The+Murder+of+Kevin+Ives+and+Don+Henry

Cole Campbell

The Murder of Kevin Ives and Don Henry

The Fat Man

January 4, 2017

It seems as if every cozy little town contains a deep, dark secret that most residents don’t know or choose to ignore. My home town, Bryant, has secrets of its own. The secrets revolve around the murder of two Bryant seniors, Kevin Ives and Don Henry, and drug smuggling in the eighties. The two deaths have remained unsolved, but have sparked public interest in the morals and intentions of those we elect to represent and protect us.

I grew up listening to the stories my mom told me of her two friends who were run over by a train 29 years ago. Sheltering me from what the truth might be, my mother never told me about the conspiracy behind the deaths. Up until last year when I did a research project about the incident, I never thought twice about what happened to those boys. I realize now why everyone needs to know what happened to them.

I’ve been to Mena one time to go hiking with my dad. It’s a small town, and there isn’t much to see besides trees and hiking trails. So when I saw that there was a movie filming called “Mena,” starring Tom Cruise, I was shocked.

“American Made,” the new title for the film, is about a pilot who lands work for the CIA as a drug runner. According to IMDB, Cruise plays Barry Seal, a notorious drug runner of the eighties.

Known as the “Fat Man,” Seal was said to be smuggling about 1000 pounds of cocaine out of Mena at the height of his career, as reported by the Louisiana Voice. By 1982, Seal was making regular runs on behalf of the Medellin Cartel from Columbia, bringing tons of cocaine into the U.S. before moving his operations from Baton Rouge, La. to Mena.

Seal used the Mena airport along with double agents, who were attempting to tie Bill Clinton to drug smuggling conspiracies, especially during his first four years as President.

According to the documentary “The Mena Connection,” Clinton was approached by prosecutor Charles Black, who wanted to fund an investigation about the Mena criminal activity.

Clinton promised Black that he would get a man on the case, but never did. Clinton also denied ever speaking with Black when confronted about it.

The “Fat Man” was arrested in Florida in 1984 for money laundering and smuggling quaaludes. Sentenced to ten years in prison, Seal pulled some strings and met with two members of Vice President George Bush’s drug task force.

In the meeting, according to Spartacus Educational, Seal promised that the Medellin Cartel he ran for made a deal with the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The cartel gave a cut of their drug profits to the Sandinistas, members of the socialist Nicaraguan political organization and militarily opposed by the US, so they could access a Managuan airstrip to run drugs.

In exchange for this information, Seal’s sentence was reduced to six of months probation, and he was enlisted as an undercover informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

At the time, President Ronald Reagan was paranoid about another communist government rising in the western hemisphere, so Seal’s information was music to Reagan’s ears.

Seal purchased his own plane, and as a part of the deal with the DEA, he rigged it with a hidden camera. On one of his trips, he was able to capture a photograph of Pablo Escobar, a Colombian drug lord and drug trafficker, helping Nicaraguan soldiers load cocaine for shipment to the U.S. at the Managua airport.

The picture made President Reagan ecstatic, and he went on national television with the photograph condemning the Sandinistas as“drug smugglers corrupting American youth.”

Seal continued to smuggle drugs into the U.S. as an undercover agent until 1986, when he was gunned down by the Colombian Medellin Cartel.

According to the L.A. Times, almost a year after Seal’s death, Sandinista patrol shot down a cargo plane that was supplying weapons to the Contras, right-wing rebels in Nicaragua supported militarily by the U.S. The Nicaraguan Contra were essentially the enemies of the Sandinistas. Eugene Hasenfus, who flew for the CIA, was the sole survivor of the crash, out of four men.

Hasenfus was captured by the Sandinistas and confessed to them that the CIA was providing the Contras with weapons to fight the Sandinistas. He was sentenced to 30 years in a Nicaraguan prison, but was replaced by a spy after serving only a few months.

The cargo plane carrying weapons that was shot down was the very plane that Barry Seal used to fly drugs in and out of the U.S. before he was killed. This was not a coincidence. The plane was ultimately sold to a company after Seal died that had connections to the CIA and was shot down soon afterwards.

The story of Barry Seal reveals that the CIA, DEA and State Department have each been implicated in various drug trafficking operations that were used to illegally supply countries with weapons internationally.

The Boys on The Tracks

On August 23, 1987, in Bryant, Ark., three train conductors noticed two bodies lying across the tracks with a tarp covering them. They honked their horn and tried to stop the train, but they were unsuccessful.

