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Jonathan Hirsch
Hi, binge crew. When you're finished listening to this true crime story, go see Hunting Matthew Nichols in theaters. This film has all the elements of the true crime stories we a sprawling mystery, intrepid investigators, powerful people who know more than they let on. Two decades after her brother mysteriously disappeared on Vancouver Island, a documentary filmmaker sets out to solve his missing person's case. But when a disturbing piece of evidence is revealed, she comes to believe her brother might still be alive. The film is in select theaters now, but you can immerse yourself in the story by going to huntingmatthewnickolls.com right now. That's huntingmatthewnichols.com and welcome to the hunt. If someone you loved was brutally murdered, how far would you go to find the truth? And what if the people that were there to help you, the people you thought you could trust, what if they were in on it? In 1987, two teenage boys disappear into the Arkansas woods, only to appear later brutalized, on the railroad tracks a mile from where they were last seen. Welcome to Crime Scene, the show where we tell the stories behind the world's most unforgettable crimes. And this case has baffled investigators and the public alike. It's a story that begins in what appears to be a freak accident, but quickly escalates into a terrifying conspiracy, perhaps the most egregious in our nation's history. This week on the show, the story of Don Henry and Kevin Ives from Sony Podcasts and the Binge. This is the story of the boys on the tracks. Hey, everyone, and welcome to Crime Scene. I'm Jonathan Hirsch.
Cooper Maul
And I'm Cooper Maul.
Jonathan Hirsch
Okay, so before we get started on Boys on the Tracks, one of the things that I love about this story is the fact that it plays in a very complex world of conspiracies. So the way I've been thinking about this is there's sort of like two different kinds of conspiracies, right?
Cooper Maul
There's like mob stuff.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, yeah. Mob stuff, right? Yeah, exactly. Like lowercase C conspiracies. Those are the cases where people are part of some kind of criminal network. Then there's like a, upper case. C, conspiracy.
Cooper Maul
Yeah, like the 5G towers and Lizard people. Deep state kind of stuff.
Jonathan Hirsch
Exactly. Yeah. Like, where were you on the grassy knoll that day? Or, you know, is 9, 11 an inside job? Those type of conspiracies. And I think that this story is one of the only ones that I'm aware of where both of those things are at play at the same time. Coming up after the break, the story of the boys on the tracks. Okay, so our story starts on August 22, 1987, in Saline County, Arkansas, which, like, sort of encompasses the area around Little Rock. But it's kind of rural backwoods. Like, there's a lot of, you know, sort of country out beyond the city. And Kevin Ives and Don Henry are set to hang out with each other. They're best friends. Kevin is 17, Don is 16, and they were both about to be seniors at Bryant High School in Arkansas.
Cooper Maul
Peak teenage time of your life, right?
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, they're the kind of teenagers who, like, sort of would hang out at night, you know, like, drive around the country roads, but they also liked to hunt. And on this Saturday night, that was sort of the plan. They were out to do this thing called spotlighting. I'm not from the country, so.
Cooper Maul
Yeah, I've never heard of that.
Jonathan Hirsch
I'm not from the south. I'm from northern California, so I had never heard of this. So it was kind of fascinating to me, you know, that, like, people would go out into the woods at night and hunt. And the way that they would do it, they'd do this thing called lamp lighting or spotlighting, where they would take, you know, like, a rifle with them that would also have, like, an overhead light or, like, a spotlight. And, you know, they would shine a light across the woods as they were going through, looking for the eyes of an animal, like a deer, if they were hunting for deer, and it would sort of stun the deer, and that would be how you catch it.
Guest or Interviewee
Should.
Cooper Maul
This is, like, a step further from cow tipping. Like, that's, like. Like, different type of country hijinks.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, this is definitely, like, a little bit more hardcore than cow tipping or maybe. I don't know. I've never Cow. You tell me. Okay. All right. Okay. So we'll leave that for another time. Confirm nor deny. But yeah, so this is, like, you know, the kind of thing that these guys would do on the weekends if they were hanging out together. They would go hunting, and they would do the spotlighting. And I just found it so unnerving because in a way, like, the goal of spotlighting is to shine a light into the woods and find your target. And in a way, here they are wandering through the woods, and they themselves become a target. So this was, like, a normal thing for them to be doing, Right? Like, they're gonna go out into the woods on, you know, a weekend night and go hunting. So they meet up with a couple of friends beforehand, and they hang Out. I think they smoke some dope.
Cooper Maul
This is when people used to hang out in real life. Remember? This is before.
Jonathan Hirsch
Is that what people do?
Cooper Maul
Okay, yeah.
Jonathan Hirsch
I haven't done that in a decade, but yes. So they're going out together, and that was the last time anybody saw them. Their parents, their friends. They left out on this hunting trip. And that was sort of a normal thing they expected, like, oh, well, duh. They're going to go hunting in the middle of the night. They're going to be out all night. We may not hear from them.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. And this is before cell phones and all the tagging and find my. And all of that.
Jonathan Hirsch
Exactly, yeah. Nobody was, like, you know, checking in on, like, their geolocators for their friends when they're out there in the woods in the middle of the night in 1987. The next time that somebody does see these boys is at around dawn when a Union Pacific freight train moves through the woods around where they're hunting. And these trains are massive. I live on sort of the outskirts of Los Angeles, and the Union Pacific trains still run just by our house. And they're massive. They're loud, like you can hear them for miles. And they're fast. And it's like just six tons of steel in a bucket barreling down the road. So this freight train was going at about 50 miles an hour when it rounds a corner, and it sees in the distance what appears to be two bodies. At first, it looks like debris, but then they recognize quickly that those are bodies lined up next to each other parallel on the tracks.
Cooper Maul
And they're just getting, like, closer and closer in view.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, but these people are sort of trained to sort of spot something like this and try to put the brakes on. I think that is this the. So try to, like, put the brakes on the tracks as they're making. As if they recognize something in the distance that needs to be. That they need to stop for. But they notice these boys that are, like, lying in the tracks covered by what appears to be, like, a green tarp.
