Boys on the Tracks

but it's still a bit over the steu-a.

No, no, it's not. This steu-a is my safe space. Hmm, do you think it's all right? Yeah, exactly. This steu-a is a steu-a-a,

which is easy to understand. A garal-op-studium, job-or-um-zo. Steu-a-n-d-cras. I don't feel like steu-a-n-an. Steu-a-n-l-ed-it.

Safe. Medvisou steu-a. 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 disappear

in the show where we tell the stories behind the world's most unforgettable crimes. And this case has baffled investigators and the public alike. The story that begins in what appears to be a free accident, but quickly escalates into a terrifying conspiracy. Perhaps, the most egregious in our nation's history.

This week on the show, Story of Dawn, Henry, and Kevin Ives. From Sony podcast and the binge, this is the story of the boys on the tracks. [music playing] Hey, everyone, and welcome to Crime Scene.

I'm Jonathan Hirsch. And I'm Cooper Mal. Okay, so before we get started on boys and 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? It's like mob stuff. Yeah, yeah, mob stuff, right? Yeah, exactly. Like lower case C conspiracies. Those are the cases where people are part of some kind of criminal network.

Then there's like a upper case C conspiracy. Yeah, like the 5G towers and lizard people, deep state kind of stuff. Exactly.

“Yeah, like, where were you on the grassy note that day?”

Um, or, you know, is 9/11 an 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. [music playing] Okay, so our story starts on August 22nd, 1987 in Celine 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 beyond the city. And Kevin Isves and Don Henry

are set to hang out with each other. They're 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 I never heard of that.

I'm not from the south or the 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, this, like, different type of country hijinks.

Yeah, this is definitely, like, a little bit more hardcore than cow tipping. Or maybe, I don't know. I've never counted. You tell me.

Yeah, me neither. Okay, all right, all right. So we'll leave that for another time. Confirm nor deny. But, yeah, so this is, like, you know,

the kind of thing that these guys would do 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, you know, a weekend night and, and go hunting.

and they hang out, I think they smoke some dough.

“Is it going to be staying out in real life from how it is to be full?”

This is before. Is that what people do? Yeah, I haven't done that. 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 go hunting in the middle of a night.

They're going to be out all night. We may not hear from them. This is before cell phones and all the tagging and find my and all of that. Exactly. Yeah.

Nobody was like, you know, checking in on,

like, their geo locators 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. on sort of the outskirts of Los Angeles. And the Union Pacific train still run just by our house. And it, the massive, they're loud. Like, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took it, took

like ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch- on the tracks. - I'm just getting 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's the, so try to as 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. And 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. - Oh, that's got to be so traumatic knowing there's just nothing you can do.

You just have to keep going. - Yeah, the conductor said he replayed that moment in his mind for like years. - Yeah, how could you not? - Yeah, 'cause he was like kind of 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 has 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 what it has to make about three to five seconds to impact. And that may not sound like a very long period of 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 probably come bust.

- 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? They were out, they were out spotlighting, yeah. - Yeah, they were doing this spotlighting thing, which of course, naturally, you know, we all know what's the spotlighting of them.

But there's a shattered rifle near the bodies. So in the pre-done 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 were able to observe the scene prior to the accident, stated that the boys were partially covered by a green tarp.

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 uncovered this rifle that was shattered, which obviously makes sense

because they were out there in the woods. - I think, yeah. - 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?”

- There are many, the paramedics. - Yeah. - The paramedics picked up the tarp from the boys. - I believe they had it coming out in the rear road, anyway. They had they had body bags.

- Right. - The man who you're picking up, you know.

- But separate from the body bag was a tarp.

- Right, right. - Remember what color it was? - I can't remember everything is kind of in the CRC. You know, really didn't pay that bang much attention. - No, it was some kind of a tarp.

- You know, it wasn't a bad body bag. - Dr. Hadith, you know, more or less. Hold it. - And closer to the man there, they got it now, 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 that.

- 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 the tarp was there.

“And I think the reason the tarp is an interesting point”

is 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.

- So it's how it definitely comes to mind. - So it's how it 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 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. - Yeah, this was staged. They were being hit.

- Somebody else was there. - Yeah, so the tarp thing kind of leaves us in a place where like this is something maybe it'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 a night as an accident, that seems like a little bit preemptive. Do you know what I mean?

- Yeah. - We were told to work as an accident, you know, are the investigators told to work as action, and it was not the time and the emphasis put into the right direction at the scene.

- So after this, we get to the examination, the autopsy, and the state medical examiner is a guy named Dr. Fommi Malik, and Dr. Fommi 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 homicide.

