So in the pre-dawn hours, the crew are trying to help

with the crime scene, you know, the cops show up. But strangely, by the time the cops show up,

there's no tarp. All four of the people on the train who were able to observe the scene prior to the

accident stated that the boys were partially covered by a green tarp. So the police arrive on the

scene and they are talking with the train crew. And there's like quite a scene here, right? Like

there's debris all over the place. They're trying to make sense of what's happened. They uncover

this rifle that was shattered, which obviously makes sense because they were out there in the woods.

Yeah, doing their spotlighting thing. And something else happens that sort of odd, though,

because the crew had sworn they had seen this tarp, right?

The paramedics. The paramedics picked up a tarp from the boys.

I believe that's, they had it coming down the railroad anyway. They had, they had body bags.

You wanted to walk them out, do you? You're picking up different, you know, but separate from the body

bag was a tarp. Right. Right. Remember what color it was? I can't remember. Everything was kind of

energy. I see, you know, I really didn't pay that that that thing much attention. I knew it was

some kind of a tarp. You know, it wasn't a bad body bag. I thought they had it, you know, more or less

folded and closest I can remember. They laid it down right there.

Well, the cops couldn't recover the tarp. They didn't think much of the claims that the tarp was

absolutely there. So they're sort of saying to the train crew, like, maybe you imagined it.

So they're gaslighting them. They're gaslighting it, which yeah, was obviously not a term they

used at the time for it, but they definitely felt like they saw what they saw. The train conductor

for years into the future would claim that they saw what they saw. Then this tarp was there.

And I think the reason the tarp is an interesting point was because, okay, let's imagine that you

find two bodies lying on the track that are hit. What could it possibly be? Do you know what I mean?

Like, it could be a lot of different things. Suicide definitely comes to mind. Suicide comes to mind.

Right. So does an accident. Maybe somebody was stumbling onto the tracks and fell and got hit.

But the way that the bodies were organized on the tracks is unnerving and sort of implies a

degree of intentionality. Yeah, picture it like kind of like soldier style. And also if you're

if your plan was to take your own life, the two of you together, like a suicide pact,

and you cover yourself up with a tarp, like, why would you cover yourself? Why would you tuck

yourself in before you get run over by a train? It doesn't make any sense that the tarp would be

there. But if the tarp was there, it tells a totally different story about what was happening

on the tracks that night, you know. Yeah, this was staged. They were, you know, being a guy

hit it. Somebody else was there. Yeah. So the tarp thing kind of leaves us in a place where like,

this is something maybe that's not an accident. Yeah, potentially not an accident. But that's not

the way the investigators on the scene at the time initially sort of reacted to it. I think they

determined pretty quickly that they thought this to be an accident, which in and of itself,

the fact that people were determining this as an accident that early on in the case is a little

bit odd to me, you know, that like when you're a police investigator, you imagine you're taking

in the scene, you're gathering the evidence, you're not making a determination about something

as brutal and gruesome as two boys being run over in the middle of the night as an accident that

seems like a little bit preemptive. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

If we were told to work as an accident, you know, or the investigators were told to work as an

accident, and it was not enough time and emphasis put into it right there at the scene.

So after this, we get to the examination, the autopsy, and the state medical examiner is a guy

named Dr. Famy Malik, and Dr. Famy Malik rules these deaths as accidental.

That seems really quick. So how did he get to that? He had a close proximity to power in the state.

He was pretty close with the governor at the time, and he had a reputation of

making suicide and accidental death rulings in cases that could have been homicides.