The authorities arrived soon after, and some claim this is when they began a massive cover-up.

Seniors at Bryant High School, Kevin Ives and Don Henry allegedly witnessed a drug drop from Mena before they were murdered. It is likely that this is a direct result of Barry Seal running drugs out of Mena in the early eighties.  

The boys’ bodies were found in a drop location for drugs that were being flown out of Mena known to the pilots as A1. Two out of three pilots interviewed in the “Obstruction of Justice” documentary confirmed the site and it’s name.

When recalling the accident to local authorities, all the members of the train crew observed a tarp covering the bodies before they were run over. The police discounted the statement and blamed the tarp on an “optical illusion.” One of the railroad employees stated as he pointed toward the tracks, “I know it was some kind of tarp, and to my recollection they set it right over there.”

The investigation was rushed, and the infamous state medical examiner at the time, Fahmy Malak, was quick to rule the deaths as accidental due to a marijuana-induced coma.  Malak was known for asking police officers what they thought happened to a body, and then he would rule the death the way the officers told him to.

After months of constant persuasion and pestering by the parents of the boys, the bodies were exhumed, and a second opinion was brought in, Atlanta medical examiner Dr. Joseph Burton.

Burton concluded that Kevin’s skull had been crushed and Don had been stabbed in the back hours before they were run over by the train. His autopsy also showed that Malak had mutilated Ives’s skull by sawing it in many different directions, which made it virtually impossible to determine where the initial skull fractures were. This was presented to a Grand Jury, which ultimately decided the case should be treated as a homicide rather than an accidental death.

Although Burton gathered that the boys were murdered, that did not explain why Malak would falsify his ruling. Malak, in fact, had direct ties to Jocelyn Elders, who was the head of the state health department, and Bill Clinton, who was governor at the time.

Both Clinton and Elders had the authority to remove Malak from office after his false ruling, but they continued to support him and even gave him a $32,000 pay raise.

These relationships began to tie the murders to something larger than just a homicide.
All information was gathered from “The Obstruction of Justice” documentary.

The Prosecutors

Linda Ives, mother of the victim Kevin Ives, has devoted her life to finding out the truth behind her son’s murder.

In a recent interview, she told me about defense attorney Dan Harmon.

Harmon approached the Ives’ family with his friend deputy prosecutor Richard Garrett and convinced them that he and Garrett would stop at nothing to find those responsible for her son’s murder.

Ives said that she and Harmon became good friends while he was working the case.

¨People warned of us Harmon,¨ she said. ¨They told us that he was bad news and that he was involved in drugs.”

Ives said that there was a possibility that Harmon was dealing drugs, but she was sure he had intentions of helping her find out what happened to her son.

“Over the years, Dan, my husband, Larry and I grew very close,” Ives said. “We never made a move without him knowing, and he never made a move without us knowing, or so we thought. We even gave him thousands of dollars from Kevin’s insurance, because he had a hard time supporting his family.”

Harmon had been rumored to be on the tracks the night the boys were murdered, but Ives chose to ignore the rumors because she wanted to trust Harmon.

“I told myself that nobody would befriend parents of a murder victim and then screw them over, but I was wrong,” Ives said.

After meeting with deputy prosecutor Jean Duffey, who was put in charge of a drug task force for Saline County, Ives was made aware of incriminating information tying Harmon to the murders of Kevin Ives and Don Henry.

Ives and Duffey helped Pat Matrisciana make the documentary, “The Obstruction of Justice.”

Matrisciana was a video journalist who also filmed “The Clinton Chronicles” in the early 90s. His documentary accused many men holding high rank, such as Dan Harmon, of being corrupt and involved in drugs.

According to WorldNetDaily, Matrisciana created the “Obstruction of Justice” documentary to show the connection between the cover-up of Kevin Ives and Don Henry’s murder, Mena drug trafficking and Bill Clinton.

The documentary drew a line in the sand between Ives and Harmon.

According to ID Files, Harmon was convicted in July 1997 of racketeering, extortion and drug conspiracy, and sentenced to eight years in prison.

In October 1997, prosecutors brought more drug charges against Harmon, and he was sentenced to three years in prison, for a total of more than 11 years.

He was released in 2006 after helping prosecutors in a murder conspiracy case.

After facing all of these drug charges, it may not be so far-fetched that he was at the tracks when Ives and Henry were murdered.

The Witnesses

As Dan Harmon’s “investigation” pushed forward, many potential witnesses started to turn up dead.

