The Lonely Crusade of Linda Ives
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The Wall Street Journal
April 18, 1996
Micah Morrison
The Lonely Crusade of Linda Ives
Train Deaths - Linda Ives and Jean Duffey -(Web Site)
The Boys On The Track - Mara Leveritt - (Web Site)
Linda Ives appears to be a simple housewife--born in 1949, graduated from Little Rock's McClellan High School, and married to Larry Ives, an engineer on the Union Pacific railroad. But her tale is one of the most Byzantine in all Arkansas, involving the murder of her son and his friend, allegations of air-dropped drugs connected to the Mena, Ark. airport, a series of aborted investigations and, she believes, cover-ups by local, state, and federal investigators.
The case started nine years ago, when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Today, with Mr. Clinton in the White House, it is still rattling through the state, with one of the principal figures making bizarre headlines in the local press as recently as the last few weeks. Above all, the "train deaths" case opens a window into the seamy world of Arkansas drugs.
The bare facts of the case are these: At 4:25 a.m. on Aug.23, 1987, a northbound Union Pacific train ran over two teenagers, Kevin Ives and Don Henry, as they lay side by side, motionless on the tracks. Arkansas State Medical Examiner Fahmy Malak quickly ruled the deaths "accidental," saying the boys were "unconscious and in deep sleep" due to smoking marijuana. "We didn't know anything about marijuana at the time," Mrs. Ives says. But when medical experts found the explanation implausible, "we really began asking questions." The families held a press conference challenging the ruling, which received wide publicity in Arkansas.
This in turn provoked an investigation by a local grand jury in Saline County, a largely rural area between Little Rock and Hot Springs. Ultimately the bodies were exhumed and another autopsy was performed by outside pathologists. They found that Don Henry had been stabbed in the back, and that Kevin Ives had been beaten with a rifle butt. In grand jury testimony, lead pathologist Joseph Burton of Atlanta said the boys "were either incapacitated, knocked unconscious, possibly even killed, their bodies placed on the tracks and the train overran their bodies." In September 1988, the grand jury issued a report stating, "Our conclusions are that the case is definitely a homicide."
The teenagers told their parents they were going out for a night of deer hunting by spotlight. From the beginning allegations of a drug connection haunted the case. One police report filed seven months after the death reads, "Confidential Informant states that she has been told that the area the two boys died in is a drop zone for dope." The case soon became a local cause celebre. A Republican candidate for sheriff in heavily Democratic Saline county held a press conference by the railroad tracks where the two teenagers died, promised to crack down on "drug lords" operating in the area, and won an upset victory.
On taking office, however, the new sheriff passed the investigation along to Chuck Banks, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas during the Bush administration. Mr. Bank's office was probing allegations of drug-related corruption among Saline County officials. At the same time, another investigation was opened by Jean Duffey, a deputy prosecutor heading a newly created drug task force for the state's Seventh Judicial District. Drawing on interviews with area residents and informants, the task force developed a theory that the area was used as a site for drug drops by plane. "We had witnesses telling us about low-flying aircraft and informants testifying about drug pick-ups," Ms. Duffey recalled recently.
Ms. Duffey also says that her supervisor, outgoing Prosecuting Attorney Gary Arnold, gave her a strange order upon her new appointment. "He told me, 'You are not to use the drug task force to investigate any public officials.' At the time, I assumed it was because of the U.S. attorney's investigation. But as soon as my undercover agents hit the streets, they began linking public officials to drug dealing. So I began funneling that information to the U.S. attorney's office."
Eight months after taking the post of drug task force coordinator, Ms. Duffey was fired amid allegations of financial mismanagement, child abuse and official improprieties. The Arkansas State Police subsequently found no basis on which to charge her with mismanagement of task force funds and state welfare authorities cleared her of the abuse allegation. Ms. Duffey next received a subpoena that apparently would have forced her to reveal the identitiy of her informants--to some of the very people being probed for drug corruption, she claims. She chose to ignore the subpoena, she says, "rather than showing up in court and refusing to testify and being jailed for contempt. I feared for my safety in an Arkansas jail. Then the judge issued a felony arrest warrant--'failure to appear' usually is a low-level misdemeanor--and told the newspapers I was a fugitive. That's when I left the state."
Ms. Duffey attributes the "smear campaign" and subpoena that forced her from the state to Dan Harmon, who had won the Democratic nomination for prosecuting attorney for the Seventh Judicial District. While he did not take office until January 1991, he had considerable influence in 1990 because the Democratic nomination insured he would eventually gain the post. Interviewed this week, Mr. Harmon says that Ms. Duffey is a "crackpot" and that he was "planning to replace her when all hell broke loose."
Ms. Duffey says that matters were a great deal more serious than a personal dispute between her and Mr. Harmon: "My agents were turning up information linking Mr. Harmon to drugs, that's what the real problem was." Mr. Harmon also was identified in leaked investigative documents as a "target" in the 1989-1991 U.S. attorney's drug-corruption probe, and Ms. Duffey says the reason she did not respond to Mr. Harmon's attacks was that the U.S. attorney's office was assuring her that his indictment was imminent. But in November 1990 the case supervisor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Govar, was removed from the investigation and U.S. Attorney Banks took charge.