So the state medical examiner arrives to perform an autopsy and determine the cause of death

in the custody boys. It's always a tough one considering, you know, I don't want to be more

bit, but the way the train probably left these bodies was not necessarily intact. No, it's definitely

a complicated scene, and this is kind of like if the way that these bodies were found and the whole

tarp situation is the first thing that is odd and off about this case, what happens with

the medical examiner is the second. I found this article from 1990 in the Arkansas Times by Rod

Lorenz in which it's sort of a takedown of Dr. Famy Malik. He says that Dr. Famy Malik is one of

the few people in the state who can get in to see the governor in 15 minutes notice. On his way up

the steps of the state capital, Malik often detours over to a nearby garden and trumps through it

to snap off three or four roses like the entitlement, you know. Inside, he lavishes these in a

courtly way upon the governor's secretaries who know him as the benevolent Dr. Malik, a native

Egyptian with polished manners and a worldly charm. Sounds like a trip. Yeah, I mean, what a way

to open an article about a guy, right? Like he's clearly does not think too highly of him. In

public, Malik likes to do everything with a flourish, and he's always chauffeur to court appearances

in his state car, to the frequent dismay of prosecutors, not to mention other witnesses waiting to

testify. Malik insists that he appear on the stand first. This is like not typical medical

examiner behavior. I picture them as always like fairly low key. Yeah, right. Like VIP seats at the

case that you're there for. Instead of responding to the lawyers, Malik speaks directly to the jurors,

answering questions or explaining his conclusions, despite his thick accent, his testimony is usually

so smooth and convincing that his audience, even the sleepy ones, pay attention. For more than 12

years, Malik's dictatorial rule in the Office of State Medical Examiner has gone virtually unchallenged

until his work has been consistently questioned. On two occasions, his findings have been directly

refuted by juries. Transcripts reveal that in two cases, Malik has altered testimony from pre-trial

depositions to the actual trial. And in both cases, it bolsters the prosecution's case. He has

demonstrated in court to have mishandled evidence. Former employees routinely characterize him

at best as incompetent and at worst psychologically unbalanced. This is just the wildest

characterization of a medical examiner. I think I've ever heard this is the guy who in 1987,

on the day after these boys are found on the track, is assigned to do the autopsy and the evaluation

of this case. This is the guy with like the smoke and mirrors reputation here is. Yeah, he's definitely

not the most reliable according to a lot of people over time. So this guy's got a sketchy and troubled

history to say the least problematic and a reputation for mischaracterizing cases. Yeah. So there's

things in people's minds when this actually starts to unfold. He's assigned to this case and his

ruling on the case is that these were accidental deaths. Can't say that shocks me, given what we

just learned about that. Yeah, I mean, unsurprising for him, but definitely surprising for the family

and people involved in this case who were expecting that something far different had happened here

than to people like just accidentally being hit by a train, especially when you find out

what he said happened that night. He says that according to the toxicology reports,

the boys had the equivalent of 20 marijuana cigarettes in their bloodstream at the time that they

were killed. So he determined that they had fallen into a coma and laid down on the tracks and were

run over. Now, yeah, I'm not a marijuana expert by any stretch of the imagination I was raised

by a pot head in Northern California. So I have a little bit of anecdotal information. It's not

really my thing, necessarily, but feels like yeah, maybe not. Yeah. Okay. So I was like, I've

dabbled a bit. Okay. And what I can't help but think about is like the weed in 1987. Yeah,

it's up to you kick out of the dirt. It's not strong enough to just lay you out. I mean, the weed

today, even now, yeah, I mean, yeah. Okay. So well, I guess I have to say like when I moved to

Los Angeles, I was living in New York with my wife and the night before we left, we decided to go

out, you know, like with some friends, we were like dancing. And somebody gave us a Tootsie role

on the dance floor. And I should have known what was being given to me, but you know, different time,

I guess. So we split it. I ate it and it laid me out. And I woke up in the morning and I was

still stoned. And I was absolutely convinced that I was absolutely convinced that I had had

some kind of heart attack or a stroke that had the pipeline from like eating weed to I've had

some kind of traumatic brain event is yes, is paper thin. I mean, I crawled up next to my wife

and like couldn't talk. I was like signing her. Yeah. Last time I think I thought I had a

I had a brain aneurysm. So yeah, definitely. Yeah. It's just that's a phenomenal. Sure.

