A Murder Mystery: Two Boys on the Tracks Part 1
A Story Explaining Some of the Clinton Body Count and the Iran-Contra Affair
Two Boys Found On The Tracks
On August 23, 1987, two boys, Don Henry (16 years old) and Kevin Ives (17 years old), went spotlighting in Celine County near Alexander, Arkansas. Spotlighting, for those that don't know, is when you go hunting in the middle of the night with a flashlight. One person uses the flashlight to light up a target and stun the prey by shining the light in its eyes. A second person shoots the target. Being best friends, this was something that the two boys did often at this location. So at 1 am, the two friends set off to a well known location to engage in the late night illegal hunting activity.
However, at approximately 4 am, a freight train en route to Little Rock, Arkansas spotted the two boys laying motionless and partly covered by a green tarp across the tracks about 300 feet ahead. The engineers blew the trains horn and employed their emergency brakes. Despite the light from the train and the blowing horn, neither body moved. And despite the engineer's best efforts, the 75 car, 6,000 ton Union Pacific freight train going more than 50 miles per hour was unable to stop in time.
The train ran over the bodies of the two boys. The train was over a mile long. Over 1,000 feet of the train ran over the spot where the two boys lay before coming to a full stop.
Police were called and arrived at the scene at 4:40 am. A .22 caliber rifle and flashlight were gathered as evidence. (No green tarp was found.)
Stephen Shroyer's Account
Stephen Shroyer was the train's engineer. He immediately knew something was wrong before the train ran over the bodies of the two boys.
To him, it looked like they had been laid out by someone. They were lying exactly parallel on the tracks; their legs were across the rails, their torsos were between the tracks, and their arms were straight down by their sides. They were partially covered by a light green tarp. Lying parallel to both of them was Don’s .22 rifle. Neither of them were moving. When Stephen laid down on the diesel horn, he got no reaction from them. The train then went over them.
— Unsolved Mysteries Wiki: Don Henry and Kevin Ives
The position of the bodies are important to note here. Why? When the train went over the bodies, it left the torsos intact.
Dr. Malak and The First Autopsy
The Arkansas state medical examiner at that time was Dr. Fahmy Malak. He concluded that the boys had passed out on the tracks from smoking 20 marijuana cigarettes and never heard, saw, or felt the oncoming freight train before they were run over. The death was ruled by him to be an accident.
Ummm... okay. Case closed. Mystery solved. End of story, right? Right? ...
The parents of the boys, Curtis Henry and Larry and Linda Ives, didn't accept that answer and pushed to have a second autopsy done.
LA Times: Clinton’s Ties to Controversial Medical Examiner Questioned
The Second Autopsy
So, a second autopsy was performed.
Newly appointed prosecutor Richard Garrett had Kevin and Don’s bodies exhumed for a second autopsy to be performed by a noted expert." This would have been by Dr. Joseph Burton, a Georgia medical examiner. "This doctor concluded that together, they had smoked not twenty, but between one and three marijuana cigarettes. Friends who were with them that night confirmed this amount.
— Unsolved Mysteries Wiki: Don Henry and Kevin Ives
This is the first discrepancy.
He also found evidence to indicate that one of them was already dead and one unconscious when the train hit them.
— Unsolved Mysteries Wiki: Don Henry and Kevin Ives
This is the second discrepancy.
Furthermore, he found evidence that Dr. Malak did not follow proper procedures when conducting the autopsies.
— Unsolved Mysteries Wiki: Don Henry and Kevin Ives
Don't things usually happen in threes?
Don Henry’s t-shirt was analyzed by an expert pathologist. Cuts in the fabric indicated that Don was stabbed before the train ran over him.
In July 1988, a grand jury reversed Dr. Malak’s original finding of accidental death and officially ruled their deaths 'probable homicides'.
— Unsolved Mysteries Wiki: Don Henry and Kevin Ives
It would seem as if Dr. Malak wasn't totally on the up-and-up. Let's come back to this in just a minute.
The First Witness - Keith Coney
Keith Coney was the first witness to come forward in this case. He was with both Don and Kevin the night that they died. He supposedly told his family and friends that law enforcement officials were responsible for the two murders.
Two days later, Keith has his throat slashed by an attacker. He hops on his motorcycle to get away. At some point, he loses control, crashes and dies. Some reports say that he was run off the road by a pursuing car.
No investigation is opened. No autopsy is performed. The official story was that he died in a car accident.
Surely, that is just a coincidence.
The Second Witness - Keith McKaskle
Keith McKaskle comes forward a few months later and gives evidence and testimony to Richard Garrett.
At some point, Keith gets spooked and I mean really scared. He starts saying goodbye to family and friends. He starts giving away his possessions. He even plans his own funeral. He was afraid for his life.
Two days later, Keith is found dead in his garage having been stabbed 113 times. Police, Richard Garrett and Don Harmon, who is the Saline County Prosecutor, all deny that Keith's death had any relationship to Don and Kevin's murders.