In June 1991, Mr. Banks announced that the investigation was over. "There's not going to be any pressing of indictment against Mr. Harmon or any other public official," he said. "We found no evidence of any drug-related misconduct by public officials." Mr. Banks added that there would be no arrests in connection with the deaths of Kevin Ives and Don Henry.
Bill Clinton's gubernatorial administration assumed a role in the Ives and Henry case shortly after Dr. Malak's marijuana-induced accidental death ruling. Dr. Malak, an Egyptian-born physician appointed medical examiner during Mr. Clinton's first term, already had been buffeted by a number of controversial cases. With public pressure growing over botched tests and faulty handling of evidence in the train deaths affair, Gov. Clinton called in two out-of-state pathologists to review the work of the medical examiner and the state crime lab, where the autopsies had been conducted.
But when the Saline County grand jury probing the case attempted to subpoena the outside pathologists, Gov. Clinton balked. Betsy Wright, his chief of staff, submitted an affidavit saying she did not "know when the two pathologists will return to Little Rock" and that their contract with the state was to "make a job performance evaluation, not to provide a second opinion on specific cases." The grand jury responded by issuing a subpoena to Ms. Wright herself on May 25, 1988, and the next day issued its initial ruling of "probable homicide" in need of further investigation.
Two months later, Gov. Clinton revived a long dormant state Medical Examiner Commission to handle the Malak controversy. The panel was headed up by the director of the Arkansas Department of Health, Joycelyn Elders. In January 1989, the Medical Examiner Commission ruled on the Malak case. There was "insufficient evidence at this time for dismissal" of Dr. Malak, Dr. Elders announced. Nine months later, Gov. Clinton introduced a bill to make the state more competitive in hiring forensic pathologists--by giving Dr. Malak a $32,000 pay raise; the state Legislature later cut the raise by half. Ms. Wright says the salary was raised in anticipation of removing Dr. Malak and attracting a new medical examiner. Dr. Malak was eased out of his job and given a position as a Health Department consultant to Dr. Elders a month before Gov. Clinton announced his presidential run.
A Los Angeles Times report in May 1992 notes that Dr. Malak's other controversial cases included one involving Mr. Clinton's mother, nurse-anesthetist Virginia Kelley. It said Dr. Malak's 1981 ruling in the death of one patient Mrs. Kelley was attending helped her "avoid legal scrutiny" in that death when she was already a defendant in a negligence suit in another patient's death. The suit was eventually settled by the hospital; Mrs. Kelley's hospital privileges were revoked in 1981 and she withdrew from practice.
Linda Ives has developed more sinister explanations for the Clinton administration's solicitude for Dr. Malak, charging that "high state and federal officials" have joined in an attempt to cover up the deaths of the boys and drug-related activities in Saline County. Taking allies where she can find them, she recently teamed up with California-based Jeremiah Films to produce a just-released videotape of her story. The company previously produced the notorious "Clinton Chronicles" videotape, but Mrs. Ives promises that she has "exercised full editorial control" over the new tape, and says that portions of the proceeds will go to "a special Civil Justice Fund we've established to find a courageous lawyer and finance a wrongful death lawsuit."
Of course, Mrs. Ives's own perceptions are colored by a nine-year obsession with her son's death. "I firmly believe my son and Don Henry were killed because they witnessed a drug drop by airplane connected to the Mena drug smuggling routes," Mrs. Ives says. "It's the only thing that could explain everything that has happened." It's well established that self-confessed cocaine smuggler and Drug Enforcement Administration informant Barry Seal operated out of Mena, in western Arkansas. Although he was murdered 18 months before the death of the boys, reports of Mena-connected drug activities persisted for years.
Police records also show that one of the early investigators on the train deaths case was Arkansas State Police Officer L.D. Brown, a former security aide to Gov. Clinton who is now cooperating with Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's Whitewater probe. He says that he was ordered off the train deaths case in 1988. "I was told it had something to do with Mena and I was to get off it," Mr. Brown said in a recent interview. The superior officer who gave him the order died of cancer in 1994.
Last July, in an interview with American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrrell, Mr. Brown claimed that he worked briefly for Barry Seal, and that when he informed Gov. Clinton of Mr. Seal's activities, Gov. Clinton told him that it was "Lasater's deal" and that he was not to worry about it. Dan Lasater is the Little Rock bond dealer and Clinton supporter arrested for cocaine distribution in 1986, in the same probe that netted Roger Clinton, the president's brother. While Mr. Lasater has received far less publicity than Hillary Clinton's financial transactions, veteran Arkansas observers have long viewed him as one of Mr. Clinton's most troubling connections. The new round of Senate Whitewater hearings reauthorized yesterday will provide a glimpse of Mr. Lasater, since the next stage of investigation will delve into some of his deals.