But then it wears off, right? And then you're fine or you have an embarrassing story to tell.

Yeah, you're awake in your paranoid. You're not in a coma. Yeah. No, you're definitely not

falling asleep or slipping into some kind of coma like state and allowing a six ton

train to barrel over you. Yeah, you're going to wake up for that. Yeah, that's definitely

something that you wake up for. It's insane. Honestly, that this became the determination. And I guess

at the time, you know, people didn't have an understanding of what this was. It was not legal.

Yeah, and we're in peak weed moral panic like pre this is more on drugs time. Exactly. Yeah,

this is a, you know, I don't know if it was a scheduled one narcotic at the time, but

it's not differentiated from the other major hardcore street drugs that you would find in the 80s.

So maybe they thought this would pass as a determination, but even then it really didn't hold

mustard. The toxicologists outside of the case were questioning this ruling. And obviously,

the family didn't feel like they're two boys who they knew dabbled, but didn't see them as

like these crazy, just normal kids stuff. Right. Yeah, they weren't smoking 20 cigarette weed

cigarettes. And we don't say marijuana marijuana. Yeah, exactly. The M word, they weren't

getting high out of their minds and wandering onto the train tracks. This just did not make sense

to them. And there were other sort of questionable aspects of this case at that time, right.

Like this determination was made really quickly. And it appeared at the scene that police officers

also were corroborating this idea that this was an accident, even before they had an opportunity

to fully contemplate what could have been a crime scene, right. So like family members of

members of the public show up at the scene the next day and they're walking through the woods

and looking for stuff. And they recovered a lot of debris like the debris flew a quarter of a mile

from where this happened giant free train. Yeah. And in one case, they found they found a

foot from one of the boys. And this wasn't something that was recovered by the police. So

there was a sense in the public's mind and in the mind of the family that there was a rush

to judgment to determine this was accidental. And yeah, exactly. And to sort of think that, you

know, there might have been some other scientifically questionable reason that all of this had happened.

And then there's a question with the tarp. So there's a lot of questions in the early days of

this case about what actually was going on, you know. So local law enforcement just accepts this

ruling. Yeah. No questions asked cases closed. But I think we're all probably wondering

what the parents think of this. Yeah. I mean, if you have looked into cases like this before,

the kind of person who might have showed up at this show with us here in the crime scene office,

you probably are starting to question whether or not law enforcement had something to do with this.

And the family wasn't about to let this go. So this is when we should probably talk about Linda

Ives, who is the mother of Kevin. And she is the one who truly, truly held a candle for this case

for her entire life. She never let it go. I believe Kevin and John were on here the tracks that night

and saw either money or drugs dropped from an airplane. I believe that law enforcement officers

killed them. And the coverup began immediately. Expanded to the medical examiner, Farming Malik.

Always a mom. It's always the mom. It is always the true crime moms. Yeah. The true crime

moms are the ones who hold the can. I'm actually when you mentioned that, I was thinking about

a story that you and I did together called scary Terry was a podcast about Terry Lee Hoffman,

it was a cult leader in Dallas. And there was a tragic death associated with one of her followers

or the daughter of one of her followers and the stepmother. Gail. Gail. Gail forever. She is 85 years old.

And I'm driving through the neighborhood in North Dallas where this cult leader lived passing by the

house. And the she was like vibrating sadness, frustration, regret for everything that had happened

to her stepdaughter, Devoro 40 years earlier. And still remembered every single detail. Every detail

like it had happened yesterday. And it's just I feel like Linda is one of those people too. You know,

she just cared so much about finding the answers about what had happened to her boy and to her boy's

best friend. And she wasn't about to give that up, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely become

an archetype. We see it even in true crime fiction. Yes, they're all over the place. I mean,

this is just how some of these cases push through our families that truly deeply care about finding

the right answer. And in this case, I really feel like it would have ended here if it weren't for

people like Linda taking up the torch and making sure that they find answers.