Cooper Maul
Weird.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. Get to that in a second, because it is sort of weird. But they try their best to pump on the brakes as much as they can, but they do not get there in time. It just. The train is moving too fast. It's too big. They can't stop the train's momentum fast enough. But these boys don't appear to move or flinch at all as they're lying there on the tracks covered by this tarp. And of course, the train runs right over them.
Cooper Maul
Oh, that's gotta be like so traumatic, knowing there's just nothing you can do. You just have to keep going.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. The conductor said he replayed that moment in his mind for like years.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. How could you not?
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. Cause he's like, if I had moved faster, done something, you know, he just couldn't get there in time. And something that you don't really think about, which later, as the investigation into this case began, is, you know, if something runs over you like that, it's not like you like running over a bottle in your car.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
The time that we had placed the train into an emergency position and laid down on the horn, I would estimate
Jonathan Hirsch
about three to five seconds to impact.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
And that may not sound like very long period of time, but when you're bearing down on a couple of children, it's an eternity. Honestly.
Jonathan Hirsch
It like the debris from that impact scattered a quarter of a mile across the world.
Cooper Maul
It would practically combust.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. Just everything flies everywhere. So there's bits and pieces of body on the track. But like the actual, you know, the actual evidence from what would become a scene of investigation is not, it's not like easy to assemble all of it.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. How do they begin to recover all of that?
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, exactly. So they. So the, the impact happens and the train stops and they come out and they're sort of, you know, law enforcement is called and the police arrive on the scene to sort of document it and they also recover something else on the tracks that was with them, which is what appears to be sort of a shattered rifle. Which would make sense. Right? Like they were out.
Cooper Maul
Yeah, they were out spotlighting.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, yeah, they were doing this spotlighting thing, which of course. Yeah, naturally, you know, we all know what spotlighting is, but there's a shattered rifle near the bodies. So in the pre dawn hours, the crew are trying to help with the crime scene. The cops show up. But strangely, by the time the cops show up, there's no tarp.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
All four of the people on the train who were able to observe the scene prior to the accident stated that the boys were partially covered by a green tarp.
Jonathan Hirsch
So the police arrive on the scene and they are talking with the train crew and there's like quite a scene here. Right. Like there's debris all over the place. They're trying to make sense of what's happened. They uncover this rifle that was shattered, which obviously makes sense because they were out there in the woods. Yeah. Doing their spotlighting thing and. And something else happens that's sort of odd though, because the Crew had sworn they had seen this tarp. Right.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
Paramedics. The paramedics, Yeah. I believe the paramedics picked up a tarp from the boys. I believe that's they had it coming down the railroad anyway. They had body bags walking down through you, picking up different, you know, but separate from the body bag was. Was a tarp. Right, right. Remember what color it was? I can't remember. Everything was kind of in a chaos. You know, I really didn't pay that thing much attention. I knew it was some kind of a tarp. You know, it wasn't a bad body bag because they had it, you know, more or less folded, and close as I can remember, they laid it and now right there.
Jonathan Hirsch
Well, the cops couldn't recover the tarp. They didn't think much of the claims that the tarp was absolutely there. So they're sort of saying to the train crew, like, maybe you imagined it.
Cooper Maul
So they're gaslighting them.
Jonathan Hirsch
They're gaslighting it, which, yeah, was obviously not a term they used at the time for it, but they definitely felt like they saw what they saw. That the train conductor for years into the future would claim that they saw what they saw, then this tarp was there. And I think the reason the tarp is an interesting point is because. Okay, let's imagine that you find two bodies lying on the track that are hit. What could it possibly be? Do you know what I mean? Like, it could be a lot of different things.
Cooper Maul
Suicide definitely comes to mind.
Jonathan Hirsch
Suicide comes to mind.
Cooper Maul
Right.
Jonathan Hirsch
So does an accident. Maybe somebody was stumbling onto the tracks and fell and got hit. But the way that the bodies were organized on the tracks is unnerving and sort of implies a degree of intentionality.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. Picture it like, kind of like soldier style.
Jonathan Hirsch
And also, if you're. If your plan was to take your own life, the two of you together, like a suicide pact, and you cover yourself up with a tarp, like, why would you cover yourself? Why would you tuck yourself in before you get run over by a train? It doesn't make any sense that the tarp would be there. But if the tarp was there, it tells a totally different story about what was happening on the tracks that night.
Cooper Maul
Yeah, this was staged. They were, you know, being hidden.
Jonathan Hirsch
Somebody else was there.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. So the tarp thing kind of leaves us in a place where, like, this is something maybe that's not an accident.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, potentially not an accident, but that's not the way the investigators on the scene at the time initially sort of reacted to It I think they determined pretty quickly that they thought this to be an accident, which in and of itself, the fact that people were determining this as an accident that early on in the case is a little bit odd to me. You know, that, like, when you're a police investigator, you imagine you're taking in the scene, you're gathering the evidence, you're not making a determination about something as brutal and gruesome as two boys being run over in the middle of the night as an accident. That seems like a little bit preemptive. Do you know what I mean?
Cooper Maul
Yeah.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
We were told to work as an accident, or the investigators were told to work as an accident, and it was not enough time and emphasis put into it right there at the scene.
Jonathan Hirsch
So after this, we get to the examination, the autopsy, and the state medical examiner is a guy named Dr. Fahmi Malik. And Dr. Fahmi Malik rules these deaths as accidental.
Cooper Maul
That seems really quick. So how did he get to that?
Jonathan Hirsch
He had a close proximity to power in the state. He was pretty close with the governor at the time, and he had a reputation of making suicide and accidental death rulings in cases that could have been homicide. So the state medical examiner arrives to perform an autopsy and determine the cause of death in the case of these boys.
Cooper Maul
A tough one, considering. You know, I don't want to be, but the way the train probably left these bodies was not necessarily intact.