As Mr. Lasater was being charged with cocaine distribution in 1986, the DEA confirmed that he was the target of a drug trafficking probe involving his private plane and a small airstrip at the New Mexico resort, Angel Fire, which he had purchased in 1984. In the transcript of his interview with the FBI, Mr. Lasater identifies a police officer named Jay Campbell as an old friend. He also says that Mr. Campbell was a member of a DEA task force and had flown on his plane. Mr. Campbell--working a narcotics beat at the time for a nearby town's police force--was subpoenaed by the original Saline County grand jury and appears in police reports on the train deaths case.
Mr. Lasater could not be reached for comment. Mr. Campbell, now a lieutenant in a Pulaski County (Little Rock) narcotics unit, says that Mr. Lasater was only an "acquaintance" and that he was not a member of a DEA task force at the time, though he later served on several federal probes. He vigorously denies any involvement in the train deaths case and says he was "dragged into" the probe by a publicity-seeking Dan Harmon, then serving as special prosecutor for the Saline County grand jury.
One of the most constant and puzzling counterpoints in Linda Ives's lonely crusade has been Mr. Harmon, today still prosecuting attorney for the Seventh Judicial District. Initially, he led the aggressive Saline County grand jury that had the bodies exhumed. He even worked on the case as a volunteer before requesting that the presiding judge appoint him special prosecutor to supervise investigation of the deaths. Mr. Harmon had previously served as an elected county prosecutor in 1978-1980, then declared bankruptcy and briefly decamped to California before returning to Arkansas and private practice. Mr. Harmon won his 1990 election as prosecuting attorney by capitalizing on publicity gained as special prosecutor in the train deaths, and has held the post ever since.
At the time of his election, Mr. Harmon was a suspect in the U.S. attorney's corruption probe. "Dan Harmon..."states a February 1990 U.S. Attorney's Office memorandum leaked to the Arkansas press, "has been identified as a target in this investigation." One of the cocaine dealers targeted in the probe allegedly was connected to Mr. Harmon. The dealer, the memo says, "may have been involved, indirectly, in the murders of Kevin Ives and Don Henry." Mr. Harmon was cleared in June 1991 when U.S. Attorney Banks announced that he had found no evidence of drug-related misconduct by officials.
It appeared that the crusade was over. But in 1993, Mrs. Ives persuaded yet another new Saline County sheriff to reopen the train deaths probe. Detective John Brown was assigned the case. He says he was soon approached by a high-ranking state official who told him "it would be best if I just left this thing alone." But Mr. Brown did not leave it alone. In fact, Mr. Brown says that he turned up a new witness in the case. According to Mr. Brown, the witness claims that he saw Mr. Harmon on the tracks the night the boys were killed. Mr. Harmon dismisses the charge as "totally ridiculous."
But the new witness appears to have triggered an FBI probe. Mr. Brown says he was in the process of checking out the allegation when he mentioned it to a local FBI official who, much to Mr. Brown's surprise, immediately took the witness into protective custody and polygraphed him. "The FBI then said they were taking over the case and wanted everything I had," Mr. Brown recalls.
Jean Duffey, the former drug task force head, says the FBI contacted her in 1994--three years after she fled the state--telling her that a new investigation of the train deaths and official corruption was under way, and asking for her assistance. Linda Ives also says that after about 18 months of extensive contacts, the FBI broke off communication with her last August, shortly after a summary of the case was forwarded to current U.S. Attorney Paula Casey.
In November, Mrs. Ives had a final meeting with FBI officials. Apparently, the FBI was backing away from the case, particularly the second autopsy. At the November meeting, Mrs. Ives says, "FBI agent Bill Temple told me, 'It's time for you to realize a crime has never been committed." Mrs. Ives and Ms. Duffey then went public with the charge that the FBI was participating in a "cover-up" of the controversial case.
The FBI has not responded to numerous requests for comment on its agents' conversations with Mrs. Ives. In virtually the only FBI comment on the case, I.C. Smith, the Little Rock FBI chief, gave a brief interview to the local Benton Courier in which he denied that his office was covering anything up. He said that the main obstacle was "the very real problem of determining whether federal jurisdiction would apply." Mr. Smith also suggested that Agent Temple had been "misquoted" and would not have spoken in such a "cold-hearted manner" to Mrs. Ives.
Mrs. Ives sticks to her story, and ridicules Mr. Smith's suggestion that jurisdiction might be at issue. "It's a federal corruption probe they've been working for 18 months," she says. "It's ludicrous to believe the FBI would work a case that long without knowing if they have jurisdiction."
In a memo on the Benton Courier article sent to Mr. Smith (and also sent to six Arkansas media outlets), Ms. Duffey says Mrs. Ives's account of the conversation was confirmed by Phyllis Cournan, another FBI agent in the room at the time. Ms. Duffey's memo also says that in 1994 Ms. Cournan told her that the FBI had recommended that Mr. Banks, then the U.S. Attorney, be charged with obstructing justice. Mr. Banks, now in private practice in Little Rock, did not respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Dan Harmon has again been making news in Arkansas. His ex-wife, Holly DuVall, was arrested Nov. 30 after making a call from Mr. Harmon's phone to an undercover agent to buy a small amount of Methamphetamine. Eleven days earlier, she had made news when local police searched her rented condominium near Hot Springs at the manager's request, following an altercation. They found an empty cocaine evidence package that should have been locked in the safe at Mr. Harmon's drug task force; federal investigators were soon visiting the condo and Mr. Harmon's office.