Coming up, the families fight for answers and the shocking truths they reveal.

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Okay, so quick refresher. Yeah. These two boys Kevin and Don are found dead on the railroad tracks.

Train crew who's there say when the train was approaching, they see a tarp over them.

Right. A green tarp. When the cops show up, they're like, there is no tarp.

There was never a tarp. Yeah. And the medical examiner hastily performs an autopsy and rules the

cause of death. Accidental. And likely these boys were in a coma from smoking 20 marijuana cigarettes.

Right. Yeah. Case closed. And yeah. And the only people who seem to not be buying this are Kevin

and Don's parents. Yeah. Case closed. Move on. Let's go on to the next case. Right. The family's not

buying it at all. Linda Ives, Kevin's mom, Don's parents, Curtis and Lena, they refuse to accept

the official explanation. I'm not buying it at all either. Yeah. I mean, none of us are. And that's

where this story really starts to snowball into, you know, a capital C type conspiracy, which we'll

get to. Kevin's father at one point says, we're willing to go to any length to solve this thing.

All we want to know is what happened. If someone can convince us beyond a doubt that this is

what happened, we can let it go. But until then, as long as there's a doubt, we will pursue it.

Well, I couldn't believe that that Kevin was knocked out on marijuana or are in any kind of heavy

drugs, anything like that because I was a home lot during the day when Kevin came in from school

and Linda was here at night. And we'd never seen him in a state that he even act like he was

spaced out or however you want to phrase it. I just couldn't see any signs that he was into any kind

of heavy drugs or any kind of really drugs at all. So they continue to trudge forward knowing that

the official line on this story couldn't possibly be what happened that night, you know.

And what avenues do they have? Because it's not like there's a suspect in this.

Yeah, I mean, they're doing their own sort of questions. They're asking law enforcement,

they are talking to the train crew. They're doing records requests. They're looking for

inconsistencies. It's like they're conducting their own search and evaluation of the crime scene,

right? Well, they're investigating the investigation. Yeah, they really are. And so the family and local

citizens start to get involved. It really starts to snowball into something that looks a lot more

complicated than the official line is, you know, at one point they find this 22 rifle that Don Henry

had had in his possession that night. They find gold chains belonging to the boys in the forest.

I think I mentioned the foot. You know that your investigation has not been thorough if civilians

and family members are uncovering evidence like after the case has been effectively closed.

Yeah, I mean, if your family is going into the woods and finding things like somebody's body part,

you probably have not effectively finished your investigation like you missed a foot.

Yeah, it's unbelievable. Really, it sounds like a parody of a crime scene at this point. So

they make it their mission to find out what the hell really happened. We were absolutely puzzled

and outraged over the ruling of accidental as a matter of death. We didn't think that the

fact supported that ruling and what we started out to do was just to obtain a second opinion.

We met resistance from all fronts, from law enforcement, from the crime lab.

We retained an attorney, a private investigator, and obtained court orders to get

testable samples of everything that they had in order to get a second opinion. And family

malic refused to obey the court orders. So malic is also refusing to obey court orders to

Are you surprised? No, not at all. I mean, I think the family knew at this point that there was

something fishy about all of this. So they're getting resistance everywhere, but they are

uncovering information as they go. And one of the things that they learned from the hospital

was that there had been no intake or treatment record for these boys when they arrived.

What the hell is going on here? Yeah. And then there's accounts from like the EMTs and other people

involved, right? They said at the scene, the blood of the boys looked dark. That means it's

not fresh. Yeah, not fresh. So like Shirley Raper was one of the EMTs who was there at the time.

And she says we grabbed our paramedics equipment and took off down the tracks. Billy, who is the

other paramedic, reached the first body and he told me to stop and not come any closer. I just

observed the one body and occurred to me right off that it was strange because the lack of blood

and the color of the body parts and the color of the blood, the body parts had a pale color to them.

