The Mena Murders

Found this story, which involves an alleged large scale drug operation, corrupt State government officials, and a string of murders to cover up the crime.

This is scary, when a criminal operation has infiltrated the very government agencies whose job it is to investigate and enforce the law. A conspiracy which is willing to kill to prevent the truth from being uncovered.

Mena Murders in Arkansas.
July 29, 1998
Gary Lane, reporter

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 that 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.”

In 1994, CBN News was among the first to nationally broadcast details of the Mena drug operation. The rural west Arkansas town 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 and fled the state 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 and ruled died of natural causes by Dr. Fahmy Malak




More Mysterious Deaths in Arkansas
1995 Mark E. Howerter

Ranking right up there with the outrageous way that the government handled the Randy Weaver family and Barry Seal is another murder mystery. This one took place in 1987. Two seventeen-year-old boys were out hunting close to their home near Alexander, Arkansas. They never returned home alive.

A lot has been written about the two boys, Don Henry and Kevin Ives. The deaths were big news in Arkansas and still are the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation after all these years.

A northbound train was blazing along through the night full bore when the engineer spotted the bodies of two boys laying across the tracks. The train was not able to stop. The two deaths were reported as a double suicide even though the boys were happy, healthy and had never mentioned suicide before to anyone who knew them. Suicide was changed to accidental death by infamous Arkansas State Medical Examiner, Dr. Fahmy Malak.

One of the boys’ mothers, Linda Ives, has dedicated her life to finding out what really happened to her son, Kevin, ever since that hot August night in 1987. Mrs. Ives was able to get a grand jury to look at the case. They had the bodies exhumed and reviewed by Dr. Joseph Burton, chief medical examiner for Atlanta, Ga.

The second autopsy showed that Kevin’s skull had been crushed and that his friend Don had been stabbed in the back hours before the train ran over their bodies. A second grand jury concluded that both boys were obviously murdered and that their deaths were tied to the drug traffic in Saline County, Arkansas.

Days after the area had supposedly been scoured for evidence relatives found one of the boys’ feet and some gold chains that the police didn’t find. Dr. Malak’s autopsy report didn’t even mention that one of the boys had a foot missing. Much of the evidence surrounding the case wound up missing also, including crime scene photos.

Dr. Malak’s rulings on mysterious deaths in Arkansas have come under close scrutiny many times. In May of 1992 the LA Times did a cover story on him and his incompetence as a medical examiner. The Times cited over 20 other cases that were grossly bungled. A 20/20 television special also covered the story.

Some of Malak’s well known rulings are: The 1985 murder of Raymond Albright who was shot 5 times with a Colt .45 which Malak ruled a suicide. The case of James Milam who was decapitated. Malak had ruled that Milam died of natural causes!

Didn’t Malak answer to anybody? Yes. His boss was the head of the State Medical Commission, Dr. Joycelyn Elders. Dr. Elders answered directly to then Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

How could Bill Clinton have allowed such a bungler to continue in his position when there was a public outcry for his ouster? Good question. Bill Clinton’s mother, Virginia Kelley, while working as a nurse anesthesiologist at a hospital in Hot Springs, made a mistake which resulted in a young woman’s death. She had been undergoing minor surgery to repair an injury she sustained when a young man threw a rock at her.

Dr. Malak ignored the fact that it wasn’t the rock, which killed her, but the bungled anesthesia and arrested the man who threw the rock! He actually did 2 1/2 months in prison before it was straightened out. At the time of that young woman’s death Mrs. Kelley was already being sued for the death of another young woman who died because of her botched anesthesia.

In Arkansas when Bill Clinton was Governor it was a good ole boys’ network such as we have been fortunate not to see anything quite like here. Fahmy Malak and Dr. Jocelyn Elders kept Gov. Clinton’s mom out of trouble and he took good care of them as long as he could in return.

So why were the two 17 year old boys killed? Good question. There was an airstrip used by drug smugglers flying in from South America en route to Mena, Arkansas (Remember Barry Seal?) to drop cocaine near where the boys were killed. Saline County, Arkansas Police Detective John Brown was in charge of the official investigation for two years. Brown believes that the boys were at the wrong place at the wrong time and saw one of the drops.

There was one witness to the murders, a Sharlene Wilson who had been an informant for the DEA. She had been a witness for the Saline County Drug Task Force, which was mysteriously shut down when it got a little too close to the truth. Much like Barry Seal, Sharlene Wilson was sold out and sent to prison and lives in fear for her life for what she knows about the Arkansas drug traffic.

State Police Investigator, Russell Welch from Mena, Arkansas also verifies that the deaths of Don Henry and Kevin Ives were linked to the Mena drug traffic. One of his informants in prison had come forward with such information.

An 18-year-old also came forward in late 1993 claiming that he had also been in the woods and witnessed the murders when he was 12. Sharlene Wilson verified that other kids were in the woods the night of the murders, but that they got away. This got the FBI office in Little Rock interested in the case and they are currently still investigating it.

Detective John Brown has met with a pilot who used to make drops at the site where the boys were killed. It was known as “A-12″ to the smugglers.

As his investigation got him closer to the truth, Detective Brown turned in his badge on August 16, 1994 out of fear. Brown claims that Saline County Sheriff, Judy Pridgen, was also scared to death by what he had uncovered and told him so. At their last meeting on August 15th, 1994, Sheriff Pridgen said, “We both know where this leads. Do you really want to take down the President of the United States?

John Brown’s life has been threatened and his home ransacked and burglarized three times since his resignation, but his files were all handed over to the FBI before he resigned. Maybe this tragedy will end better than those of Barry Seal and Randy Weaver. We can always hope.

 

I don't know. Bill Clinton just seems too good-natured and congenial to carry out this sort of thing.
Not too difficult to imagine Hillary being the mastermind though, and Bill just going along with it.

 

Yes, as rapists go I imagine he's very good-natured indeed.