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.