On March 18, Ms. Duffey went public with charges against Mr. Harmon on a local TV broadcast, "The Pat Lynch Show." One newspaper, the Malvern Daily Record, ran with the story, under the headline "Duffey alleges Harmon at scene of teens' murder." Four days later, Mr. Harmon announced that he was a Democratic candidate in the primary for Saline County sheriff.
The next day, he was arrested on felony kidnapping and aggravated assault charges after allegedly dragging Ms. DuVall from her car and taking her on a 100-mile-per-hour ride. After a few days in jail and a brief hunger strike, Mr. Harmon held a press conference to deny kidnapping Ms. DuVall and denounce his arrest as a "political" move to undermine him. In regard to the train deaths allegations, Mr. Harmon says he plans to sue Ms. Duffey, Mr. Lynch and the Malvern Daily Record.
In mid-January the state cut off funding for Mr. Harmon's drug task force, and on Jan. 28 the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that "Federal investigators are said to be building a racketeering case against people associated with the now-defunct Seventh Judicial District Drug Task Force." Arkansas State Police officials confirm that a corruption probe is under way. Mr. Harmon is not worried. "Nobody has questioned me," he says. "Nobody has informed me I'm a target. It's all just innuendo in the local press.
The results of any continuing federal investigation touching on the Ives and Henry deaths will be presented to Mr. Bank's successor as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District. So Linda Ives' crusade will end up in the hands of Ms. Casey, the longtime Clinton ally and campaign worker who recused herself from Whitewater cases only after making several crucial decisions. President Clinton appointed her U.S. attorney in Little Rock in August 1993, shortly after his unprecedented demand for the immediate resignation of all sitting U.S. attorneys. Mrs. Ives says she is not optimistic about Ms. Casey. "But then," she adds, "it's not like I'm going to go away, either.
END OF ARTICLE
SOME ADDITONAL INFORMATION REGARDING THE TRAIN DEATHS:
1. With regard to Dr. Malak, in 1992 the Los Angeles times also documented that he falsified the "cause" of death 20 times.
2. Raymond Albright - Murdered 1992 - Actual cause of death was murder. Albright was shot 5 times in chest and Malak ruled the cause of death "suicide".
3. James Dewey Milam - Murdered - Milam had information on the deaths of Ives and Henry. Malak's initial ruling was an ULCER. Milam was decapitated. Malak concluded that the family pet had eaten the entire head and regurgitated the head later on. Unfortunately for Malak, the entire head was later found intact in a trash bin just a couple blocks away from the initial area where the body was found. Malak made up the entire story.
4. Keith Coney - Murder and cover-up May 1988 - Keith had initially been with Kevin Ives and Don Henry the night of the train death. He told relatives that "law enforcement" officials were responsible for murdering Kevin and Don. 2 days later he was killed while riding his Motorcycle at very high speed being chased by a vehicle. According to some officers, his throat had been slashed by his attackers. Ruled a traffic accident. No autopsy done.
5. Keith McKaskle - Murdered Nov. 1988 - Keith was allegedly at tracks that night with Kevin and Don. He turned over the information he knew to Richard Garrett, Deputy Prosecutor. He immediately told everything he knew to his family and also told his family that he had told the "wrong" people what he knew when he told Garrett the information. He was so convinced that he was going to be murdered he arranged his funeral, told family and friends good-bye. Within days he was stabbed 113 times. The night of local elections in 1988, Keith laid 2 cents on the Wagonwheel tavern bar and said if Jim Steed wins this sheriff election tonight my life's not worth 2 cents.He was right.
6. Gregory Collins - Murdered Jan. 1989 - Greg had information on the Ives and Henry murders. He was scheduled to appear at the grand jury and had been subpoened. He had been shot in the face with a shotgun. It was ruled a suicide. No autopsy was performed.
7. Boonie Bearden - Murdered under mysterious circumstances March 1989 - He was a friend of both Greg Collins and Keith Coney. He "vanished" without a trace. It was rumored he knew exactly what had happened at the tracks. An anonymous caller said he knew where he had been murdered. The police found a piece of a shirt, nothing more. His body has never been recovered.
8. Jeff Rhodes - Murdered April 1989 - He told his family he knew too much about the murders of Kevin, Don and McKaskle's murders. His body was found in a trash dump. He had severe gunshot blasts to the head, his hands and feet had been partially sawn off, he was possibly tortured and then burned.
9. Richard Winters - Murdered in July 1989 - Winters was a possible suspect in the deaths of Ives and Henry. He was cooperating and was to be a witness for Don and Kevin within the Grand Jury. He was gunned down in cold blood via a shotgun blast to his face in a robbery which has been proven to be a set-up.
9. Jordan Ketelsen - Murdered June 1990 - Jordan was believed to be connected to the murder of Mckaskle. He was shot at point blank range in the head via a shotgun in his pickup truck. There was no police investigation. No autopsy was performed as the body was cremated quickly.