Like someone that had been dead for some time. So the idea there is is that they may have been killed

somewhere else and then placed on the tracks. Right. Yeah. And there was another professional

who said like the bodies looked more like mannequins. There was very little blood at the scene.

The impact site was very dark. The blood was just too dark for him to consider it normal.

So yeah, I mean, there's something else going on here. And meanwhile, the train crew is still saying

there was a tarp. There was a tarp covering these boys' bodies. And none of these details are

meaningfully being addressed by local law enforcement. Public pressure is mounting. A local

prosecutor approaches the family, a guy by the name of Dan Harmon. And he sort of offers to

represent the family. Okay. So they got an ally. There was no doubt in my mind that it was

homicide. I mean, there's no doubt in the injuries. Yeah. Now they got an ally. The public is

obviously in their court. The sheriff is getting a ton of pressure to reopen this case. He declines.

And then in early 1988. So it's about several months after the incident or in the boys died.

The new attorney holds a press conference. 17-year-old Kevin Ives and 16-year-old Don Henry

were struck by a train near Alexander. The medical governor had said that the boys were asleep

and drugged with marijuana. The parents, however, disputed that claim and persuaded authorities

to reopen the case. Would you like to give up your son and everybody think they was smoked up

and raped down and passed out? No. I don't think anyone wants to give up their kid.

Unless that is honestly proved to be the truth, then you have to accept that this point

has not been proved to both. The day after this press conference under the pressure from the public

sheriff steed, the sheriff at the time. And he relents and reopens the case with one condition,

which is so typical. No publicly criticizing him. He's tired of being under the microscope

of the family. I imagine there's so much distrust in their community right now.

I could also imagine that this guy was a little fragile and didn't want to be criticized and

didn't like the families working in his investigation, whatever he thought that investigation was.

But at this point now, things really do start to move. Celine County had a new deputy prosecutor

who had just been elected in. And he started a prosecutor's investigation, which was essentially

an inquiry into this case. And Dan Harmon, that guy who was representing the family who called

the press conference, he ends up being sort of pointed to this prosecution team that's looking

in to the case. And they convene a grand jury. This is kind of fascinating stuff. So yeah,

I'm not mistaken. Typically when a grand jury is convened, I feel like I know what you're going

to say. Yeah, there's a suspect. Right. Yeah. You usually are like preparing to indict somebody.

That's what's so wild about this case is that they weren't planning to indict anybody at this

point. They wanted to investigate this as a homicide. So a grand jury was convened as like

an investigative tool, essentially, as an investigative tool. So who's testifying in this grand jury?

Like in a grand jury without an indictment, they were basically trying to determine whether or not

there was a case here in that they could review this case. So they do in February of 1988 change

the official cause of death from accidental to undetermined. And this allows the grand jury to order

that the bodies of these boys are exhumed and reexamined from an independent medical examiner.

Grant your petition and do grant your petition for exhumation. There was somebody out in Atlanta

who also had access to more technology at the time to examine these bodies. And this is honestly

the moment where the story changes forever because that marijuana cigarette theory goes out the

window. Well, I should have never been in the window. There was definitely no reason for it to be

in the window. The THC the THC levels were low. So not 20 joints, nothing incapacitating. They had

had a couple of joints that night together. They had smoked some pot when they went out in the woods

to go hunting. But more important like it like you do in Arkansas in the woods in the late 1980s,

right? Maybe not me like didn't work out. But like more importantly, the physical trauma of the

bodies indicated that one of the boys was already dead or mortally wounded when the train struck.

So before the train struck. And the other was like the EMT's observed. Exactly. Right. Yeah,

that this body. These bodies were likely moved to this location and covered up with a tarp. And

covered up with a tarp. But there's more to this. The grand jury uncovers other failures. So at the

time that this happened, the sheriff had promised the public and individuals interested in the case

that there would be an FBI analysis of the boys clothing. But then he quietly sent it to the state

instead didn't even send it to the FBI for evaluation. And there are no consequences for

overpromising and underdelivering on these investigations for these people. So far. And a lot

of ways I feel like they were above the law because they felt like they were the law. And in many

ways, felt above this kind of critique from what they probably perceived to be the annoyances of

this family. And who knows how dogged they were. But if you lost a child, wouldn't you be?