So the state medical examiner arrives to perform an autopsy and determine the cause of death in the case of these boys. - A tough one, considering, you know, I don't wanna be morbid, 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?

and the Arkansas Times by Rodler Rens

“in which it's sort of a takedown of Dr. Fommi Malik.”

He says that Dr. Fommi 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 roboses, like the entitlement, you know? Inside, he lavishes these in a quarterly way upon the governor's secretaries who know him as the benevolent Dr. Malik,

a native Egyptian with polished manners and a worldly charm. - So it's 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.

And public Malik likes to do everything with the flourish,

and he's always chauffered 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 exam in our behavior.

“I picture them as always like fairly low key.”

- Yeah, right, like VIP C set 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 in the evaluation of this case. - This is the guy who's like the smoke and mirrors reputation here.

- 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. - He's just problematic. - And a reputation for mischaracterizing cases.

- Yeah. - So there's things in people's minds that 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 this gap. - 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 two 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, I'm not a marijuana expert by any stretch of the imagination.

I was raised by a pothead in Northern California, so I have a little bit of anecdotal information. It's not really my thing, necessarily, but the little's like, yeah, maybe not, yeah.

- Okay, so I was like, I've dabbled a bit. And what I can't help with the thing about was like the weed in 1987. - Yes, that's the you kick out of the dirt. - That's not like 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 to a zero on the dance floor. And I should have known what was being given to you right. - Yeah, you know, different times.

- 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. I've had some kind of traumatic brain event is just paper thin, I mean. - I crawled up next to my wife and like couldn't talk.

- Yeah, last time I ate you, I thought I had

a brain injury as a, yeah, definitely, yeah. That's a phenomenal picture. - But then it wears off, right? And then you're fine, or you have an embarrassing story to tell you?

- 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 gonna 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, I weren't peak weed, moral panic, like prees.

- This is more on drugs, huh?

- Exactly, right. - Yeah, this is a, you know, I don't know if it was a schedule 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 us a determination, but even then it really didn't hold Mr. the toxicologists outside of the case were questioning this ruling and obviously the family didn't feel like there are two boys who they knew dabbled

but didn't see them as like these crazy, just normal kid stuff. - Right. They weren't smoking 20 cigarette weed cigarettes. - And we don't say marijuana anymore, 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 the 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. - For where this happened.

- Giant freeing train. - Yeah, and in one case 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 at 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. 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.

- Definitely 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 cover began immediately expanded

to the medical examiner from Emeallic. - 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 a can. I'm actually, when you mentioned that, I was thinking about a story that you and I did together called Scary Terry, it was a podcast about Terry Lee Hoffman,

it was a colt 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 forever. She is 85 years old and I'm driving through the neighborhood

in North Dallas where this colt leader lived, passing by the house. And she was like vibrating sadness, frustration, regret, for everything that I happened to her stepdaughter Devaro, 40 years earlier.

- And so 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. She just cared so much about finding the answers

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 are 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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Add free by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. - What podcast, Karen, tell us.

“- Oh, it's called "Blink Jekandle" story.”

I created it about a man named Jake who I met who is the only survivor of a terminal brain illness brought on by heroin use. But there is a lot of mystery and medical malpractice and true crime elements that are very shocking

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- Okay, so quick or fresher. These two boys, Kevin and Dawn are found dead on the railroad tracks. Treen 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 is never a tarp. - Yeah.

- And the medical who's in there 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 Dawn'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. Dawn's parents, Curtis and Lena, they refuse to accept the official explanation.

- And 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 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 Kevin was knocked out on marijuana or in to any kind of heavy drugs anything like that because I was home a 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 in to 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? 'Cause 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 is 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.

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 accidentalism and of death.

We didn't think that the fact supported that ruling and what we started out to do was just to have

a tiny 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 men like refused to obey the court orders.

- So Malik is also refusing to obey court orders. - Absolutely. - 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 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 Rapeur 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 was 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've got an ally.

There's no doubt in my mind that it was homicide. I mean, there's no doubt in the country. - In Jerry's mind. - 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 where the boys died,

the new attorney holds a press conference. 17-year-old Kevin Ayes and 16-year-old Don Henry were struck by a train near Alexander. The medical examiner 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 Lee was smoked up in late date and passed out?

No, I don't think anyone wants to give up their care.

“Unless that is honestly proved to be the truth,”

then you have to accept that this point he has not been proved to us. - The day after this press conference under the pressure from the public, Sheriff Steed, the sheriff at the time,

and he relance and reopens the case with one condition, which is so typical. No publicly criticizing Lee's tired of being under the microscope. - I'm not sure there's a family.