Jonathan Hirsch
No, it's definitely a complicated scene. And this is kind of like if the way that these bodies were found and the whole tarp situation is the first thing that is odd and off about this case. What happens with the medical examiner is the second. I found this article from 1990 in the Arkansas Times by Rod Lorenz, in which it's sort of a takedown of Dr. Fam Malik. He says that Dr. Faymi Malik is one of the few people in the state who can get in to see the governor in 15 minutes. Notice on his way up the steps of the state capitol, Malik often detours over to a nearby garden and tromps through it to snap off three or four roses. Like the entitlement, you know, inside. He lavishes these in a courtly way upon the governor's secretaries who know him as the benevolent Dr. Malik, a native Egyptian with polished manners and a worldly charm.
Guest or Interviewee
Sounds like a trip.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. I mean, what a way to open an article about a guy, right? Like, he's. Clearly does not think too highly of him in public. Malik likes to do everything with a flourish. And he's always chauffeured to court appearances in his state car. To the frequent dismay of prosecutors, not to mention other witnesses waiting to testify, Malik insists that he appear on the stand first.
Cooper Maul
This is, like, not typical medical examiner behavior. I picture them, as always, like, fairly low key.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, right. Like VIP seats at the case that you're there for. Instead of responding to the lawyers, Malik speaks directly to the jurors, answering questions or explaining his conclusions. Despite his thick accent, his testimony is usually so smooth and convincing that his audience, even the sleepy ones, pay attention. For more than 12 years, Malik's dictatorial rule in the office of state medical examiner has gone virtually unchallenged until his work has been consistently questioned. On two occasions, his findings have been directly refuted by juries. Transcripts reveal that in two cases, Malik has altered testimony from pre trial depositions to the actual trial. And in both cases, it bolsters the prosecution's case. He has demonstrated in court to have mishandled evidence. Former employees routinely characterize him, at best as incompetent and at worst, psychologically unlike, balanced. This is just the wildest characterization of a medical examiner. Yeah, I think I've ever heard. This is the guy who, in 1987, on the day after these boys are found on the track, is assigned to do the autopsy and the evaluation of this case.
Cooper Maul
This is the guy with, like, the smoke and mirrors reputation here.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, he is definitely not the most reliable, according to a lot of people over time.
Cooper Maul
So this guy's got a sketchy and troubled history, to say the least.
Jonathan Hirsch
He does problematic.
Cooper Maul
And a reputation for mischaracterizing cases.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. So there's things in people's minds when this actually starts to unfold. He's assigned to this case, and his ruling on the case is that these were accidental deaths.
Cooper Maul
Can't say that shocks me, given what we just learned about this guy.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, I mean, unsurprising for him, but definitely surprising for the family and people involved in this case who were expecting that something far different had happened here than two people, like, just accidentally being hit by a train. Especially when you find out what he said happened that night. He says that according to the toxicology reports, the boys had the equivalent of 20 marijuana cigarettes in their bloodstream at the time that they were killed. So he determined that they had fallen into a coma and laid down on the tracks and were run over. Now, I'm not a marijuana expert by any stretch of the imagination. I was raised by a pothead in northern California, so I have a little bit of anecdotal information it's not really my thing necessarily, but feels like, yeah, maybe not. Yeah.
Cooper Maul
Okay. So I was like, I've dabbled a bit. Okay. And what I can't help but think about is like, the weed in 1987. Yeah.
Jonathan Hirsch
The stuff that you kick out of the dirt.
Cooper Maul
Definitely not strong enough to just lay you out. I mean, the weed today, even now. Yeah.
Jonathan Hirsch
I mean.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
Yeah.
Jonathan Hirsch
Okay. So. Well, I guess I have to say, like, when I moved to Los Angeles, I was living in New York with my wife. And the night before we left, we decided to go out, you know, like with some friends. We were like dancing and somebody gave us a Tootsie Roll on the dance floor. And I should have known what was
Cooper Maul
being given to me.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
Yeah.
Jonathan Hirsch
Really naive, you know. Different times, I guess. So we split it, I ate it and it laid me out. And I woke up in the morning and I was still stoned. And I was absolutely convinced that. I was absolutely convinced that I had had some kind of heart attack or a stroke that.
Cooper Maul
Yeah, the, the. The pipeline from like eating weed to I've had some kind of traumatic brain event is.
Jonathan Hirsch
Is.
Cooper Maul
Is paper thin.
Jonathan Hirsch
I mean, I crawled up next to my wife and, like, couldn't talk. I was like signing her.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. Last time I ate weed, I thought I had a. I had a brain aneurysm, definitely. Yeah, that's a phenomenon for sure.
Jonathan Hirsch
But then it wears off. Right. And then you're fine or you have an embarrassing story to tell.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. You're awake and you're paranoid. You're not in a coma.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, no, you're definitely not falling asleep or slipping into some kind of coma like state and allowing a six ton train to barrel over you.
Cooper Maul
Yeah, you're gonna wake up for that.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, that's definitely something that you wake up for. It's insane, honestly, that this became the determination. And I guess at the time, you know, people didn't have an understanding of what this was. It was not legal.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. And we're in peak weed moral panic. Like pre. This is war on drugs time.
Jonathan Hirsch
Exactly. Yeah. This is a. You know, I don't know if it was a Schedule 1 narcotic at the time, but it's not differentiated from the other major hardcore street drugs that you would find in the 80s. So maybe they thought this would pass as a determination, but even then it really didn't hold muster. The toxicologists outside of the case were questioning this ruling and obviously the family didn't feel like their two boys, who they knew dabbled but didn't see them as like these crazy, just normal kid stuff, right? Yeah. They weren't smoking 20 cigarette weed cigarettes.
Cooper Maul
And we don't say marijuana anymore.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yes, exactly. The M word. They weren't getting high out of their minds and wandering onto the train tracks. This just did not make sense to them. And there were other sort of questionable aspects of this case at that time. Right. Like this determination was made really quickly. And it appeared at the scene that police officers also were corroborating this idea that this was an accident even before they had an opportunity to fully contemplate what could have been a crime scene. Right. So, like, family members and members of the public show up at the scene the next day and they're walking through the woods and looking for stuff, and they recovered a lot of debris. Like the debris flew a quarter of a mile from where this happened.
