The Billy Jack Haynes Rap
By Jean Duffey
Linda’s website team worked feverishly to meet the deadline of August 23, 2019 (the 32nd anniversary of the murders), to publish the revamped www.idfiles.com. The deadline was met and the site drew over 11,000 views in just 30 days. This was without a push for new followers, since we are still building the website and working to complete the posting of materials that Linda has chronicled for 32 years..
However, a bizarre circumstance has come to our attention that we wish to address on our site. Billy Jack Hayes, an ex-pro-wrestler from Portland, contacted Linda in late 2016, and told her that he was on the tracks the night Kevin and Don were murdered. Linda has never refused to hear information, no matter how questionable, so she talked with Haynes sporadically for months. Most of what her said could be found on the internet, but Linda had no way to verify or discredit other things he said. The next 3 years exposed Haynes’ increasing desperation to make money by exploiting his story. He went from telling possibly plausible involvement with the people who killed the boys to increasingly implausible tales and an inability to keep his stories straight.
Haynes’ tales became more and more questionable. He claims he has a video of the train running over the boys, but no one has ever seen it, he claims that he had a one-night stand with Bill Clinton who Haynes says “was in love with me,” he says that he talked on a cell phone with Bill Clinton when the boys were captured that night and could hear Hillary yelling in the background, “Leave no witnesses.” Linda insistes that Haynes take a polygraph, and although he claims that he has passed two, he refuses to show her any evidence that he has.
Apparently, now more desperate than ever for money and attention, Haynes hooked up with a rap group to make a video asserting his claims of being involved in the murders of Kevin and Don and of being a cocaine trafficker for Barry Seal. I knew the answer before I asked Seal’s wife, Debbi, if it was possible that Haynes distributed drug for Seal. She just laughed. Of course, anyone with any knowledge of Seal’s operations, knows that he was a mover of tons and tons of cocaine and was not involved in street-level distribution from the trunk of his car as Haynes claims.
The rap video was discovered by James, our webmaster, just after it was posted on youtube, August 12, 2019. James dismissed it as inconsequential, since Haynes has posted many video interviews on youtube essentially making the same claims. He readily admits to having brain damage as a result of his years of wrestling, and he has earned the internet nickname, “Billy Wack Hayes.”
There is a compelling concern Linda and I have. Law enforcement completely ignores Billy Jack Haynes. We have to wonder. Is it because:
- Higher authorities, who call the shots, believe that Haynes is truly “wacked out” and of no value in solving the murders of Kevin and Don, or
- Those higher authorities know that Haynes was on the tracks that night and has knowledge of Bill and Hillary being involved, so strategically give him free reign to make a fool of himself because of his inability to think right.
Linda and I decided to throw the story to the internet public and let each person believe what they will, because we just can’t say. We are promoting the video, because:
- The “Might Casey X Mankind” rappers tell Billy Jack Haynes’ claims in a clever and entertaining way that doesn’t offend Linda or disrespect the boys.
- The rap doesn’t include vulgar language that is common in rap, and doesn’t include anything that Linda or I feel is inappropriate, other than Billy Jack, himself.
- The rappers portrayal of Haynes clearly begs the question, “Who, in their right mind, would try so hard to convince people to believe that he was involved in the murder of children?”
- We see a potential for the video to draw attention to our website from an audience that we might otherwise not reach.
Their video is at: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fkNkDvHH_r0 . We wish “The Mighty Casey X-Mankind” luck and hope their Billy Jack Haynes video goes viral.
Our website is www.idfiles.com and our twitter handle is Ives-Duffey Files @id_files .
9-27-2019
By Jean Duffey
COMMENTARY
In spite of the protection, promotions, and rewards Kirk Lane has enjoyed from high-level public officials, Ives and Duffey have done what they could to make it a bumpy road for him. Documentary film-maker, Pat Matrisciana stepped up to the plate and put faith in doing the right thing. He gave Linda and Jean complete editorial control over the content of Obstruction of Justice: The Mena Connection, in which Dan Harmon, Richard Garrett, Jim Steed, Danny Allen, Jay Campbell, and Kirk Land were named as suspects in the murders of Kevin and Don. Lane and Campbell suspected to be the hands-ons killers sued Matrisciana for over $600,000 in a defamation complaint. At trial, the judge withheld crucial evidence from the jury, and Matrisciana lost. However, when Matrisciana appealed, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the jury’s decision and dubbed our allegations “the Campbell/Lane scenario.” The Court cited ample evidence to support our allegations that Campbell and Lane are the suspected killers. Below are excerpts from the opinion. Linda says, “the Eighth Circuit opinion makes Campbell and Lane look more guilty than I ever have.” Yet, neither Campbell nor Lane have ever been questioned or interviewed by any law enforcement authority. In fact, the FBI Special Agent who was investigating the murders was denied a request to interview them.