You know, so I think, you know, the family was right to push forward. But they encountered

resistance. That was a lot darker and more complex than I think they could have imagined.

So through Malik's attorney who's lawyer it up at this point, he is still continuing to defend

his findings. His attorney stated, Dr. Malik has said he doesn't believe anybody laid a finger

on these boys. It's crazy how all of this could have been avoided had they just done a thorough

investigation here. Right. Some of the reporting from the time the second examiner who came in to

evaluate the case found that the bodies had very little marijuana in their systems and found

evidence of possible stab wounds and head trauma inflicted prior to the train strike. He concluded

that quote, one boy was already dead and one unconscious before the train ever hit them.

Understand how that part is probably harder to determine an autopsy when someone's already dead.

But stab wounds, that's going to be, you know, you can look at someone and know that they've been

stabbed. Yeah. Interesting how that was not included in the first report. Yeah. And maybe the

bodies weren't even looked at in the first report because they missed all kinds of things including

parts of the body that were missing. So I got to say at this point, this story starts to feel like

it's some kind of movie. Do you know what I mean? It just feels like they've made up this story

in like a writer's room somewhere, you know. Yeah, clearly. I mean, and think most of the time

doesn't have to be documented. You would think, but there's all this missing documentation,

including whether or not there was any sort of intake at the hospital at the night that this occurred.

So once the grand jury rules these deaths as probable homicides,

yeah, the accident theory is no more. Yeah, nobody believes that. Nobody believes that.

Something happened in the woods that night. So these boys were placed on these tracks. Right,

exactly. And so then the question kind of becomes not like what happened, but why?

Coming up, that capital C conspiracy we keep talking about blows the doors off this case.

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okay so the investigators are pursuing motive at this case and something comes up that seems

pretty consistent which is sort of drug related but of a whole nother scale that we haven't even

gotten into yet which is like 20 marijuana cigarettes way bigger than 20 marijuana cigarettes more

like 20 pounds a marijuana cigarettes if you catch my drift in the 1980s this area of Arkansas

was actually sort of a ground zero for narco trafficking that was happening from South America

into the United States they actually made a movie called American made with Tom Cruise as the lead

in which he played this guy Barry seal Barry seal was like a TWA pilot who ended up being consigned

to sort of traffic some of these drugs across the border and there was an airport not too far

from where the boys were killed called the Mina airport where a lot of the drug trafficking had

been happening in the 1980s the aircraft that did Barry seal had there at rich mountain aviation

where there was only one purpose for them there's only one use for that type of aircraft and that was

smuggle cocaine they had special cargo doors installed on the side without FAA permission

so that these doors could be opened in flight they'd pull in slide back and the cocaine could be

dropped outside in flight feels so random like Arkansas and drug trafficking don't necessarily go

hand in hand but you know low flying planes without a lot of people to come around to notice you

it's like the perfect strategy at the time and this guy Barry seal was already arrested and convicted

by the time the boys were killed but there was a trafficking infrastructure that had already been

built up in the area so people started to wonder do these boys see something yeah they saw something

there was a drug pipeline that was supposedly allegedly connected to CIA linked contra operations

out of Mina Arkansas just down the road out in the woods where these drops probably occur right exactly

yeah there's like these like these drops like maybe they saw something while they were spotlighting

they were spotlighted if you know what I mean that's wrong place wrong time yeah that hunting metaphor

was so chilling to me when I first started looking at the story so yeah let's talk about some of the

people the eyewitnesses that were coming forward as they start to reinvestigate this case one of

them claim that they saw two boys being beaten by what looked like two law enforcement officials

um and then thrown into the back of an unmarked car yeah and given what happened to Don and Kevin