Cooper Maul
Giant freight train.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. In one case, they found a foot from one of the boys. And this wasn't something that was recovered by the police. So there was a sense in the public's mind and in the mind of the family that there was a rush to judgment to determine this was accidental and. Yeah, exactly. And to sort of think that, you know, there might have been some other scientifically questionable reason that all of this had happened. And then there's the question of the tarp. So there's a lot of questions in the early days of this case about what actually was going on, you know,
Cooper Maul
so local law enforcement just accepts this ruling, no questions asked, Case is closed. But I think we're all probably wondering what the parents think of this.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. I mean, if you have looked into cases like this before, the kind of person who might have showed up at this show with us here in the crime scene office, you probably are starting to question whether or not law enforcement had something to do with this. And the family wasn't about to let this go. So this is when we should probably talk about Linda Ives, who is the mother of Kevin, and she is the one who truly, truly held a candle for this case for her entire life. She never let it go.
Guest or Interviewee
I believe Kevin and Don were near the tracks that night and saw either money or drugs dropped from an airplane. I believe that law enforcement officers killed them and the COVID up began immediately expanded to the medical examiner, Fahmi Malik.
Cooper Maul
Always a mom.
Jonathan Hirsch
It's always the mom. It is always the true crime moms. Yeah, the true crime moms are the ones who hold the can. I'm actually, when you mentioned that, I was thinking about a story that you and I did together called Scary Terry. It was a podcast about Terry Lee Hoffman, who was a cult leader in Dallas. And there was a tragic death associated with one of her followers or the daughter of one of her followers and the stepmother, Gail. Gail Gayle, forever. She is 85 years old, and I'm driving through the neighborhood in North Dallas where this cult leader lived, passing by the house and the. She was like vibrating. Sadness, frustration, regret for everything that had happened to her stepdaughter Devereaux, 40 years
Cooper Maul
earlier and still remembered. Every single detail.
Jonathan Hirsch
Every detail. Like it had happened yesterday. And it's just, I feel like Linda is one of those people, too, you know, she just cared so much about finding the answers about what had happened to her boy and to her boy's best friend, and she wasn't about to give that up, you know?
Cooper Maul
Yeah, it's definitely become an archetype. We see it even in true crime fiction.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yes. They're all over the place. I mean, this is just how some of these cases push through are families that truly, deeply care about finding the right answer. And in this case, I really feel like it would have ended here if it weren't for people like Linda taking up the torch and making sure that they find answers. Coming up, the families fight for answers and the shocking truths they reveal. Quick break. This surprised me. The most useful advice I get now doesn't come from experts. It comes from regular people on TikTok. What works, what doesn't. No filters. Download TikTok and see for yourself. The world moves fast. Your workday even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create, and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn more@Microsoft.com M365 copilot.
Cooper Maul
Okay, so quick refresher.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah.
Cooper Maul
These two boys, Kevin and Don, are found dead on the railroad tracks, right?
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah.
Cooper Maul
Train crew who's there say when the train is approaching, they see a tarp over them, right?
Jonathan Hirsch
A green tarp.
Cooper Maul
When the cops show up, they're like, there is no tarp. There was never a tarp.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah.
Cooper Maul
And the medical examiner hastily performs an autopsy and rules the cause of death accidental and likely. These boys were in a coma from smoking 20 marijuana cigarettes, right?
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah.
Cooper Maul
Case closed.
Jonathan Hirsch
Move on.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. And the only people who seem to not be buying this are Kevin and Dawn's parents.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. Case closed. Move on, let's go on to the next case. Right. The family's not buying it at all. Linda Ives, Kevin's mom, Don's parents, Curtis and Lena. They refuse to accept the official explanation.
Cooper Maul
I'm not buying it at all either.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, I mean, none of us are. And that's where this story really starts to snowball into, you know, a capital C type conspiracy, which we'll get to. Kevin's father at one point says, we're willing to go to any length to solve this thing. All we want to know is what happened. If someone can convince us beyond a doubt that this is what happened, we can let it go. But until then, as long as there's a doubt, we will pursue it.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
Well, I couldn't believe that Kevin was knocked out on marijuana or into any kind of heavy drugs, anything like that, because I was home lot during the day when Kevin come in from school and Linda was here at nights. And we'd never seen him in a state that he even act like he was, you know, spaced out or however you want to phrase it. I just couldn't see any signs that he was into any kind of heavy drugs or any kind of really drugs at all.
Jonathan Hirsch
So they continue to trudge forward knowing that the official line on this story couldn't possibly be what happened that night,
Cooper Maul
you know, and what avenues do they have? Cause it's not like there's a suspect in this.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, I mean, they're doing their own sort of questions. They're asking law enforcement. They are talking to the train crew, they're doing records requests, they're looking for inconsistencies. It's like they're conducting their own search and evaluation of the crime scene, Right?
Cooper Maul
Well, they're investigating the investigation.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, they really are. And so the family and local citizens start to get involved. It really starts to snowball into something that looks a lot more complicated than the official line is, you know, at one point they find this.22 rifle that Don Henry had had in his possession that night. They find gold chains belonging to the boys in the forest. I think I mentioned the foot.
Cooper Maul
You know, that your investigation has not been thorough. If civilians and family members are uncovering evidence, like after the case has been effectively closed.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. I mean, if your family is going into the woods and finding things like somebody's body part, you probably have not effectively finished your investigation. Like, you missed a foot. Yeah, it's unbelievable, really. It sounds like a parody of a crime scene at this point. So they make it their mission to find out what the Hell really happened.
Guest or Interviewee
We were absolutely puzzled and outraged over the ruling of accidental as a manner of death. We didn't think that the fact that supported that ruling. And what we started out to do was just to obtain a second opinion. We met resistance from all fronts. From law enforcement, from the crime lab. We retained an attorney and a private investigator and obtained court orders to get testable samples of everything that they had in order to get a second opinion. And Fay Malik refused to obey the court orders.