EXCERPTS FROM THE OPINION
Because of the bizarre circumstances of the deaths and a perceived lack of investigation by law enforcement entities, Linda Ives, Kevin’s mother, began investigating the deaths herself, seeking reports from various law enforcement agencies through whatever means available, and prodding those agencies to pursue the investigation. Early on, she worked with Dan Harmon, who was appointed special prosecutor on the case. At one point, Harmon told Ives that the killers would be appearing before a grand jury the following day. Campbell and Lane were among the various individuals called to testify on that date, December 2, 1988.
Previously, on June 20, 1988, law enforcement officials twice interviewed Ronnie Godwin while he was incarcerated in the Jefferson County Jail. Godwin indicated that, while returning home from Gigi’s nightclub on August 22 or 23, 1987, he pulled off the road when he observed a “police car that was gray in color with three antennas on the trunk and a spotlight by the driver’s door sitting in the driveway to the . . .[Ranchette] grocery store.” He saw two men he believed to be police officers. One was pushing a teenage boy up against the telephone booth. Another teenage boy was lying or kneeling on the ground. The men then put the boys in the back of the car and drove over the crest of a hill near the grocery store, only to return five or ten minutes later. When the car returned, Godwin did not see the boys but saw something that looked like a garbage bag in the back seat. Godwin also provided a diagram detailing the locations of all the individuals in relation to one another, the grocery store, the phone booth, the road by which the car exited and returned, and his observation point. Godwin described “the larger of the two” officers, who was pushing the boy, as being “about 200 pounds, six foot tall, with sort of long brown hair, wearing a white or a light color shirt.” The other was described as being the smaller of the two and wearing a khaki shirt. On another occasion, a person thought to be Godwin contacted the father of Don Henry and related the story to him. Godwin’s statements to law enforcement officers and to Henry were all substantially similar.
At the time of the boys’ deaths, Lane was an undercover detective for the narcotics division of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office, previously having worked for the Benton Police Department. Campbell was a lieutenant with the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department. The two worked together, and at times, their investigations would spill over into a portion of Saline County that abutted Pulaski County. Harmon told several individuals, including Ives, that the descriptions provided by Godwin fit Campbell and Lane. The car Godwin described was somewhat similar to a description provided by Alan Smith, who had heard police vehicles and walked to the scene of the boys’ deaths to see what was happening. In a July 6, 1988 interview, Smith indicated that before the commotion, he observed an undercover police car in the vicinity to which Godwin referred. He said the car was blue and that the way he knew it was an undercover police car was because “[i]t had antennas, or something.” State police Sergeant Barney Phillips asked Smith if he knew Lane and, although Smith had “heard of him,” it appears that he would not have known him by sight.
On February 21, 1990, while incarcerated at the Garland County Jail, Mike Crook, the proprietor of Gigi’s, gave a statement to Phillips. The report states that on the morning the boys’ bodies were found:
[A] Mexican looking guy, who he only knows as “Jerry,” came by and told them that late last night he was sitting across from the Ranchette Grocery Store . . . trying to catch his wife with her boyfriend, when two boys walked up to the grocery store and one boy rode up on a motorcycle and the three of them were there smoking a joint.The boy on the motorcycle then rode off. Then, “an unmarked police car pulled up and two men in plain clothes got out and . . . one of them was Kirk Lane, who used to work for the Benton Police Department, and the other guy he did not know but he was a large man.” The two boys and “these two cops got into an argument and the two cops beat the boys unconscious and threw them into the car and then drove off.”
Although there are discrepancies in the times, three reports placed two teenage boys at the grocery store either late the night before, or early morning of the day the boys’ bodies were found. Godwin estimated the time to be approximately 2:30 a.m. and, on the morning the bodies were found, “Jerry” told Crook that he had observed the incident “late last night.” In addition, a person named Sandy Duncan told Mr. Henry that she saw the boys at the grocery store at approximately 4:00 a.m.
POSTSCRIPT COMMENTARY
It is interesting to note that the were several FBI Agents and State Police Officers lined up to testify as character witnesses for Campbell and Lane in the defamation suit. However, not one of them had ever actually worked with Campbell or Lane.
Several years later, in spite of protests from citizens and city council officials, Kirk Lane was appointed Benton Chief of Police in secrecy by his best friend, Mayor Mike Holland. A few years after that, Lane was appointed by Governor Asa Hutchinson as the Arkansas Drug Czar. Hutchinson was formerly U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas who thwarted one of the federal investigations of Mena. There is no denying the connections of the coverups of the murders of Kevin and Don to the Crimes of Mena, who is being protected, and who is doing the protecting. For more on Kirk Lane, visit his page.