The Boys on the Tracks, Part I: More Unsolved Murders in Arkansas?

Kevin Ives and Don Henry


July 29, 1998


In the late 1980s, two boys died on lonely train tracks in Arkansas. The case could be destined to be another one of Arkansas' unsolved murders. Or is the truth really known, but being concealed by powerful people in high places? Here's part one of senior reporter Gary Lane's special investigation.

It's late August, 1987, in Arkansas' Saline County ... a time when simmering summer nights slowly surrender to the approach of autumn. A freight train passing through the tiny town of Alexander makes an emergency stop just beyond the bodies of two teenage boys found lying across the tracks.

Arkansas medical examiner Dr. Fahmy Malak concludes that Don Henry and Kevin Ives had smoked twenty marijuana cigarettes and then passed out on the tracks.

"Their bodies had been lying in identical positions according to the train crew, and my thought was, 'If they were so stoned, why weren't they sprawled out all over the place? Why were they lying in identical positions?' So, immediately, we had a lot of questions that they had no answers for," says Linda Ives, the mother of one of the murder victims.

The Ives family wasn't satisfied with Dr. Malak's conclusions. In April 1988, Kevin's body was exhumed, and another autopsy was performed, this one by Atlanta medical examiner Dr. Joseph Burton.

"Out of that investigation, Dr. Burton found that Don had been stabbed, and Kevin had received a crushing blow to the face and actually had a pattern injury which fit the plate of a gun butt that Don had been carrying," says Ives.

Dr. Burton's autopsy confirmed what Linda and her husband had suspected all along: someone had murdered their son Kevin and his friend Don Henry.

But what caused Dr. Malak to arrive at such an outrageous determination of death? Then-Governor Bill Clinton said his state medical examiner was overworked and "stressed out."

Former Clinton employee and well-known Clinton critic Larry Nichols says Mr. Clinton was an accomplice in concealing the truth.

"You've got a case there that they don't want solved, and I'm talking about the officials at every level want that case to stay unsolved," says Nichols. "At some point, Bill Clinton has got to be held responsible for not helping to get the truth out, instead of using his guy to help cover it up."

But why would Mr. Clinton defend Malak, although his rulings had been questioned in more than 20 cases? Dateline NBC and The Los Angeles Times have suggested a motive. They've documented Fahmy Malak's role in clearing Bill Clinton's mother, the late Virginia Kelly, of wrongdoing in the negligent death of a teenage girl at Ouachita Memorial Hospital in 1981.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Dr. Malak's ruling helped Clinton's mother avoid scrutiny in the death of patient Susie Deer. The Times quoted the Polaski County coroner as saying there was a lot of speculation that "Malak's ruling in favor of Clinton's mother was a factor" in the governor's decision to retain him as state medical examiner.

Then-Governor Clinton said he resented any implications of a connection, and the governor's office proceeded to shut down further investigation of the train deaths. Dr. Malak was eventually removed as state medical examiner, but was given a job as a $70,000 per year consultant to the Arkansas Department of Health.

Regardless, a grand jury determined that Kevin Ives and Don Henry had been murdered. But why? Who would want to kill two teens who were just out "deer spotting" on that fateful August night?

"Kevin and Don were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time," says Linda Ives. "I think that they stumbled upon a drop site. I believe it was a regular drop site for drugs and cash and was linked to a very large drug-smuggling operation based in Mena."

The rural west Arkansas town of Mena was used as a service and drop point for a drug-smuggling ring involving the Dixie Mafia. Some of the Mena drug operatives were connected to the Arkansas and U.S. governments.

Jean Duffey headed up Arkansas' 7th District drug task force in 1990. She was never allowed to conduct a thorough investigation of drug running in Mena or any possible connection to the train deaths. Her task force and a federal grand jury were shut down after they started examining corruption involving public officials.

"The corruption is on a lot of different levels," says Duffey. "And it's extensive. It's from local all the way up to federal. When my task force officers were linking public officials to drug trafficking, Dan Harmon was a name that came up consistently. No matter who else or what direction we went, Dan Harmon always seemed to be in the middle of it."

Dan Harmon was a local government official, the prosecuting attorney for Saline, Grant, and Hot Springs counties in 1979 and 1980 and then again from 1991 through 1996. He was convicted in June of 1997 on drug, racketeering, and extortion charges and has started serving eight years in prison.

In January 1991, long before his drug offenses became public knowledge, Harmon convinced a judge to subpoena evidence obtained by Jean Duffey's task force -- evidence gathered against him and other public officials. Ms. Duffey refused to honor the subpoena flee the sate when a warrant was issued for her arrest.

"I had developed the trust of many informants, and I was not about to give their names up to someone who I thought would put their lives in jeopardy," says Duffey. "Witnesses tend to turn up dead. Many witnesses have turned up dead in the case primarily talking about the murders of Kevin and Don."

Among them?

Jeff Rhodes - His body was found in a trash dump in April 1989.
Keith McKaskel - The former bar bouncer was found stabbed to death in November 1988. He had warned his friends that he would be killed for what he knew.
Keith Koney - He died in a motorcycle accident after an unconfirmed high speed chase.
Gregory Collins - He was shot in the face in January 1989.
Jordan Kettleson - He may have had information on the Ives and Henry deaths. Kettleson was shot dead in the front seat of his pickup truck.
James Milam - A possible source of more information, his body was found decapitated.




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