Jonathan Hirsch
So Malik is also refusing to obey court orders.
Cooper Maul
Are you surprised?
Jonathan Hirsch
No, not at all. I mean, I think the family knew at this point that there was something fishy about all of this. So they're getting resistance everywhere, but they are uncovering information as they go. And one of the things that they learned from the hospital was that there had been no intake or treatment record for these boys when they arrived.
Cooper Maul
What the hell is going on here?
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, and then there's accounts from, like, the EMTs and other people involved. Right. They said at the scene the blood of the boys looked dark.
Cooper Maul
That means it's not fresh.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, not fresh. So, like, Shirley Raper was One of the EMTs who was there at the time. And she says, we grabbed our paramedics equipment and took off down the tracks. Billy, who was the other paramedic, reached the first body, and he told me to stop and not come any closer. I just observed the one body, and occurred to me right off that it was strange because the lack of blood and the color of the body parts and the color of the blood. The body parts had a pale color to them, like someone that had been dead for some time.
Cooper Maul
So the idea there is. Is that these. They may have been killed somewhere else and then placed on the tracks, right?
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. And there was another professional who said, like, the bodies looked more like mannequins. There was very little blood at the scene. The impact site was very d. The blood was just too dark for him to consider it normal. So, yeah, I mean, there's something else going on here. And meanwhile, the train crew is still saying there was a tarp. There was a tarp covering these boys bodies. And none of these details are meaningfully being addressed by local law enforcement. Public pressure is mounting. A local prosecutor approaches the family, a guy by the name of Dan Harmon, and he sort of offers to represent the family.
Cooper Maul
Okay, so they've got an ally.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
There is no doubt in my mind that it was a homicide. And there's no doubt in the grand jury's mind.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, now they got an ally. The Public is obviously in their court. The sheriff is getting a ton of pressure to reopen this case. He declines. And then in early 1988. So it's about several months after the incident when the boys died. The new attorney holds a press conference.
Cooper Maul
17 year old Kevin Ives and 16 year old Don Henry were struck by
Jonathan Hirsch
a train near Alexander.
Cooper Maul
The medical examiner had said that the
Jonathan Hirsch
boys were asleep and drugged with marijuana.
Cooper Maul
The parents, however, disputed that claim and persuaded authorities to reopen the case.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
Would you like to give up your son and everybody think they was smoked up and laid down, passed out? No, I don't think anyone wants to give up their kid. Unless that is honestly proved to be the truth, then you have to accept it. At this point, it has not been proved to us.
Jonathan Hirsch
The day after this press conference, under the pressure from the public, Sheriff Steed, the sheriff at the time, he relents and reopens the case with one condition, which is so typical. No publicly criticizing. He's tired of being under the microscope.
Cooper Maul
There's so much distrust in their community right now.
Jonathan Hirsch
I could also imagine that this guy was a little fragile and didn't want to be criticized and didn't like the family mucking in his investigation, whatever he thought that investigation was. But at this point, now things really do start to move. Saline county had a new deputy deputy prosecutor who had just been elected in, and he started a prosecutor's investigation, which was essentially an inquiry into this case. And Dan Harmon, that guy who was representing the family, who called the press conference, he ends up being sort of appointed to this prosecution team that's looking into the case, and they convene a grand jury. This is kind of fascinating stuff.
Cooper Maul
So if. Yeah, I'm not mistaken. Typically when a grand jury is convened,
Jonathan Hirsch
I feel like I know what you're gonna say.
Cooper Maul
Yeah, there's a suspect, right?
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, you usually are, like, preparing to indict somebody. That's what's so wild about this case is that they weren't planning to indict anybody at this point. They wanted to investigate this as a homicide. So a grand jury was convened as,
Cooper Maul
like, an investigative tool, essentially.
Jonathan Hirsch
As an investigative tool.
Cooper Maul
So who's testifying in grand jury, like
Jonathan Hirsch
in a grand jury without an indictment, they were basically trying to determine whether or not there was a case here and that they could review this case. So they do, In February of 1988, change the official cause of death from accidental to undetermined. And this allows the grand jury to order that the bodies of these boys are exhumed and Reexamined from an independent medical examiner.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
Grant your petition and do grant your petition for exhumation.
Jonathan Hirsch
There was somebody out in Atlanta who also had access to more, you know, technology at the time to examine these bodies. And this is honestly the moment where this story changes forever. Because that marijuana cigarette theory goes out the window.
Cooper Maul
Well, it should have never been in the window.
Jonathan Hirsch
There was definitely no reason for it to be in the window. The THC levels were low. So not 20 joints, nothing incapacitating. They had had a couple of joints that night together. They had smoked some pot when they went out in the woods to go hunting. But more important, like you do in Arkansas in the woods in the late 1980s. Right. Maybe not me. Like, didn't work out. But like, more importantly, the physical trauma of the bodies indicated that one of the boys was already dead or mortally wounded when the train struck. So before the train struck.
Cooper Maul
And the other was like the EMTs observed.
Jonathan Hirsch
Exactly. Right. Yeah. That this body. These bodies were likely moved to this
Cooper Maul
location and covered up with a tarp.
Jonathan Hirsch
And covered up with a tarp. But there's more to this. The grand jury uncovers other failures. So at the time that this happened, the sheriff had promised the public and individuals interested in the case that there would be an FBI analysis of the boy's clothing. But then he quietly sent it to the state instead. Didn't even send it to the FBI for evaluation.
Cooper Maul
And there are no consequences for over promising and under delivering on these investigations for these people so far?
Jonathan Hirsch
No. In a lot of ways, I feel like they were above the law because they felt like they were the law and in many ways felt above this kind of critique from what they probably perceived to be the annoyances of this family. And who knows how dogged they were. But if you lost a child, wouldn't you be, you know, So I think, you know, the family was right to push forward.
