By Jean Duffey

Linda and I met for the first time when we were asked to work with the FBI agent, Phyllis Cournan, who was put in charge of investigating the murders of Kevin and Don and any political corruption involvement.  The first couple of months I communicated with the FBI, I spent many hours on the phone with the Cournan, as was Linda, filling her in on background information about Saline County. It was during this time I learned that Detective John Brown had been assigned to work the "train deaths" case shortly after he moved his family to Saline County and took a job as Sheriff Judy Pridgon's deputy, so Linda and I shared information with John as well.

I met John in the spring of 1994, and we began to compare notes. It was encouraging how much of our information was identical even though it was developed three years apart. John had been working with an investigative reporter who put him in contact with a pilot who goes by the name of Joe, and who claims to have been a CIA operative. Joe told John that on several occasions he had flown the Saline County drop which was known as "A-12," and that he took orders from CIA operatives out of Mena. This is the explanation of why Saline County officials were getting federal protection, Kevin and Don's murders could not be solved, and high ranking public officials turned their backs on me and my task force.

The claims Joe made about Mena/CIA drug drops in Saline County suddenly ended the years of bewilderment and confusion and made sense of everything. Without knowing anything at all about this Joe person, I had made a judgment about the credibility of his information based on the logic of his claims. The reporter who initially developed Joe as an informant had some doubts about his credibility, so I set out to make my own determination. I asked John what he knew.

John said Joe gave him an accurate description of the land marks approaching the tracks and described railroad lights that hung horizontally over the tracks like an arm under which the train passed. John drove the area and walked the tracks. Joe's description fit everything he had described except the lights. There were no such lights that hung over the tracks horizontally, so John filed Joe in his drawer of interesting-but-not-good-information. It was some weeks later that John was visiting with Linda and Larry Ives when he told them about Joe. Larry had been a Union Pacific engineer on that very run for years and in fact, it was his old crew that ran over the boys.  Larry told John that up until three weeks before Kevin and Don were murdered, the lights had been exactly the way Joe described.  John took Joe out of his bad-information file and began communicating with him.

Later, Joe and I developed a rapport, and he told me that "A-12" drop number 46 was a money drop that came up missing. He said the cops in charge of picking up the drop hid out for subsequent drops to see who might try to steal another drop. Joe said Kevin and Don were in the area of drop number 50 and were ambushed. They were beaten and killed and their bodies were placed on the tracks. I passed this story on to the FBI agent who was in the process of having polygraphs administered. A few weeks later, I was told by the agent that Joe's story had been verified through the polygraph tests. (The agent also told Linda Ives that the only people failing the polygraphs were cops.)

Joe is adamant that Seal was working with the CIA drug smuggling operations headquartered at Mena, and although Seal was assassinated a year before Kevin and Don were murdered, the drug drop they stumbled across was originally part of Seal's operation.

I still don't know very much about Joe, but I do know that I have never caught him in a lie, and that goes a long way in my book when Linda and I are desperately seeking reliable information. Joe continues to supply information that always pans, and each time it does, his credibility becomes less questionable.

Before we knew Joe, Linda and I were convinced that the murders were connected to drug drops that came in through Mena.  Linda has said a hundred times that the connection to Mena is the only thing that makes since of the high-level of cover-ups and protection of the killers.  After getting to know Joe, we are certain that the murders are connected to Mena drugs.