- 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 Lee's family. - Lee's definitely not there yet.

- He does not know anything 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,

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 into the case, and they convene a grand jury. This is kind of fascinating stuff. So if-- - Yeah. - I'm not mistaken, typically when a grand jury

is convened, I feel like I know what you're gonna 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, as an investigative tool. - So who's testifying in this grand jury?

- Like an grand jury without an indictment, they were basically trying to determine whether or not there was a case here and 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 re-examined from an independent medical examiner. - Right, your petition and do grand your petition

for accumation. - There was somebody out in Atlanta who also had access to more, you know, 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 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 importantly, 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 EMTs observed. - Exactly, right. Yeah, that this body--

these bodies were likely moved to this location. - And covered up with the 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 over promising and under delivering on these investigations for these people. - No, in 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 dog it they were. But if you lost a child, wouldn't you be?

“- So I think 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 Malach's attorney, who's lawyer it up at this point, he is still continuing to defend his findings. His attorney stated, "Dr. Malach has said,

"He doesn't believe anybody, late a finger, on these boys." It's crazy how all of this could have been avoided how 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."

- And you're saying how that part is probably harder to determine an autopsy when she's already dead, but stab wounds, that's gonna be, 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 gotta say at this point, this story starts to feel

like it's some kind of movie. Do you know what I mean?

in a, in like a writer's room somewhere, you know?

- Yeah, clearly. I mean, and think most of the time,

“doesn't this stuff 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,

the accident theory is, is no more. - Yeah, nobody believes that. - Nobody believes that. - Something happened in the woods. - Bullshit.

- So, there's 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 of this case.

- Thanks so much for joining us on Crime Scene. Be sure to like, subscribe, and follow wherever you watch your listen. You can get exclusive content from us, and over 50 jaw dropping true Crime series, ready to binge ad-free right now.

By subscribing to the binge on Apple Podcasts, or go to getthebinge.com to explore all the true Crime series. - Infamous is the gossip show that's smart. We talk about Tyra Banks and bringing down top model. We talk about Jenna Jamison

and how she dominated the 90s. - You know, she's horny and she's in charge. She just was very smart about marketing herself. - We talk about celebrities who maybe shouldn't be celebrities. Like the Beckham guy.

- Brooklyn is their first kid.

He's had a little bit of the Neppo baby curse. - We investigate orgasm cults. - A woman's erotic power can unlock many other powers in her life. - And, of course, we discuss people who have gotten into lots of trouble.

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“was the only thing I'm guilty of is being shot amazing.”

- Listen to Infamous, the gossip show that's smart. The show's called Infamous. Sabrina, Karen. - I have been listening to a new show from the binge called Fatal Fantasy.

I am obsessed. - Wait, wait, I need to know more, telling you. - Tell me everything. - I will. It's a very shocking.

It's like ultra weird crime story of a murder

for a higher plot that, yeah, wait for it. Leverage the dynamics of the underworld and underworld being a medieval fantasy game. - Wait, so it's live action, role playing gone wrong. - Horribly wrong.

- And you can binge all episodes now. - Oh my, that sounds so good. I know what I'm doing on my drive home today. - Search for Fatal Fantasy and subscribe to the binge podcast channel on Apple Podcasts

or at GetTheBinge.com. - And then once you're done,

“you can listen to one of the over 60 true crime”

and investigative podcasts a part of the channel while you wait for the next month's drop. I really need to know what happens. - Selfishly, you do, so that we can talk about it. - So whenever you listen, search for Fatal Fantasy

and hit subscribe to the binge to get all episodes. All it wants, add free, stories, including your subscription. (upbeat music) - 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 other scale that we haven't even gotten into yet, which is like-- - She's like-- - She's like 20 marijuana cigarettes?

- Way bigger than 20 marijuana cigarettes, more like 20 pounds of 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. - It's the aircraft that had been very sealed, had there at Richmond 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 one. Cargo doors installed in the side

without if they permission. So that these doors could be opened in flight and pull in a slide back and cocaine could be dropped outside in flight. - Feel 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 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, - Did these boys see something? - Yeah, they were supposed to.

- They were supposed to. - There was a drug pipeline that was supposedly allegedly connected to CIA-linked contra operations out of Mina Arkansas to tear down the road.

“In the woods, were these drops probably occur, right?”

- Exactly, yeah, there's like these drops, like maybe they saw something. While they were spot lighting, they were spot lighted. If you know what I mean, that's right. - Wrong place, wrong time.