10. Mike Samples - Murdered June 1995 - Mike was another grand jury witness for Don and Kevin. He was reported as knowing a great deal about the deaths of Ives and Henry. Sources say he had been involved with picking up drugs that were dropped out of planes at the Mena drop sites. He was shot to death in the head and was not found for some time.
11. John Hillyer - Murdered - NBC cameraman and investigator who brought much of the initial Mena findings to the publics attention. It cost him his life.
Note: Authorities(investigators) have denied any connection between these cases and the Kevin Ives/Don Henry murders! There is great fear that they will implicate very powerful people within the Arkansas Power circle.
SUSPECTS IMPLICATED IN IVES/HENRY MURDERS & COVER-UP:
Dan Harmon - Prosecutor
Richard Garrett - Deputy Prosecutor
Jim Steed - Sheriff
Jay Campbell - Pulaski County sheriff's deputy
Kirk Lane - Pulaski County sheriff's deputy
Danny Allen - Officer
Larry Rochelle - at the tracks that night.
ADDITIONAL OFFICIALS WHO SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED FOR OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE AND COVER-UP:
Bill Clinton - President
Michael Fitzhugh - U.S. attorney
Chuck Banks - U.S. attorney
Floyd Hays - FBI Agent
John Cole - Judge, Saline County
Rick Elmendorf - former Saline County head investigator under Sheriff Jim Steed.
Don Birdsong - State Police liason to Governor Clinton.
Fahmy Malak - Former Ark.State Medical Examiner
Jocelyn Elders - Former Ark. State Health Dept. Director
SOME PREVIOUS QUOTES ON VIDEO:
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." - The Clinton Chronicles
John Brown - Former Saline County Criminal Investigator - " The fact is, we know who killed these kids." - The Clinton Chronicles
SOME ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Pat Matrisciana of Citizens For Honest Government is being sued by Pulaski County sheriff's deputies Jay Campbell and Kirk Lane, the two officers who are alleged of participating in the Ives/Henry deaths and seen by more than one witness at the tracks. They state that the Clinton Chronicles video wrongly accused them. Also John Brown secretly switched sides in what he believes happened in his "comments" on the video and gave a sworn affidavit to the the attorneys representing Campbell and Lane, basically stating his comments were taken out of context! Yeah, right John, that's why you ordered 300 copies of the video which you never paid for and distributed, including in Congressman Livingstone's office. John, you showed the video in your campaign for Sheriff of Saline County. You promoted the video on Jane Chastain's radio program because, according to Jane, "you wanted the truth to get out." In an interview with John Bennett you stated, "as far as I can tell, everything on the video is 100% accurate." You told Lt. Col. Tom McKenney, Jean Duffey, and Linda Ives, that you personally believed Campbell and Lane had killed the two boys. John, you know what happened. Is someone threatening your family or you personally? Speak up John, I can't hear you.
Also, Dan Harmon, in one day, was convicted of 4 drug charges Monday, April 14, 1998. On Wednesday, June 11, 1997, Dan Harmon was found guilty of five of eleven federal felony charges, including racketeering by using his office to get drugs and money. However, the Harmon issue is another whole story in itself, and none of these charges have anything to do with the "TRAIN DEATHS.
The FBI knows who murdered Kevin Ives & Don Henry
"Sharlene was surprisingly frank about her job at the Mena Airport in the mid-1980s. The cocaine was flown in on twin-engine Cessnas, sometimes as often as every day. "I'd pick up the pallets and make the run down to Texas. The drop-off was at the Cowboys Stadium. I was told that nobody would ever bother me, and I was never bothered....If there was a problem I was to call Dan Harmon."
A lot of cocaine that came into Mena was taken up to Springdale in northwest Arkansas, she said, where it was stuffed into chickens for reshipment to the rest of the country.
But she had another job, which she revealed to me two years later when we were allowed to meet and talk in relative privacy at the prison library. This time she was trembling with emotion, giving free rein to the terrible remorse that had been eating at her for nine years. She used to pick up cocaine deliveries on the railway tracks near a little town of Alexander, thirty miles south of Little Rock.
'Every two weeks, for years, I'd go to the tracks, I'd pick up the package, and I'd deliver it to Dan Harmon, either straight to his office, or at my house....Sometimes it was flown in by air, sometimes it would be kicked out of the train. A big bundle, two feet by one and a half feet, like a bale of hay, so heavy I'd have trouble lifting it....Rodger the Dodger picked it up a few times.'
But in the summer of 1987 one of the drops disappeared. Furious, Harmon brought out some of his men to watch the delivery on the night of August 22. They were expecting a delivery of 3 to 4 pounds of cocaine and 5 pounds of "weed." Sharlene was supposed to make the pickup that night but she had been "high-balling" a mixture of cocaine and crystal and was totally "strung-out." They told her to wait in the car, which was parked off Quarry Road. It was around midnight.
"It was scary. I was high, very high. I was told to sit there and they'd be back. It seemed forever....I heard two trains. Then I heard some screams, loud screams. It... it...," she stammered, breaking into uncontrollable tears. She never did finish that sentence.
"When Harmon came back, he jumped in the car and said, 'Let's go.' He was scared. It looked like there was blood all down his legs."