I would be really nervous to speak out about what I saw there yeah exactly and now we also know

that there were stab wounds there was head trauma there was more than just the impact of the trains

that affected the boys that night when they died one of the witnesses was anonymous at the time he

said two cops drove up confront the boys beat them up throw them in the back seat of their car and drive

off I mean two cops this goes deep it really does this is when that lower case C is really taking shape

as an uppercase C if you will and this is when things get even weirder a woman by the name of

Charlene Wilson said that she was among several people who were in the field near the train tracks

awaiting a drug drop in the early morning hours of August 23rd 1987 so the same morning the

boys were hit by the train the people have to track that night to my knowledge were Dan Harmon

Keith McCaskill Larry Rochelle I do know that the boys were watching the drop side okay and they

got curious as to what was being dropped there it's another witness to that saying you know that one

of these was a cop like a narcotics officer and a separate report placed a man in military

fatigues near the tracks both a week before and on the night of the murder so who knows what that

means was it another hunter or was it somebody else staking out the spot if it was good for the

drop or whatever exactly and then people connected to this case start dying that's when this gets

that's really strange yeah that's big capital C conspiracy hallmark sign a bar owner assisting

the investigators as staffed a subpoenaed witness is shot another disappears entirely and yet

another dies after claiming that he knew too much the people whose testimony might have solved

this case years ago have systematically been eliminated there apparently was a great deal of fear

that these people could implicate very powerful players the eight month long grand jury investigation

into Kevin and Don's murder came to an abrupt halt December 31st 1988 last minute legal maneuvering

by Harmon Garrett and presiding judge John Cole prevented the jurors from revealing their findings

in the final report the men and women of the grand jury were sent home frustrated that they had not

been allowed to do their job the saline county special grand jury has now disbanded three hours

ago it delivered its final report on the deaths of two teenage boys but the grand jury was not allowed

to do what it wanted I know that because you could not repeat and the report much of the testimony

that you heard and evidence that you received that you are somewhat frustrated by and that's

understandable in the final analysis I know that the grand jury hated that at this point to give

it up because I think the public needs to know about the seriousness of the drug problem here in

Slinge County and maybe other surrounding county it was now two and a half years since the

incident of the boys on the tracks saline county deputy prosecutor Jean Duffy was asked to head up

the newly created drug task force the job would require her to investigate drug trafficking

in a three county area of Arkansas including saline county however on the day she was appointed

her boss prosecutor Gary Parland gave her a peculiar command Gary Arnold came into my office

stood in front of my desk looked me straight in the face and said jinging you are not to use the drug

task force to investigate any public official he turned on his heel and marched out

so none of these deaths are officially linked to Kevin and Don but there definitely is a pattern here

and then it gets even more fucked up years later the most devastating revelation surfaces which is

that prosecutor who came forward to help both with the family and then with the case

he's convicted on federal drug charges for racketeering extortion and drug trafficking every single

person who touches this case is somehow corrupt and yeah and the prosecutor who's like involved in

the case is actually getting in the mix in a way that why if he was involved with this why would

he offer up himself as an ally to the family it doesn't make sense to me unless he had a convenient

investment in it

okay so i know that at the beginning of this case we talked about little conspiracies and big

conspiracies we should probably get into some of these are just like lay them out for people the

first one is of course the drug smuggling in Arkansas we talked a lot about that the meaner airport

and its connection to the wider sort of like drug trafficking rings that were happening in that time

those two kind of track for me yeah they totally do and there were some federal implications

there was actual investigations into these into these drug trafficking rings that connected local

and state law enforcement to some of the trafficking rings that were happening again all of this

wide speculation but the widest regulation of all is the governor of Arkansas at the time was