Cooper Maul
Hell, yeah.
Jonathan Hirsch
But they encountered resistance that was a lot darker and more complex than I think they could have imagined. So through Malik's attorney, who's lawyered up at this point, he is still continuing to defend his findings. His attorney stated Dr. Malik has said he doesn't believe anybody laid a finger on these boys.
Cooper Maul
It's crazy how all of this could have been avoided had they just done a thorough investigation here.
Jonathan Hirsch
Right. Some of the reporting from the time, the second examiner who came in to evaluate the case found that the bodies had very little marijuana in their systems and found evidence of possible stab wounds and head trauma inflicted prior to the train strike. He Concluded that, quote, one boy was already dead and one unconscious before the train ever hit them.
Cooper Maul
I understand how that part is probably harder to determine in an autopsy when someone's already dead, but stab wounds, that's gonna be, you know, you can look at someone and know that they've been stabbed.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah.
Cooper Maul
Interesting how that was not included in the first report.
Jonathan Hirsch
And maybe the bodies weren't even looked at in the first report because they missed all kinds of things, including parts of the body that were missing. So I gotta say, at this point, this story starts to feel like it's some kind of movie. Do you know what I mean? It just feels like they've made up this story in a writer's room somewhere, you know?
Cooper Maul
Yeah, clearly. I mean, and think most of the time, doesn't this stuff have to be documented?
Jonathan Hirsch
You would think. But there's all this missing documentation, including whether or not there was any sort of intake at the hospital at the night that this occurred.
Cooper Maul
So once the grand jury rules these deaths as probable homicides.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah.
Cooper Maul
The accident theory is no more.
Jonathan Hirsch
Nobody believes that. Nobody believes that something happened in the woods that night.
Cooper Maul
These boys were placed on these tracks.
Jonathan Hirsch
Right, Exactly. And so then the question kind of becomes not like what happened, but why? Coming up, that capital C conspiracy we keep talking about blows the doors off this case.
Cooper Maul
Thanks so much for joining us on Crime Scene. Be sure to like subscribe and follow wherever you watch or listen. You can get exclusive content from us and over 50 jaw dropping true crime series ready to binge ad free right now by subscribing to the binge on Apple podcasts or go to getthebinge.com to explore all the true crimes. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means
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Cooper Maul
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Jonathan Hirsch
Okay, so the investigators are pursuing motive at this case, and something comes up that seems pretty consistent, which is sort of drug related, but of a whole nother scale that we haven't even gotten into yet.
Cooper Maul
Which is bigger than 20 marijuana cigarettes.
Jonathan Hirsch
Way bigger than 20 marijuana cigarettes. More like 20 pounds of marijuana cigarettes, if you catch my drift. In the 1980s, this area of Arkansas was actually sort of a ground zero for narco trafficking that was happening from South America into the United States. They actually made a movie called American Made with Tom Cruise as the lead in which he played this guy, Barry Seal. Barry Seal was like a TWA pilot who ended up being consigned to sort of traffic some of these drugs across the border. And there was an airport not too far from where the boys were killed called the Mena Airport, where a lot of the drug trafficking had been happening in the 1980s.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
It's the aircraft that Barry Seale had there at Rich Mountain Aviation, where there was only one purpose for them, there was only one use for that type of aircraft, and that was smuggle cocaine. They had special cargo doors installed in the side without FAA permission so that these doors could be opened in flight. They'd pull in, slide back, and the cocaine could be dropped outside in flight.
Cooper Maul
Feels so random. Like Arkansas and drug trafficking don't necessarily go hand in hand, but, you know,
Jonathan Hirsch
low flying planes without a lot of people to come around to notice you. It's like the perfect strategy at the time. And this guy, Barry Seal was already arrested and convicted by the time the boys were killed. But there was a trafficking infrastructure that had already been built up in the area. So people started to wonder, did these boys see something? Yeah, they weren't supposed to. Something. There was a drug pipeline that was supposedly allegedly connected to CIA linked Contra operations out of Mena, Arkansas, just down
Cooper Maul
the road out in the woods. Where these drops probably occur, right?
Jonathan Hirsch
Exactly. Yeah. There's like these, like these drops. Like maybe they saw something while they were spotlighting. They were spotlighted, if you know what I mean.
Cooper Maul
That's wrong place, wrong time.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah. That hunting metaphor was so chilling to me when I first started looking at the story. So, yeah, let's talk about some of the people, the eyewitnesses that were coming forward as they start to reinvestigate this case. One of them claimed that they saw two boys being beaten by what looked like two law enforcement officials and then thrown into the back of an unmarked car.
Cooper Maul
Yeah. And given what happened to Don and Kevin, I would be really nervous to speak out about what I saw there.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, exactly. And now we also know that there were stab wounds, there was head trauma. There was more than just the impact of the trains that affected the boys that night when they died. One of the witnesses was anonymous at the time. He said two cops drove up up, confront the boys, beat them up, throw them in the back seat of their car and drive off. I mean, two cops.
Cooper Maul
This goes deep.
Jonathan Hirsch
It really does. This is when that lowercase c is really taking shape as an uppercase c, if you will. And this is when things get even weirder. A woman by the name of Charlene Wilson said that she was among several people who were in the field near the train tracks awaiting a drug drop in the early morning hours of August 23, 1987.
Cooper Maul
It's the same morning the boys were hit by the train.
Guest or Interviewee
The people at the track that night, to my knowledge, were Dan Harmon, Keith McCaskill, Larry Rochelle. I do know that the boys were watching the drop site. Okay. And they got curious as to what was being dropped there.
Jonathan Hirsch
It's another witness, too, that's saying, you know, that one of these was a cop, like a narcotics officer. And a separate report placed a man in military fatigues near the tracks both a week before and on the night of the murder. So who knows what that means? Was it another hunter or was it
Cooper Maul
somebody else staking out the spot if it was good for the drop or whatever.
Jonathan Hirsch
Exactly. And then people connected to this case start dying. That's when this gets really strange.