She later learned that a group of boys had been intercepted at the drop site. According to Sharlene some of the them had managed to get away, but Kevin Ives, 17, and Don Henry, 16, were captured. Harmon's men interrogated them as they were lying on the ground, face down, hands tied behind their backs. They were kicked and beaten, and finally executed. One of the boys was stabbed to death with a "survival knife." The bodies were wrapped in a tarpaulin, carried to a different spot on the line, and placed across the railway tracks so that the bodies would be mangled by the next train.
The following day Harmon told Sharlene that she would have to ditch her car. He gave her $500 in cash and told her to deliver a packet of cocaine to an address in Rockford, Illinois. She went to an auto auction and bought an Olds Cutlass Supreme for $450 in cash and drove to Rockford. From there she fled to the obscurity of Nebraska.
....Cournan( Phyllis Cournan - FBI Agent) contacted Jean Duffey in Texas, persuading her to open the files of the drug task force. She went to see Sharlene in the penitentiary. "She asked me if Rodger Clinton had been on the railway tracks that night," said Sharlene.
..."The boys were murdered, said Phyllis, and the FBI knew who did it. But the forensic evidence was contaminated. We couldn't get anything out of the DNA," she said. "All we had were witnesses with huge credibility problems; we couldn't go to trial with that...What were we suppose to do?"
She was putting the best face on it, trying to convince herself. I could sense her slipping away into the embrace of the Bureau. She had poured her heart and soul into the case, but when it came to the crunch she was going to be a team player."
THE SECRET LIFE OF BILL CLINTON - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
THE TRAIN DEATHS, THE COVER-UP, AND CLINTON - Thread 1
There Is No Justice In America
The Fall of the Republic
BTTT--
I love Micah's work
.
How would you like to live with the knowledge day in and day out that your son was butchered, beaten, stabbed and laid out on the railroad tracks for a train to rip him to shreds. Then find out about Fahmy Malak. Then re-open the case and trust law enforcement to find out what happened. Then have every aspect of law enforcement cover-up everything as you go along the circus trail. Then find out about Mena, the Dixie Mafia, Bill Clinton, Roger Clinton and what really happened. Then trust the FBI, and find out that they're in on it also and will be of no help, and will cover-up whatever is necessary. Then find out the Congress won't help because they're hands are dirty in Mena also. Then find out the Justice Department is facilitating evil for the Dixie mafia and will be of no help and shut down every aspect of every channel of justice needed to continue the cover-up. Then turn to friends, and well, they're just plain tired of it all. It truly is a lonely road when justice flees and corruption settles in.
Yes, me too my friend. She's one of the few troopers with her voice in the wildreness who has tried to continue to tell the tragic story with tentacles that reach right into the White House. Nobody likes to say that, but it's the truth.
The following links may be of interest to newcomers:
BUMP
I'm learning something new every day here on FR.
Oops. You stated Micah. Mara Leveritt has done a great deal also. She's been steady all these years.
Then turn to friends, and well, they're just plain tired of it all. It truly is a lonely road when justice flees and corruption settles in.
I well recall thinking that this story would finally awake the sense of outrage that has been numb for 8 sorry years....
Wrong again!
When will our long national nightmare be over???
Thanks.
"I'm learning something new every day here on FR."
Excellent! This is how they get away with so much. Click here.
sharlenes's testimony entered into the record at the defamation trial of pat matriciana implilcated several in the murders & placed dan harmon & others at the scene.
this alone should have triggered a new grand jury investigation, but instead has been covered up and forgotten by law enforcement.
"When will our long national nightmare be over???"
Honestly, I don't believe it's going to be over. The people are asleep at the switch. I too thought long ago that this story would cause outrage. However, the media, for the most part blacked out the news, or reported few pertinent facts of the case. I showed the video one time to a group of about 25 pastors. Their faces were white. However, later, the key, as far as I know, they did nothing about it. Of course, what can one do that's effective? I think I know the answer to that, but I would rather not say.
An equally fascinating but appaling...BUMP.
"this alone should have triggered a new grand jury investigation, but instead has been covered up and forgotten by law enforcement."
IT'S OUTRAGEOUS!!! People should hit the streets. They should do it for many reasons, but for Linda Ives also. Everytime I post something on this it makes me want to throw my PC out the window!
Here, this man is part of the evil. You may know the name, because he's tied to your handle.
The Hunt for Christians
Indonesia: The Moluccas
In the Moluccas, a group of islands in eastern Indonesia and a place once praised for the peaceful cohabitation between Muslims and Christians, a terrible religious conflict has erupted. Muslim fighters of "Laskar Jihad" (Fighters of the Holy War) want to eliminate Christians from the Moluccas.
Mass murder
The religious war in the Moluccas began in January 1999 with a simple disagreement between a drunken Christian bus driver and a Muslim - the bus driver is said to have insulted Islam.
The deep economic crisis and the officially supported immigration of Muslims had heightened tensions between the longtime resident Christian population and the Muslim immigrants to the boiling point.