His neighbor was convicted of the murder.
The Third Witness - Gregory Allen Collin
Another witness came forward — Gregory Allen Collin.
Gregory's mother was found dead in Dallas County, Arkansas. She had been shot by a .38 caliber pistol.
Two months after that, Gregory was subpoenaed to go give testimony to a grand jury. He never showed up. The grand jury was disbarred.
A month after that in January 1989, Gregory was found dead. He was killed by a shotgun blast to the face.
There was never any trial for his death.
The Fourth Witness - Booney Bearden
That following March, the fourth witness disappeared. Police found his shirt floating in the Arkansas River. An anonymous caller said that Booney was murdered.
Woodrow May, an admitted drug dealer now in the state penitentiary, said that Boonie was in the middle of all of it. He also said that Boonie was very smart and that he wasn't dead.
The Fifth Witness - Jeff Rhodes
In April 1989, the fifth witness, Jeff Rhodes, disappeared. His charred body was found two weeks later in a burnt dumpster. He had been shot and his body was badly mutilated with a knife.
His father said that during a phone call two weeks earlier his son had told him he had to get out of town because he knew about the Henry, Ives, and McKaskle murders.
A man named Frank Pilcher Jr. was convicted of Rhodes' s death.
The Sixth Witness - Richard Winters
In the summer of 1989, two years after Don Henry and Kevin Ives died, yet another suspect in their deaths, Richard Winters, was gunned down in what appeared to be a robbery staged to cover a murder. The year before, Winters had been called as the witness to appear before the grand jury.
It has never been established whether Richard Winters' claims were idle talk or not. He died while participating in an armed robbery of a crap game in Lonoke County. When Winters and an accomplice broke in, one of the intended victims, apparently not surprised, opened fire with a 12-guage sawed off shotgun.
Calloway, who is said to have planned the burglary, is now serving time in a federal prison in Texas for providing the supposedly intended victim of the burglary with the gun that was used to kill Winters.
The Seventh Witness - James Milam
There was also a James Milam. He was another witness to the deaths. He died from decapitation. Dr Fahmy Malak ruled that he had died of natural causes... and that a dog ate his head.
That same year of 1989, James Milam had been found decapitated in his home and with his head missing. Medical examiner Fahmy Malak claimed the death to be of natural causes, brought on by an ulcer. He also claimed that Milam’s small dog had eaten its owner’s head. Milam’s head was later found in a trash bin several blocks away, leading Malak to state that the dog had regurgitated the head. Milam was reportedly a witness to the Mena drug operation and to the murders of Kevin Ives and Don Henry.
— The Murders of Kevin Ives and Don Henry
Surely, That Is the End of It... Maybe?
No. Not exactly.
Authorities in Saline County continued to insist that the mess of drugs and murders that plagued the area were being aggressively investigated. But that wasn’t exactly true.
In June of 1990, another convicted drug dealer was found shot to death in the driveway of a house near Lake Hamilton in Garland County. Jordan Colin Ketelsen, the son of reputed drug-dealer Ron Ketelsen and the man named as a suspect in the stabbing death of Keith McKaskle, died of a single shotgun blast to the head. Garland County sheriff's deputies ruled the death a suicide.
Ketelsen's girlfriend said she'd witnessed the shooting. There was no further investigation.
The Body Count So Far
You know... I am not really sure. At this point of the story, which I have severely condensed down, we have 2 boys, 7 witnesses, 1 mother, and a whole slew of suspects (many I didn't even mention) who have disappeared and/or been killed. All of these people were tied to the murder of two boys, Don Henry and Kevin Ives.
Three years prior, there was also a similar murder 200 miles away. In 1984, two boys, William "Bilie" Hainline and Dennis Decker, were found on the tracks in Hodgen, Oklahoma just like Don and Kevin.
So What Exactly Caused All Of This?
The boys stumbled across something they weren't supposed to. The popular and most likely scenario was they stumbled onto a large drug trafficking ring. But this wasn't just any drug trafficking ring. This one had ties... all the way to the Arkansas State Governor and the White House.
Let me explain.
Dr. Fahmy Malak Explained
Dr. Fahmy Malak was a forensic pathologist who took over the office of Arkansas Chief Medical Examiner in 1981.
The previous Chief Medical Examiner was Dr. Stephen Marx. When Marx left, he left amid a string of controversies. For example, "Marx had not documented a bullet hole in 'drowning' victim Millicent Lynn's head. In another case, Marx had wrongly ruled that prison inmate Richard Fuller had died of a heart infection rather than from a broken neck."
If you are guessing that there was a little bit of corruption going around, you would be correct.
By the way, Malak was appointed by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.
Public Pressure, Third Autopsy, and Another Grand Jury
In 1990, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton caved to mounting public pressure regarding the boys' deaths. Two out of state pathologists were called in and another autopsy was performed.
