Kevin Ives & Don Henry (Boys on the Tracks)

Case background and investigation

In the pre-dawn hours of August 23, 1987, the crew of a Union Pacific freight train approaching the Crooked Creek trestle near Alexander, Arkansas, saw two figures lying motionless between the rails, partly covered by a pale green tarpaulin. Unable to stop in time, the train ran over them. The victims were identified as Kevin Ives, 17, and Don Henry, 16, two teenagers from the Bryant area who had gone out that night with a .22 rifle; a shattered rifle was recovered at the scene. Local police arrived within minutes, but the initial handling of the case would become one of the most disputed investigations in Arkansas history.

Arkansas state medical examiner Dr. Fahmy Malak ruled the deaths accidental, concluding the boys had smoked enough marijuana to fall asleep on the tracks — a finding he attributed to THC intoxication. The victims' parents rejected that explanation and pushed for further review. Toxicologist Dr. James Garriott of San Antonio concluded in 1988 that the THC levels could not have caused unconsciousness, and Georgia medical examiner Dr. Joseph Burton, who conducted second autopsies after the bodies were exhumed, found marijuana consistent with only one or two cigarettes. According to Burton's findings, there was also evidence of injuries inflicted before the train strike, including a possible stab wound to Don Henry and head trauma to Kevin Ives. In February 1988 the cause of death was officially changed from accidental to undetermined, and in June 1988 a Saline County grand jury ruled the deaths a probable homicide. The deaths were officially ruled homicides in 1990.

The subsequent investigation was mired in controversy. Saline County Sheriff James H. Steed Jr. initially resisted investigating and, according to case accounts, sent key evidence to the state crime lab rather than the FBI; he lost his 1988 re-election bid. Between 1988 and 1990, several people connected to the case or named as potential witnesses died or disappeared, including Keith McKaskle, who was murdered in 1988, Greg Collins, killed by shotgun in January 1989, Keith Coney, who died in a motorcycle crash, Daniel "Boonie" Bearden, who disappeared in March 1989, and Jeffrey Rhodes, whose body was found in a landfill in April 1989. Dan Harmon, the prosecutor who had represented the families and led a grand jury probe, was himself convicted in 1997 of racketeering, extortion, and drug-related charges and sentenced to prison in 1998. Malak resigned as state medical examiner in September 1991.

The case became nationally known through a 1988 Unsolved Mysteries segment and journalist Mara Leveritt's award-winning 1999 book The Boys on the Tracks. A persistent theory holds that the teenagers stumbled upon a drug drop connected to smuggling operations associated with pilot Barry Seal and the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport, though no such link has ever been proven. Kevin's mother, Linda Ives, spent more than three decades seeking answers, filing a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2016 against multiple agencies; a judge ordered some documents reviewed and partially disclosed, but the suit was dismissed in September 2019 without producing records tied to the deaths. In 2018, former professional wrestler Billy Jack Haynes claimed in a recorded statement to have witnessed the killings while working security for a drug operation, a claim that has not been substantiated by authorities. Linda Ives died on June 3, 2021, at age 71. No one has ever been charged, and the murders of Kevin Ives and Don Henry remain unsolved.