Friday, April 15, 2011


From the soundtrack of "The New Clinton Chronicles" (sorry I misspelled "Fahmy Malak" earlier.

LINDA IVES (Mother of Kevin Ives): On August 22nd, 1987, Kevin had spent the night with his friend Don Henry. They left Don's home around 12:30 or quarter till 1, on the 23rd of August in the early morning hours, and the next thing we knew they had been run over by a train. There seems to be a small airstrip in the area. There had been sightings and reports of small airplanes flying very low with lights off in the area. I believe they saw something they shouldn't have seen. Three weeks later their deaths were ruled accidental by the State Medical examiner, Fahmy Malak, and we disagreed with that ruling because we thought the evidence pointed to homicide. At that point, we had a lot of questions and no answers and the facts didn"t add up to what he was telling us, so we decided to get a second opinion and met with resistance from all fronts, both with our law enforcement, with the state crime lab, with everybody that we turned to. We obtained court orders, requesting samples of everything that the crime lab had for a second opinion, and Fahmy Malak resisted court orders. He refused to obey them.

NARRATOR: ULTIMATELY, IT WAS PROVEN THAT DON HENRY HAD BEEN STABBED IN THE BACK AND KEVIN IVES" SKULL HAD BEEN CRUSHED PRIOR TO THE PLACEMENT OF THEIR BODIES ON THE RAILROAD TRACKS. HOWEVER, MALAK STOOD BY HIS RULING THAT THE BOYS HAD SIMPLY FALLEN ASLEEP ON THE TRACKS. MALAK HAD BEEN KEPT IN OFFICE AT THE INSISTENCE OF GOVERNOR CLINTON FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS DESPITE VIGOROUS PUBLIC OUTCRY TO HAVE HIM REMOVED. AS LONG AS MALAK'S RULINGS PLEASED THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE OR STATE POLICE, THEY WERE LEFT TO STAND NO MATTER HOW IMPLAUSIBLE. MALAK'S OBVIOUS LACK OF MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE REACHED A PINNACLE WHEN HE RULED THAT JAMES MILAM, WHO HAD BEEN DECAPITATED, HAD DIED OF NATURAL CAUSES. YET CLINTON, WHO HAD THE POWER TO REMOVE MALAK FROM OFFICE, INSISTED HE STAY.

LINDA IVES: There were allegations of tampering with evidence in murder cases. There were allegations of perjury in different cases. It didn't seem to matter what Malak did, Clinton protected him. He made excuses, such as, he's overworked, he's just stressed out, he's underpaid. They gave him a $14,000 raise, which was an insult to my family, as well as a lot of others in the state who to this day are struggling with asinine rulings in the deaths of children and other loved ones. I was outraged that protecting a political crony of Clinton's was more important than the fact that two young boys had been murdered.

JOHN BROWN: Dan Harmon was just a local attorney in the town of Benton, Arkansas, and after Don Henry and Kevin Ives were killed and their bodies placed on the tracks and run over by a train, he approached Linda Ives and the Henry family about trying to help them. He's a manipulator; he gives a great closing argument in court. He's been trained for years to play the game. He knows how to do it; he's very good at it. Mr. Harmon can win your confidence and make you think he's the greatest guy in the world. He did that to Linda Ives. He helped lead them down a path that absolutely led to nowhere on this case. I got involved in the case and immediately Harmon tried to discredit me without even knowing me. I couldnt figure it out. I ran across a young lady named Sharline Wilson, who told a horror story that I didn't really believe at the time. So I started searching for evidence to substantiate just part of what she had said. Harmon went ballistic; he called, he threatened me, he threatened Sheriff Pridgeon, he threatened Captain Gene Donald, the chief deputy, all because I talked to this one woman.

SHARLINE WILSON: The people at the track that night, to my knowledge, were Dan Harmon, Keith McKaskle, Larry Rochelle. I do know that the boys were watching the drop site, O.K.? And they got curious as to what was being dropped there.

JOHN BROWN: The fact is, we know who killed these kids. The whole reason this case has been slowed down, stopped wherever we're at - they can't do anything with it as long as Clinton is in office, because the tracks go right back to Bill Clinton being involved in the cover-up. He took care of everybody that ever covered anything up in this case; everybody got promoted.

NARRATOR: A NUMBER OF PEOPLE APPROACHED THE POLICE WITH INFORMATION ABOUT DON AND KEVIN'S MURDERS AND CONSEQUENTLY WERE MURDERED THEMSELVES.

LINDA IVES: Shortly before Keith McKaskle was murdered, he knew that he was fixing to be murdered. He told his family good-bye, told his friends good-bye. The night of the elections in 1988, he took two pennies out of his pocket and threw them on the bar there at the Wagon Wheel and said "If Jim Steed loses this election, my life isn't worth two cents," and he was murdered that night. Jeff Rhodes was a young man from Benton, who was murdered in 1989. Shortly before his death he made a phone call to his dad in Texas, and told him he needed to get out of Benton, Arkansas, that he felt he knew too much about the boys on the railroad tracks, and the death of Keith McKaskle. A couple of weeks later Jeff was found dead. He'd been shot in the head. They'd attempted to cut off his head, and hands and feet, and set him on fire in a dump.

NARRATOR: A TOTAL OF SIX PEOPLE WITH INFORMATION ABOUT THE BOYS' MURDERS WERE EVENTUALLY MURDERED AS WELL.

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