Circuit Judge John Cole appointed Dan Harmon special prosecutor of the Kevin Ives and Don Henry case in 1988, which gave him direct access to and control of information as the case developed. This is when witnesses began turning up dead, but no one connected that to Harmon at the time.

Keith Coney, who was believed to be with Kevin and Don the night they were killed, told friends and family members that law enforcement officials were responsible for the murders. He died on May 17, 1988, when he struck the back of a tractor trailer after apparently being in a high speed chase.

Keith McKaskle, who was allegedly at the tracks by Sharlene Wilson on Aug. 23, 1987, turned in information he had to Deputy prosecutor Richard Garrett, who was Dan Harmon’s partner. Wilson was known as the “Lady with the Snow” in Little Rock. She has confessed to selling cocaine to both Bill and Roger Clinton.

McKaskle then realized that he had told the wrong person, and made his own funeral arrangement. After telling his family goodbye, he was stabbed 113 times only days later. His murder remains unsolved.

Greg Collins was supposed to testify in front of a grand jury for Ives and Henry, but was shot in the head before he had the chance. His murder remains unsolved.

Boonie Bearden, who was friends with Collins and Coney, went missing in 1989. His shirt was found in Bryant, but his body was never discovered.

Jeff Rhodes told his family that he feared for his life because he knew too much about Kevin, Don and McKaskles’ murders. In April, 1989 his body was found in the Little Rock city dump after he had been shot in the head twice and set on fire.

Four men were possibly killed because of what they knew. These witnesses testimonies’ could have solved the murders of Kevin and Don, however they were all killed before they had the chance.
All evidence gathered from “The Obstruction of Justice” video documentary.

The Crusade

In March 1990,  Saline County deputy prosecutor, Jean Duffey, was assigned to lead a drug task force to investigate drug smuggling in Saline County.

According to ID files, the day Duffey was hired, her boss, Gary Arnold, instructed her not to investigate any public officials. Almost immediately, however, Duffey’s undercover officers discovered that there were a number of public officials involved in drug trafficking.

Afraid to go against Arnold’s orders because he might’ve been one of the public officials involved in drugs, Duffey brought the information to Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Govar, who was in charge of a federal investigation of corruption in Saline County.

The task force obtained information that tied public officials, including Richard Garrett and Dan Harmon, to drugs and the murders of Kevin Ives and Don Henry. This is when Linda Ives realized that Harmon and Garrett had been lying to her and using her for nearly four years.

Fearing for his reputation, Harmon used the local newspapers to destroy Jean Duffey’s character.

Duffey wrote in ID files, “Lynda Hollenbeck wrote for the Benton Courier and Doug Thompson wrote for Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Hollenbeck and Thompson were willing participants in Harmon’s smear campaign against me and my task force, and neither reporter bothered to verify anything Harmon said; they just printed it — lie after lie, article after article — even when they knew Harmon was lying.”

Duffey’s boss, U.S. Attorney Chuck Banks, concluded that the media whirlwind created by Harmon had made her ineffective, and decided to fire her.

Although she was no longer head of the task force, Duffey and another officer of the task force dug deeper into the “train deaths” case and eventually brought information to U.S. Attorney Chuck Banks, who promised that they would be able to testify with the information.

However, this never happened, and the federal investigation regarding corruption in Saline County was unexpectedly terminated. All public officials who had indictments against them were cleared of all wrongdoings.
“I finally understood,” Duffey wrote in a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal in 1997, “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.”

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  • D

    DONNA Ginter | Jan 7, 2023 at 9:14 am

    My nephew is Boonie Bearden. He hasn’t been found. I believe he was at the wrong place at the wrong time just like these boys. I feel he came upon something tried to flee and he lost his life.

    Reply
  • H

    Hope Harkins | Jun 7, 2019 at 4:15 pm

    Makes me curious

    Reply
  • C

    Clark Kent | May 27, 2017 at 4:09 pm

    I have known about this case since the late 80’s.
    I can’t believe how much evidence & eyewitnesses there are to this case, yet it gets blocked every time there was any positive movement.
    I know in August of 2016, Linda Ives filed another suit under the freedom of information act. I have not been able to find out anything since.
    The new movie about Barry Seal will most likely be Hollywood nonsense.
    I hope I hope their murders get solved, & the families get justice.

    Reply
  • B

    Baz | May 1, 2017 at 5:54 pm

    Good article!
    Here’s a documentary that is LOADED with footage, documents, info etc, about what happened to Kevin Ives and Don Henry, and the following cover-up of their murders, right up to the latest news about their story in August 2016.