Another grand jury was convened. However, Governor Bill Clinton would not allow the pathologists to be subpoenaed.
Jay Campbell was one of the local cops who was subpoenaed.
Dan Lancaster, convicted cocaine dealer in 1986, later revealed that Jay Campbell would fly with on his private plan. Some of these flight were for running drugs.
Jay Campbell later became sheriff of Saline County.
Jean Duffy - Drug Task Force
In 1990, a new head of the drug task force comes onto the scene. Jean Duffy starts putting pieces together. Shortly afterward, she is threatened and run out of town. She later made the statement:
I didn’t understand the power of the political machine back then, but after being persuaded by the FBI to assist in an investigation they opened in 1994, I learned of connections to the CIA, Mena, and drug-smuggling. I finally understood; to solve the train deaths case would be to expose the crimes of Mena, and no government agent who has come close to doing either has survived professionally.
Wait... the CIA?
Barry Seal
In the 1980's, under the Reagan administration, Barry Seal got into some trouble. Some serious trouble. He ended up going to Washington DC and cutting a deal that would keep him out of prison. He was to become an informant for the government.
Seal ended up testifying that he worked for the DEA. And he made over $600,000 a year doing it. He also gave testimony that he was used by the CIA to help finance the Nicaraguan Contras. In fact, one of the planes that the CIA gave him was shot down and was full of weapons. Surprise! Surprise!
Oh by the way, Barry Seal was later murdered.
In 1986, Seal was killed in a hail of machine-gun fire outside a Baton Rouge Salvation Army halfway house after allegedly crossing Pablo Escobar and the Medellin drug cartel.
Arkansas Gazette: Activities at airport in Mena detailed
Before I Explain The Iran-Contra Affair
Okay. There are books, documentaries, and even feature films which have been made regarding parts of the Iran-Contra Affair. I could write a novel and still not explain everything. There are so many threads to it. So I am going to describe the broad scope of this and then break down the part that we are concerned about.
Oh, and if you do want to watch the movies regarding this, you have a choice.
Snowfall - A look at the early days of the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles during the beginning of the 1980s.
Air America - A young pilot finds himself recruited unwittingly into a covert and corrupt CIA airlift operation in Laos during the Vietnam conflict. This is the wrong country but is about the same CIA operation. It stars Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr.
American Made - The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair. It features Tom Cruise. This is the one that I would recommend. It actually mentions the presidents who were involved.
If you want to see a documentary on it, there are several. COVER UP: Behind the Iran Contra Affair is probably the best known one. I have provided a link.
The Reagan Doctrine
President Ronald Reagan defines the key concepts of his foreign policy in his State of the Union address. This later became known as the “Reagan Doctrine.”
Freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few; it is the universal right of all God’s children.
— Ronald Reagan
“We must stand by our democratic allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.” Reagan concluded, “Support for freedom fighters is self-defense.”
The doctrine served as the foundation for support of “freedom fighters” around the globe, of which included the rebel Contras in Nicaragua.
Reagan described the Contras as “the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers.” One problem. Much of the Contras financial funding came from Nicaragua’s cocaine trade. Enter Congress’ decision to pass the Boland Amendment.
History: The Reagan Doctrine is Announced
The Boland Amendment
The Boland Amendment was a piece of US legislation introduced in 1982 that prohibited further financial assistance to the Contras in Nicaragua for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government.
The Iran-Contra Affair
So sometime between 1981 and 1986, a plan was hatched. America would enter the worldwide smuggling business and finance the Contras in Nicaragua. However, it didn't stop just there. This was a huge operation that didn't ever end and seems to be ongoing if America's current drug problem is any indication.
This would all be done through the CIA, the DEA, and government contractors. It ultimately involved everything from weapons to drugs to human trafficking. This would become known as the Iran-Contra Affair.
Mena Airfield
In 2020, the FBI released over 1,000 pages on the airport in Mena, Arkansas.
The [Mena] airport, from 1981 to 1985, was a major transit point for the entrance of cocaine and heroin into the United States. The estimated value of the narcotics smuggled through the facility is $3 [billion] to $5 billion. For a portion of this time, the alleged ringleader of the drug smuggling, Seal, appeared to have been working with the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Agency. The goal was to expose the involvement of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime as a major supplier of cocaine from Colombia.
— Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Activities at airport in Mena detailed
And courtesy of Judicial Watch, we found out that Arkansas officials and politicians were briefed, which would have presumably included the Governor of Arkansas at that time, Bill Clinton.
Drugs were flown in but never made it to the airport. They were airdropped from the planes at designated drop zones, such as along railroad tracks, where they would be picked up.
Judicial Watch FOIA Request: CIA Mena Report (screenshot from Page 22 )
Mena Uncovered: Judicial Watch Discloses Secret CIA Report