The Boys on the Tracks, Part II:
A Witness Speaks Out From Prison
July 30, 1998
Eleven years ago this summer, two teenage boys were murdered, their bodies left on train tracks in rural Arkansas. The secrets of that fateful night weren't buried with the boys or witnesses who have died mysteriously. One woman, perhaps imprisoned for what she knows, may hold the key to unraveling the truth.
Gary Lane, reporter
For eleven years, Linda Ives has dusted off debris from the headstone of her deceased son's grave.
The bodies of 17-year-old Kevin Ives and his friend Don Henry were found on these tracks, run over by a train one late August night in 1987.
"If this could happen to Kevin and my family, it could happen to anyone," says Linda. "If it can happen in tiny Bryant, Arkansas, it can happen Anywhere, USA."
Linda believes the boys stumbled upon a drug smuggling operation on the tracks that night ... and were murdered for what they witnessed. She has sought justice for eleven years but has faced nothing but stonewalling and cover-up. Local investigations have been shut down, and even the FBI closed its examination of the case in late 1995.
Former Arkansas government insider Larry Nichols suggests that officials in high places would like to see the case of "The Boys on the Tracks" become another one of Arkansas' unsolved murders.
"I think it's been planned for a long time that this one is not going to be solved," says Nichols. "I think what's at stake -- it's about drugs, it's about money, money laundering, and it's all about Mena, Arkansas. Those boys died because of Mena, Arkansas."
The rural west Arkansas town of Mena was a service and drop point in the 1980s for a drug smuggling ring involving the Dixie Mafia. Some of the Mena drug operatives were connected to the Arkansas and U.S. governments.
But who killed the Ives and Henry boys?
Enter Sharline Wilson. She knows some of the secrets of one of Arkansas' most notorious mysteries. She's now in an Arkansas prison serving her sixth year of a 31-year sentence for drug possession. She says she was there when the boys died on the tracks nearly eleven years ago.
"I was sitting in a car waiting down the road with a bag of cocaine and a mirror and whatever else," recalls Sharline. "I was out of my mind; I'm telling you I was gone -- far bent."
Sharline says she lived a fast and loose life in Little Rock during the 1980s.
"I didn't play with little boys and toys," she says. "I chose big boys and toys. I maneuvered my way into a scene, an atmosphere of sex and drugs and alcohol with Roger Clinton, with many people ... with Dan."
"Dan" was former Arkansas 7th District prosecuting attorney Dan Harmon. Sharline says her involvement in Arkansas' drug underworld escalated when she met Harmon. She says she became his lover and eventually testified against him and others before a federal grand jury.
Afterwards, Harmon, a prosecuting attorney, led police on a drug raid of Sharline's apartment. Less than $100 worth of methamphetamines and marijuana were confiscated. What did Harmon say to Sharline that night?
"That I was going to prison," Sharline remembers. "He would put me where nobody would listen to me, he would put me where nobody would believe me, he would destroy my life, and I'm sitting in prison, but he didn't destroy my life -- he saved it."
While in prison, just before Easter 1993, Sharline Wilson experienced a jail cell conversion and gave her heart to Jesus Christ.
"In that dark cell, a light came to me in a very dark cell -- a very dim cell with a little-bitty -- probably a 50-watt bulb for a big cell," she recalls. "The Lord visited me there that night. He cleaned me up and took care of a part of me that I thought was destroyed."
How did Sharline's newly found Christian faith affect her attitude toward Dan Harmon and others who put her into prison?
"I want those people to know that I have forgiven you," she says. "I love you with the love of the Lord. I'm not angry anymore."
But would Sharline reveall all the secrets she knows about what happened to the boys on the tracks that fateful August night?
Q: You know the truth about what happened there. Why aren't you telling all?
Sharline: Because I'm scared. I'm not going to.
Q: What do you think God wants you to say about that?
Sharline: Right now, the Lord has told me to keep my mouth shut. Not in those words. I'm not scared for myself. I'm scared for my family, for my kids, for my grandbaby.
Pat Matrisciana produced the video documentary Obstruction of Justice. He's come to know Sharline quite well and says Sharline has been threatened with physical violence.
"But now that Sharline is a bit of a public figure, they have basically backed off," says Matrisciana. "I think if we all forget Sharline and we forget to pray for Sharline that her life is in jeopardy."
What is perhaps the knowledge of greatest threat to Sharline Wilson? She places Dan Harmon at the tracks the night Kevin Ives and Don Henry turned up dead.
"I remember him running back to the car telling me to hurry up, hurry up, drive, drive, drive," says Sharline. "He was there in the area. He sure was."
Does she think he was responsible?
"Yes," answers Sharline.
Two other witnesses have also placed Dan Harmon near the tracks that night. Harmon denies any involvement. In June 1997, Harmon was convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to commit extortion and to distribute drugs. He's currently serving the first year of an eight-year sentence.
Feeling that she was a victim of Dan Harmon's vengeance and that her sentence was excessive, Sharlene Wilson last November applied for executive clemency, but just last March, Governor Mike Huckabee said "No way."
"The governor wouldn't let her out," says Sharlene's attorney, John Wesley Hall. "Well, what governor would? Granting clemency is not a particularly politically popular thing to do. Any governor who ever has has taken it on the chin."
As for the boys on the tracks, Linda Ives and Jean Duffey are determined that the case will not become another one of Arkansas' "unsolved murders."
Strangely, a 16 million-dollar lawsuit filed by two policemen, mentioned in police reports as possible murder suspects in the case, may help the Ives family discover the truth. The suit is against Pat Matrisciana, and he has power of discovery in the suit. That means information crucial to learning the truth about Kevin's death may come to light.
Meanwhile, Linda Ives will fight on. She says she's considering a possible civil lawsuit against several of the murder suspects.
"They tried to sweep Kevin and Don under the rug like dirt, and that's very painful," says Ives. "Kevin may not have been important in the overall scheme to anybody else, but he certainly was to us, and Kevin and Don deserved better than what they received."
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