    Murder On The Tracks – The Story of Kevin Ives and Don Henry (1hr:20mins)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow0yPO8g9YA

    The upcoming Tom Cruise movie, American Made, was originally scheduled to be called “Mena”, but for some reason… hmmm… they changed the name.
    I’ll bet anything that there will be way more actual truth OMMITTED then they will actually allow into the movie… It will likely be a propaganda piece much like Zero Dark Thirty was.

    Don and Kevin’s tragic story is a small glimpse through the window of some of the repercussions of the overall Iran/Contra scandal, which itself, like the Boys’ story, was a whitewash of the actual truth of what happened.

    Ask yourself, how much do you actually know about Iran/Contra… and if you really don’t know much about it… why is that?

    Think about this for minute… A bunch of weapons and parts illegally are sold to Iran… the money(not all) is diverted to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels as well as weapons, again both illegally… Tons of cocaine was shipped into the U.S., by plane-load after plane-load, year after year, by the pilots that were bringing the weapons to the Contras… and for it all, only ONE PERSON, Thomas G. Clines, went to jail for 16 months, for not reporting taxes?!

    The cocaine aspect of Iran/Contra wasn’t publicly well known until Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series was published in 1996… Even though AP reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger, first broke the Contra-Cocaine-association story in December 1985, the press and the networks refused to put the story out and it was ignored, although it was thanks to their reporting that the “Kerry Committee” was formed… sadly to no avail though(even though Kerry DID uncover quite a lot of evidence).

    From Congress’ “Report of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Alleged Involvement in the Crack Cocaine Trafficking in the Los Angeles Area”, issued in February 2000…
    “While we found no evidence that any CIA employee involved in the Contra program had participated in drug-related activities or had conspired with other in such activities, we found that the Agency did not deal with Contra-related drug trafficking allegations and information in a consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner. In the end, the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the Agency was working.”

    Umm yeah ok.

    Everything that WAS brought out to the public centered on the West Coast aspect of the Cocaine-flow into the US… Freeway Ricky Ross, Danilo Blandon, Norwin Meneses and so on… What the CIA had set up in Mena Arkansas with Barry Seal etc, has never been “officially” explained… not even as shoddily as the West Coast operation was explained away.
    10 various investigations into drugs, money laundering and so forth, in and around Arkansas, from the 1980’s and 1990’s, were all shut down with no results made public.

    Guess who was the US Attorney for Western Arkansas for the entire time Barry Seal was operating out of Mena Arkansas, which is in Western Arkansas??? Asa Hutchinson.
    So for 4 long years, Hutchinson couldn’t catch Barry Seal and all those tons of cocaine??? Not even once? Even though by the mid-to-late 1970’s the FBI, DEA etc already had massive files on Seal and knew he was a big time drug smuggler, Hutchinson couldn’t find ANYTHING on Seal to charge him with???
    Perhaps THAT must be why George W Bush made Asa Hutchinson the head of the DEA in 2001 then right??? I mean WOW!, what qualifications!… The biggest cocaine smuggler in the history of the U.S., operating right in your own backyard, and you don’t even know it, so then you get picked to be the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency???
    Now, Asa Hutchinson is the governor of Arkansas??? … Bill Clinton’s old job… Hmmm
    And cocaine is still just as easy to get as is was in the mid-1980’s… almost like once the taps were turned on, they were never shut off. Almost like, huh?… Just sayin.

    Oh, and by the way… Barry seal not only had a small FLEET of planes, he also has a helicopter, as well as boats with one that had a helicopter landing pad… He also had 2 of most things important to him… such as TWO C-123 Fairchild cargo planes(think Air America, which ironically enough is where they came from… yep, the CIA)… anyways, one was the one that was shot down by the Sandinistas that Eugene Hasenfus parachuted to the ground from, and it was completely destroyed… and the other one is now a BAR IN COSTA RICA!

    I must go visit El Avion one day and have a beer(or10) in Barry Seal’s plane!!!
    The fate of Barry Seal’s plane…
    http://costaverde.com/elavion/

    Keep researching… You will be very surprised by what you discover.
    🙂

    Reply
  • J

    Jon Underwood | Jan 13, 2017 at 4:29 pm

    SUPERB read. This is a topic everyone in Arkansas should be informed on. Impressed by the details as well, I ran across similar information tying conspiracies with the Clintons and drug trafficking in South America. Thanks for sharing the real word, this can’t rest until solved.

    Reply
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