Bill Clinton Bill Clinton yes so Bill Clinton had a relationship with Fommy Malik the medical

examiner he's the state medical examiner so it's not improbable that you have some association

with him so at one point Bill Clinton's mother who was a nurse was cleared by Malik of negligence

in the death of a 17 year old patient some people even said that Clinton kept Malik in his position

despite all these controversies in exchange for his favorable ruling and then after Malik comes

under fire for the case of Don and Kevin he actually recommends that first of all he dismisses

that there was any sort of miscarriage of justice here and also later recommends that Malik

receive a pay raise of 40 percent this is a year after he clearly botched this investigation

so ultimately though there's no direct evidence that substantiates the CIA or federal involvement

or the Clinton case but man does it add to the litany of conspiracy theories associated with this

no definitely not and Linda ives for her part continues to fight for decades to try to find answers

to this in 2016 she files a suit against multiple federal agencies seeking the unreleased records

associate with the case the court acknowledges the existence of federal records but they do not

compel whole disclosure and it's crazy how even if you are a victim of something like this

the barriers to accessing any kind of files 100 percent and she fought until really until the day

that she died and she died in 2021 without any answers this case remains unsolved

there was sort of an interesting coda to all this something that did come forward in recent years

there's always someone who comes out of the woodwork honestly the type of people who like

confessed to murders they didn't commit there's like it's it's an interesting pathologist to me

i'm Billy Jack Haynes former world wrestling federation wrestler today i come with no mask

i come with no hidden voice i come to you straight face to face because this is reality man

don't hide nothing 30 years ago i witnessed a murder of two teenagers in a railroad tracks

august 23rd Alexander Arcon saw 27 years of that i was a drug addict on pain pill medication

i become clean they kept bothering me and bothering me and bothering me and finally

when Seth Ritz was killed July 10th i knew that was a message to me because that's my birthday

July 10th so here i am coming forward this is a plea that i'm going to read here for you today

the plea is for those who is yet to contribute to the golf fund me

dot com Kevin i's Don Henry murders that happened 30 years ago

please contribute to the fund so that the investigators can take advantage of his work

yeah it is it is interesting how people just want to like get themselves involved in a case like

this but who knows if he actually did see something but you know watching that

sort of confession observation video it does seem like somebody who lived with the guilt

the guilt of it take it for what it is but like i said this case remains one of the most

fascinating most speculated on unsolved crimes that i've ever encountered

we're talking about it nearly 30 years later yeah since this case has never been solved

we're left with a few theories here right you know it obviously wasn't weed no definitely not

you know did they see something they weren't supposed to yeah i'm kind of leaning that way

i think they saw something they weren't supposed to were the Clintons involved i don't know yeah

i'm going to reserve opinion on that that feels like you have it whole for another podcast

um but i'm curious when everybody else thinks yeah tell us what you think we want to know

thank you so much for joining us on crime scene today before i leave you

i wanted to give you a sneak peek at an upcoming binge series it's called my mother's lies it's

hosted by bath carous it digs into the Jessica current murder case a highly controversial case

that is still in the courts and it's told from the perspective of the son of an amateur sleuth

who helped put away a person for murder on dubious evidence you're going to want to check this one out

here's a sneak peek of the story right here it's called my mother's lies it's coming out April

first on the binge susan gabrith wasn't a journalist or a cop she was a housewife in mayfield

Kentucky but after a black teenager named Jessica current is murdered in town susan takes it upon

herself to find witnesses who can point to a killer she was just wasting away till she jumped onto

this and and she thought this was going to be her magic star and she's going to be a hero but that's

not what happened i was learning in real time the lies there was a lot of lies what were susan's real

motives for trying to solve this murder she wasn't in it to help them find the killer that killed their

why then did local cops and the Kentucky state police take her seriously that was known that

she was getting funds from them susan's son is wrestling with his mother's legacy to this day

i mean my mom was i used the word diabolical to know that she possibly covered up a murder for

somebody and perhaps the biggest question of all did she help convict an innocent man

i do feel like that they got the wrong piece from sony music entertainment and message heard

this is my mother's lies thanks so much for joining us on crime scene this show is a production

of sony podcast and the binge thank you to everyone who makes this show happen each week also

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