Cooper Maul
Yeah, that's big. Capital C conspiracy hallmark sign.
Jonathan Hirsch
A bar owner assisting the investigators is stopped. A subpoenaed witness is shot, Another disappears entirely, and yet another dies after claiming that he knew too much.
Guest or Interviewee
The people whose testimony might have solved this case years ago have systematically been eliminated. There apparently was a great deal of fear that these people could implicate very powerful players.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
The eight month long grand jury investigation into Kevin and Don's murder came to an abrupt halt. December 31, 1988. Last minute legal maneuvering by Harmon Garrett and presiding judge John Cole prevented the jurors from revealing their findings in the final report. The men and women of the grand jury were sent home frustrated that they had not been allowed to do their job. The Saline County Special grand jury has now disbanded. Three hours ago, it delivered its final report on the deaths of two teenage boys. But the grand jury was not allowed to do what it wanted. I know that because you could not repeat in the report much of the testimony that you heard and evidence that you received that you are somewhat frustrated by. And that's understandable in the final analysis. I know that the grand jury hated at this point to give it up because I think the public needs to know about the seriousness of the drug problem here in Saline County. County and maybe other surrounding counties. It was now two and a half years since the incident of the boys on the tracks. Saline county deputy prosecutor Gene Duffy was asked to head up the newly created drug task force. The job would require her to investigate drug trafficking in a three county area of Arkansas, including Celine County. However, on the day she was appointed, her boss, prosecutor Gary Arnold, gave her a peculiar command.
Guest or Interviewee
Gary Arnold came into my office, stood in front of my desk, looked me straight in the face and said, gene, you are not to use the drug task force to investigate any public official. He turned on his heel and marched out.
Jonathan Hirsch
So none of these deaths are officially linked to Kevin and Don, but there definitely is a pattern here. And then it gets even more fucked up. Years later, the most devastating revelation surfaces, which is that prosecutor who came forward to help both with the family and then with the case. He's convicted on federal drug charges for racketeering, extortion and drug trafficking.
Cooper Maul
Every single person who touches this case is somehow corrupt.
Jonathan Hirsch
And. Yeah, and the prosecutor who's like involved in the case is actually getting in the mix in a way that why,
Cooper Maul
if he was involved with this, why would he offer up himself as an ally to the family? It doesn't make sense to me unless
Jonathan Hirsch
he had a convenient investment in it.
Cooper Maul
They stood there talking for about 20 minutes.
Guest or Interviewee
Then I noticed two more people, Kevin
Jonathan Hirsch
and I, walking down the railroad Trance.
Cooper Maul
They noticed that there's someone up in the tracks and stopped hesitating.
Jonathan Hirsch
Okay. So I know that at the beginning of this case we talked about little conspiracies and big conspiracies. We should probably get into some of these or just like lay them out for people. The first one is of course the drug smuggling in Arkansas. We talked a lot about that, the MENA airport and its connection to the wider sort of like drug trafficking rings that were happening in that time.
Cooper Maul
Those two kind of track for me.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, they totally do. And there was some federal implications. There was actual investigations into these, into these drug trafficking rings that connected local and state law enforcement to some of the trafficking rings that were happening. Again, all of this wide speculation. But the widest speculation of all is the governor of Arkansas at the time was Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton, yes. So Bill Clinton had a relationship with Fahmi Malik, the medical examiner. He's the state medical examiner. So it's not improbable that he would have some association with him. So at one point, Bill Clinton's mother, who was a nurse, was cleared by Malik of negligence in the death of a 17 year old patient. Some people even said that Clinton kept Malik in his position despite all these controversies in exchange for his favorable ruling. And then after Malik comes under fire for the case of Don and Kevin, he actually recommends that first of all, he dismisses that there was any sort of miscarriage of justice here and also later recommends that Malik receive a pay raise of 40%. This is a year after he clearly botched this investigation. So ultimately though, there's no direct evidence that substantiates the CIA or federal involvement or the Clinton case. But, but man, does it add to the litany of conspiracy theories associated with.
Cooper Maul
It's not making this case look any better.
Jonathan Hirsch
No, definitely not. And Linda Ives, for her part, continues to fight for decades to try to find answers to this. In 2016, she files a suit against multiple federal agencies seeking the unreleased records associated with the case. The court acknowledges the existence of federal records, but they do not compel full disclosure.
Cooper Maul
It's crazy how even if you are a victim of something like this, this the barriers to accessing any kind of files, 100%.
Jonathan Hirsch
And she fought until really until the day that she died and she died in 2021 without any answers, this case remains unsolved. There was sort of an interesting coda to all of this, something that did come forward in recent years.
Cooper Maul
There's always someone who comes out of the woodwork on this. It's like the type of people who like confess to murders that they didn't commit. There's like, it's a. Interesting pathology to me.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
I'm Billy Jack Haynes, former World Wrestling Federation wrestler. Today I come with no mask. I come with no hidden voice. I come to you straight, face to face because this is reality, man. Don't hide nothing. 30 years ago, I witnessed a murder of two teenagers at a railroad tracks. August 23rd, Alexander, Arkansas. 27 years of that, I was a drug addict on pain pill medication. I become clean. It kept bothering me and bothering me and bothering me. And finally when Seth rich was killed, July 10th, I knew that was a message to me because that's my birthday, July 10th. So here I am coming forward. This is a plea that I'm going to read here for you today. The plea is for Those who is yet to contribute to the gofundme.com Kevin Ives, Don Henry murders that happened 30 years ago, please contribute to the fund so that the investigator can take continuous work.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, it is. It is interesting how people just want to, like, get themselves involved in a case like this, but who knows if he actually did see something? But, you know, watching that, that sort of confession, observation video, it does seem like somebody who lived with the guilt, the guilt of it. Take it for what it is. But like I said, this case remains one of the most fascinating, most speculated on unsolved crimes that I've ever encountered.
Cooper Maul
We're talking about it nearly 30 years later. You know, since this case has never been solved, we're left with a few theories here. Right. You know, it obviously wasn't weed.