Since then, almost 10,000 people, mainly Christians, have died. Two hundred churches have been burned to the ground, whole quarters of the capital city, Ambon, are nothing but rubble and ashes, and entire islands in the northern Moluccas are today "cleansed of Christians". Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes.
The intensity of the religious war increased when over 2,000 Muslim Laskar Jihad fighters (”Fighters of the Holy War”) from central Indonesia landed in the Moluccas. They had been incited by the Muslim-friendly media in Indonesia that spoke of "persecution" of Muslims in the Moluccas.
Since their invasion, the jihad fighters have been carrying out devastating massacres of Christian villagers, particularly in northern Moluccas, mainly inhabited by Muslims.
At the end of July, hundreds of Muslim extremists attacked the city of Waai, near the capital, Ambon. Around 4,000 Christians fled into the forests. The Muslims seized Waai, in the process murdering 23 people. In the meantime, tens of thousands of Christians have been living in remote jungle areas. They are in a remorseful state - ill, injured and hungry. Their fear of the Islamists is justified: Jihad fighters slit open the abdomen of a pregnant Christian woman and hacked her unborn child into pieces.
Many Christian victims have been beheaded. An eye witness in a village on the island of Haruku describes, "I was sleeping. Then, at five in the morning, I heard a bomb explode. I went outside and saw three people lying on the ground, murdered. The Muslims and the military were attacking our village from three sides. I fled past the football field into the forest. Nine people died on the football field while attempting to defend the village. Others were only injured, but then the military came and killed them by stabbing them in the neck. When the military ran out of ammunition, we tried to recover the dead. But we couldn't identify them any more - all of them had been beheaded." The Muslim Indonesian army usually fights on the side of the Muslims and does not protect the Christians from acts of violence. And so the Christians are currently so desperate that they believe that the only help that can come is through an international peacekeeping force.
Indonesian Family Forged Tight Arkansas Links a Decade Ago
The Washington Post 10/20/96
By Susan Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf
The billionaire Riady family of Indonesia got its first toehold in American industry through Bill Clinton's Arkansas more than a decade ago, forging links into the state's insular business and legal circles that still serve them today.
It was the strangest of beginnings in America, one that is still spinning off odd and intriguing relationships. Some in the cast of characters have been bit players before in controversies that have engulfed the Clintons ever since they left Little Rock four years ago.The Riadys were already owners of a vast Asian conglomerate when they first started doing business in Arkansas in 1983. They got help from, of all places, the U.S. government, which provided $2 million to the Riady's company that would in turn be lent to minority businesses.
After that not-so-humble start more than a decade ago, the Riady family's Lippo Group in Jakarta is engaged in dealings with Arkansas industrial giants like Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods, and has multiple lines into the Clinton administration, not the least of which is James Riady's personal relationship to the president. A closer look into Riady's past, gleaned from interviews, bank records, government documents and other sources shows how far the tentacles of this Indonesian family reached and provides a window into how his long relationship with Clinton took hold.
The Riadys were introduced to Arkansas through Little Rock billionaire Jackson T. Stephens, whose investment banking firm is the largest in the country outside New York. Stephens got to know Riady in 1977 when Lippo was weighing whether to buy Bert Lance's financial interest in the National Bank of Georgia. Lance at the time was budget director to President Jimmy Carter, a Stephens official said, demonstrating an interest even then by the Indonesians in political connections as well as financial. The company was then looking for a U.S. bank to help finance its export deals.
Although the Georgia sale fell through, Stephens officials struck up a relationship with family patriarch Mochtar Riady and invited his son James to Little Rock to learn about international banking. Thus began Lippo's improbable immersion into the clubby, virtually all-white world of Arkansas politics and finance that few outsiders, much less foreign nationals, had learned to penetrate.
James Riady assimilated into Little Rock society, buying a comfortable home in an area called Pleasant Valley and joining a country club where he could socialize with others in Little Rock's corporate gentry. Fluent in English and gregarious, he and his wife, Ailyn, hosted frequent dinner parties. And like most of the state's wealthiest business owners, they got to know Arkansas' young governor and his wife, whose Rose law firm did legal work for the state's corporate elite, including, now, the Riadys.
Their first Arkansas venture was Mochtar Riady's creation of Lippo Finance & Investment Inc., a lending company financed in part by the Small Business Administration and formed to make loans to small, minority-owned businesses.
As a foreign national, Mochtar Riady was unable to serve as chairman to a company whose very existence was owed to the U.S. government's SBA program. So Riady hired Carter's recently departed SBA administrator, Vernon Weaver, for the job instead. Weaver listed then-governor Bill Clinton as a character reference in his application to the SBA, according to government sources who have examined the company records. Weaver is now Clinton's U.S. representative to the European Union.
The company made loans to Asian businesses located in Little Rock, Los Angeles and New York. In 1984, Lippo and Stephens joined forces to buy a 30 percent stake in Worthen Bank Corp., Arkansas' largest financial institution with ambitions to develop international business. Worthen took over the SBA company, but surrendered its SBA license in 1987.
Republican sources said committees in the House and Senate have asked the SBA to immediately turn over all Lippo's company records, including details about the government-backed loans it financed.