- Yeah, that hunting metaphor was so chilling to me

when I first started looking at this 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 claimed that they saw two boys being beaten by what looked like two law enforcement officials

and then thrown into the back of an unmarked car. - Yeah, given what happened to Donning Kevin, I would be really nervous to speak out about what I saw there. - Yeah, exactly, and now we also know that there were stat 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. And 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 upper case 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, a waiting a drug drop in the early morning hours of August 23rd, 1987. - It's the same morning the boys were hit by the train. - The people at the track that night to my knowledge

were Dan Harmon, Keith McCaskel, Larry O'Shill. - I do know that the boys were watching the drop site. Okay, and they got curious as to what was being dropped there. - It's another witness, too, that saying, you know, that one of these was a comp,

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, those good for the drop or whatever. - Exactly, and then people connected to this case, start dying, that's when this gets really strange. - Yeah, that's big capital C conspiracy, hallmark sign.

- A bar owner assisting the investigators who stopped a subpoenaed witness is shot. Another disappears entirely and yet another dies after claiming that he knew too much. - The people who's 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 months long grand jury investigation into Kevin and Don's murder came to an abrupt halt thecember 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 Celine 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 had 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 at this point to give it up

“because I think the public needs to know”

about the seriousness of the problem here in Celine County. - And maybe other surrounding counties. (upbeat music) - It was now two and a half years since the incident of the boys on the tracks.

Celine 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 Celine County.

Parnell 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,”

Jeanine, 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 they're 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 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.”

(upbeat music) (indistinct chatter) - 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,

or 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 mean at airport and its connection to the wider sort of 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 who 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 speculation of all is the Governor of Arkansas. The other time was Bill Clinton.

- Bill Clinton.

“- Yes, so Bill Clinton had a relationship”

with FOMI mallik, the medical examiner. He's the state medical examiner. So it's not improbable to have some association with him. So at one point, Bill Clinton's mother, who was a nurse, was cleared by mallik of negligence

in the death of a 17 year old patient. Some people even said that Clinton kept mallik in his position despite all these controversies in exchange for his favorable ruling. And then after mallik 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 mallik received a pay raise of 40%. 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 a so-called investigation?

- It's not making this case look any better. - No, definitely not. And Linda, Ives for her part, continues to fight for decades to try to find answers to this. In 2016, she follows a suit against multiple federal agencies

seeking the unreleased records associated with the case. The court acknowledges the existence of federal records, but they do not compel whole disclosure. - It's crazy how even if you are a victim of something like this, the barriers to accessing any kind of files.

- 100% and she fought until really until the day that she died. She died in 2021 without any answers. This case remains unsolved. There was sort of an interesting code to all of this, something that did come forward in recent years.

- There's always someone who comes out of the litany.

- It's like the type of people who can fast to murders that they didn't commit. There's like it's interesting pathologists to me. - I'm Billy Jack King's 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

and a railroad tracks August 23rd, Alexander Arkham saw. 27 years of that, I was a drug addict on pain,

I'd become clean. They kept bothering me and bothering me

and bothering me and finally,

when Seth 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 gonna read here for you today.”

The plea is for those who is yet to contribute to the golf fund me. Dotcom, Kevin Eisen, Don Henry Motors, that happened 30 years ago. Please contribute to the fund

so that the investigators can kick the genie was work. - Yeah, it is. It is interesting how people just want to get themselves involved. In a case like this, but who knows if he actually did see something,

but 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.

Yes, as this case has never been solved

for a life with a few theories here, right? You know, it obviously wasn't weed. - No, definitely.

“- 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 gonna reserve a opinion on that. - That feels like you have a rabbit hole for another podcast. - But I'm curious when everybody else thinks. - Yeah, tell us what you think.

We wanna 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 Beth Carrus. 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 gonna wanna 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 1st on the bench.

- Susan Gabbreth 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 she thought this was gonna be her magic star and she's gonna be a hero. - But that's not what happened. - So I was learning in real time to Lies,

there was a lot of Lies. - What were Susan's real motives for trying to solve this murder? - She was, and then it's had them find the killer that killed their daughter.

- 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 to wear a 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 people.

- Getting funds for it up, a murder that I've always

in any attempt on the case. - Why, there's a lot of lives. - 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, we love journalism. These stories are deeply informed by the reporting that has brought these cases to light.

We stand on the shoulders of giants. To learn more about our sourcing, check out the extensive bibliography listed in our show note. Be sure to like, subscribe, and follow wherever you watch your listen. You can get exclusive content from us

and over 50 jaw dropping true crime series ready to binge ad-free right now. By subscribing to the binge on Apple Podcasts, or go to getthebinge.com to explore all the true crime stories included in your subscription.