Around 4:00am on August 23, 1987, the bodies of 16-year-old Don Henry and 17-year-old Kevin Ives were hit by a freight train in the town of Alexander, Arkansas, United States, as they were lying on the tracks.
The deaths were initially ruled an accident, the result of the boys in a deep sleep on the tracks while incapacitated due to high amounts of THC allegedly present in their blood.
[1] Members of the locomotive crew also stated that the bodies were partly covered by a green tarpaulin,[2] though police disputed the existence of any such tarp and none was ever recovered from the scene.
[5] When it was found that Don Henry's shirt contained evidence of a stab wound to the back, and Kevin Ives' skull may have been crushed by his own rifle, the ruling was changed to "definite homicide".
[13] In 1996, Linda Ives and film producer Patrick Matrisciana released the documentary Obstruction of Justice: The Mena Connection, in which numerous witnesses make allegations against the authorities.
County Prosecutor Dan Harmon is alleged to have been present at the railroad tracks at the time of the murders, and is said to have later helped to perpetuate a cover-up in collusion with local, state, and federal authorities.
[15] Harmon, who had at one time represented the parents of Ives and Henry, was arrested in 1997 on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, and drug possession with intent to distribute and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
[3] The two accused police officers denied any involvement in the case and sued Matrisciana and his film company for defamation, whereupon a judge awarded them $600,000.
[16][17] In 1999, investigative journalist Mara Leveritt published the book The Boys on the Tracks: Death, Denial, and a Mother's Crusade to Bring Her Son's Killers to Justice, which deals with the case and the alleged involvement of the authorities in the murders.