In the course of its Arkansas dealings with Worthen, the Riadys ended up joint owners of the First National Bank in Mena, a remote mountain hamlet known for nothing it not international intrigue. An airstrip at Mena is at the center of long-standing but unproven allegations that it was used for running guns to the Contras in Nicaragua.
One of Worthen's stockholders during this period was lawyer Joseph Giroir, who was then managing partner at the Rose Law Firm with Hillary Clinton, Webster Hubbell and the late Vincent Foster.
Giroir left Rose in the late 1980s, but has maintained ties to the Riadys. Just a day after James Riady visited Clinton in the White House in April 1993, Giroir set up a company intended to create partnership ventures with Lippo. The following year, he was able to capitalize on the U.S. decision to renew China's most-favored-nation trading status.
Since then, Giroir has publicly discussed his efforts to broker ventures between Lippo and Tyson Foods, which has been trying to increase its chicken exports to the Far East. Tyson and Wal-Mart, which already has a store in a Lippo-owned complex in Indonesia, have pressed for and won Clinton administration backing for a controversial new airport near their headquarters' in Northern Arkansas that they hope could become a cargo gateway to Asia.
With the help of White House advisor Mack McLarty, Tyson and Wal-Mart last year got the Federal Aviation Administration to provide $21 million in initial funding for the project whose price tag may ultimately run into the hundreds of millions.
Giroir is also involved in a cable television venture with Lippo. In January 1994, he and Betty Tucker, wife of then Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, traveled to Jakarta with Giroir to study the possibility investing in a cable franchise with Lippo. The Tuckers formerly owned a cable television franchise that for years turned handsome profits but that later came to haunt them. Jim Guy Tucker, who resigned his office this summer after a conviction in a Whitewater-related fraud case, faces a second trial arising from his cable dealings.
Several players in that drama turn up in the new controversy surrounding Lippo. Tucker's former lawyer, John Haley, a co-defendant in the cable case, is divorced from Maria Haley, a Clinton appointee to the Export-Import Bank. Haley's longtime law partner, Mark Grobmyer, is a golfing buddy of President Clinton's who attended an Oval Office meeting with Riady and passed out business cards presenting himself as "White House liaison" to Riady executives in Jakarta.
But perhaps the most interesting player is Webster Hubbell, the one-time associate attorney general now in jail for defrauding the Rose Law Firm and its clients. He has refused to tell Congress why Lippo paid him a large but undetermined amount of money after he left the Justice Department. He flatly rejected the contention, posed bluntly by Whitewater Republicans, that Lippo was in effect paying him to keep quiet in the Whitewater investigation as a favor to Clinton.
[End of Transcript]
I can tell you in two names who is partially to blame. Jackson Stephens and Bill Clinton. The following will give some insight for all of us to refresh ourselves with the filth of the tentacles. Huge investments, Drug-trafficking, Money Laundering, Bank/investment fraud, IMF fraud, stock market manipulation, eliminating competition, spooks clearing the way, takeovers, killing zones, global infiltration and much more. Stephens will get what he wants. He always does. As a matter of fact, he already has.
C. Joseph Giroir Jr. - Clinton's Mystery Man
New Paper Trail Details What Lippo Cash Bought
Clinton Admin. Secures Contracts
Why Red China Targeted The White House
Mack McLarty Nominated To Entergy Board of Directors - SEE MY LINKS IN ARTICLE
THE OCTOPUS - THE TENTACLES OF CORRUPTION
Regards, Uncle Bill.
Sorry Bill. I have been trying to get back to you, but my 2 and half year daughter is DEMANDING attention. I'll try to give a better reply later. Cheers for now.
There are those who will do battle with the elements which control this country, but it is going to take a 'tripping of the switch'. This national election is the last effort to save this country by the ballot!!!!!
Hi Chapita! Yes, interesting times, interesting times. I hope all is well with you. Look up. 8-)
BTTT
Well, first, as you are most certainly aware, the above is the TIP of the iceberg. After living here for over 12 years, if I try to explain to people back home they are generally indifferent or too shocked to be able to comprehend.
That Clinton is connected with some of the Indonesian 'players' came as no surprise. 'Birds of a feather syndrome.'
Personally, I enjoy living here. However, the 'people' have been utterly let down by their leaders. Unfortunately, the majority of the middle class (as with most 'developing' countries) don't care.
As for the future? One things for sure. Time's running out.
Keep smiling, Phil.
I stupidly sent the message to myself DOH! Anyway this time!
Thanks for the reply. Have a good one.
Be aware of a sudden absense of names of some posters in the future! No big deal; the feds are watching them anyhow!
Keep in mind that active duty military must have at least nine years of service to be pre-clinton.
There is a reason that most all Latin American revolutions are led by Lt. Colonels and not field grade officers!
Thanks for the link Uncle Bill.
You're welcome Beowulf. Just a little Bump.
BUMP for the truth
BTTT
Bump back.
BTTT
Ain't it funny how things can change?
Update:
*** FR WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Pat Matrisciana Judgment Overturned by 8th Circuit
34 Posted on 12/26/2001 02:11:24 PST by Uncle Bill
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