Jonathan Hirsch
No, definitely not.
Cooper Maul
You know, did they see something they weren't supposed to? Yeah, I'm kind of leaning that way.
Jonathan Hirsch
I think they saw something they weren't supposed to.
Cooper Maul
Were the Clintons involved?
Jonathan Hirsch
I don't know.
Cooper Maul
Yeah, I'm gonna reserve opinion on that.
Jonathan Hirsch
That feels like a rabbit hole for
Cooper Maul
another podcast, but I'm curious what everybody else thinks.
Jonathan Hirsch
Yeah, tell us what you think. We want to know. Thank you so much for joining us on Crime Scene today. Before I leave you, I wanted to give you a sneak peek at an upcoming binge series. It's called My Mother's Lies. It's hosted by Beth Karras. It digs into the Jessica Curran murder case, a highly controversial case that is still in the courts. And it's told from the perspective of the son of an amateur sleuth who helped put away a person for murder on dubious evidence. You're going to want to check this one out. Here's a sneak peek of the story right here. It's called My Mother's Lies. It's coming out April 1st on the Binge.
Guest or Interviewee
Susan Gabbreth wasn't a journalist or a cop. She was a housewife in Mayfield, Kentucky. But after a black teenager named Jessica Curran is murdered in town, Susan takes it upon her son to find witnesses who can point to a killer.
Jonathan Hirsch
She was just wasting away till she jumped onto this and she thought this was gonna be her magic star and she was gonna be a hero.
Guest or Interviewee
But that's not what happened.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
I was learning in real time the lies. There was a lot of lies.
Guest or Interviewee
What were Susan's real motives for trying to solve this murder?
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
She wasn't in it to help them find the killer that killed their daughter.
Guest or Interviewee
Why then did local cops and the Kentucky state police take her seriously that
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
was known that she was getting funds from them.
Guest or Interviewee
Susan's son is wrestling with his mother's legacy to this day.
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
I mean my mom was I used
Jonathan Hirsch
the word diabolical to know that she
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
possibly covered up a murder for somebody.
Guest or Interviewee
And perhaps the biggest question of all, did she help confirm convict an innocent man?
Jonathan Hirsch
I do feel like that they got
Eyewitness or Additional Interviewee
the wrong people getting fine screwed up a murder. Diabolical lies. There was a lot of lies from
Guest or Interviewee
Sony Music Entertainment and Message Heard. This is my mother's lies.
Cooper Maul
Thanks so much for joining us on Crime Scene. This show is a production of Sony Podcasts and the Binge. Thank you to everyone who makes this show happen each week. Also, we love journalism. These stories are deeply informed by the reporting that has brought these cases to light. We stand on the shoulders of giants. To learn more about our sourcing, check out the extensive bibliography listed in our show notes. Be sure to like subscribe and follow wherever you watch or listen. You can get exclusive content from us and over 50 jaw dropping true crime series ready to binge ad free right now. Now by subscribing to the Binge on Apple Podcasts or go to getthebinge.com to explore all the true crime stories included in your subscription. Toogood and Co Coffee creamers are made with farm fresh cream, real milk and contain 3 grams of sugar per serving. That's 40% less than the 5 grams per serving in leading traditional coffee creamers for a rich, delicious experience. Whether you enjoy your coffee hot, hot, cold, bold or frothy, two good coffee creamers make every sip a good one. Two Good Coffee creamers Real goodness in every sip. Find them at your local Kroger in the creamer aisle.
Podcast: Crime Scene (Sony Music Entertainment)
Hosts: Jonathan Hirsch & Cooper Maul
Date: March 26, 2026
This episode of Crime Scene revisits one of America's most perplexing unsolved cases: the deaths of Don Henry and Kevin Ives, teenagers found brutalized on Arkansas railroad tracks in 1987. Hirsch and Maul unpack the infamous "Boys on the Tracks" case, exploring the tangled web of local and federal conspiracies, cover-ups, and the relentless pursuit of justice by the victims’ families. The hosts walk listeners through the night of the tragedy, the bizarre official explanations, the dogged efforts of the families, and the cascade of revelations that turned this tragedy into a lightning rod for true crime speculation and conspiracy theories.
| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 02:06 | Theories of conspiracy: “little c” mob stories vs. “Capital C” deep state plots | | 03:36 | Victims’ backgrounds, “spotlighting” explanation | | 06:59 | Train crew discovers bodies on tracks | | 07:58 | Emotional toll on train crew | | 09:43 | Discovery of shattered rifle at scene | | 11:54 | Police deny the existence of the tarp | | 13:11 | Questions about staging/suicide theory | | 14:13 | Eyewitness: "We were told to work as an accident." | | 16:02 | Dr. Malik's background—profile and controversies | | 18:21 | Malik’s ruling: accidental deaths, “20 marijuana cigarettes” | | 24:09 | Linda Ives, the true crime mom | | 30:31 | Family faces resistance seeking second opinion and evidence | | 33:39 | Press conference leads to case reopening | | 36:21 | Exhumation, independent autopsy, homicide findings | | 42:30 | Drug trafficking context: Barry Seal, Mena Airport | | 45:04 | Eyewitness reports of police brutality, alternate accounts | | 47:10 | Mysterious deaths among witnesses/informants | | 49:52 | Prosecutor Dan Harmon later convicted of drug charges | | 51:09 | Big-picture conspiracy theories and the Clinton connection | | 53:10 | Linda Ives' lifelong fight; unsolved status | | 54:42 | Wrestler Billy Jack Haynes' confession video | | 55:37 | Final theories, hosts reflect/conclude discussion |
“The Boys on the Tracks” remains unsolved—an infuriating example of cases where questions accumulate faster than answers. Crime Scene’s deep dive leaves listeners haunted by the failures of justice and the tantalizing, chilling hints of a cover-up extending beyond small-town Arkansas. The hosts strike a conversational, skeptical, but compassionate tone that honors the victims while never losing sight of the story’s enduring mysteries.