Arkancide

getting dark. The cops are busting up the party as soon as that announcement was made, and it wasn't clear whether it was right before right after during the chaos, but like you know, people start running. Everybody's throwing their boos and getting their car out of the air, throwing their you know, your primary concern at that point, if your teenager at a party are not supposed to be, is getting rid of your boos, that's it, and getting

your house out of there. So it's a little more understandable that they might not have noticed her or thought there was anything too wrong, But still there were people who did know what was going on and who saw and who saw she and also seeing that she was that bad off, and they could hear her gasping for air and rattling, and they still threw in the back of the truck and left her back through for herself.

We have interviews in the case file where party goers recounted the events that occurred the night Janie died, but some people, including Mike and Janie's family, have warned us that we can't necessarily trust the information in the case file. Some of the party goers were later caught in lies, which to some greed is not surprising. Remember this was

a high school party with booze and weed. But to a lot of people in Marshall, Arkansas, US, relying solely on what we've learned from the official case file would be seen as naive. On September ninth, nineteen eighty nine, Janie Ward died under mysterious circumstances after collapsing at a high school party at a cabin in the woods near Marshall, Arkansas. Thirty years later, her death certificates, cause and manner of

death are still listed as undetermined. It's been thirty years and no one can answer the question what killed Janie Ward. We're diving into the theory that a lot of people in Marshall still believe that Jane was hid in the face with a blunt force object, causing a catastrophic injury to her spinal cord, and that her death was covered up because it affected powerful families in Marshall, families with connections to people in the highest offices of Arkansas government.

I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. Since Jane's death, rumors had been flying in the small town of Marshall, Arkansas, including the one that Jane got into a fight with a girl at the party. Sarah. Sarah was the polar opposite of Janey. Jannie was in the high school band, a member of Future Business Leaders of America. She worked as a waitress. Sarah was rich, popular, and a cheerleader. She won beauty pageants, and her father, Jerry, was a

prominent judge in town. But a lot of people around town claim that Sarah's sweet facade hides a fiery temper. After Jannie's death, a news channel talked to two other teens who claimed that they had been assaulted by Sarah. One had her nose broken. In the week leading up to her death. Janie's parents said that she confided in them that she was having issues with several girls at school. Ron talked with Bill Beach about it. In a phone call with him. Ron starts by saying that no one

at the party seemed to help Jannie. He could not one pad the hipper in any way. Yeah, I heard it like that. Uh, not a kick of her trend. Heir of fact. He would have a cowboy that very week, football with two of them, and poor girl up to pick her. He that has a coup whip, brought a ball. He'd come all juried. The welfare been up head, he bet daddy. But if they don't foot bug a man, he don't foot call and I her and I thought, I you. Ron is saying that Janie told him she

was having issues with two girls at school. At first, Sarah is not the girl Ron suspects Janie was having problems with. But Sarah, along with Gary, Dawn and Billy, was one of only three people who claim to have seen Janie fall, and there was something else that made the word suspicious. Sarah changed her story about what happened at the party that night. She was interviewed twice. The first one was just a very short statement, like the rest of the kids, and they were all about sixteen

at the time, most of them. And she said that she had been at the party with a couple of girlfriends and then later there was a Q and A with Bill Beach, and it was he went very easy on her, and it was very short, but basically she admitted that she lied that she'd been there with a couple guys and a girl. Looked like a sort of

double date situation. And she said, you know, I said I was with those other people because I wasn't supposed to be out with the people as we And he was like, oh, that's fine, you clear that all up? You're fine. I mean he was he was really, really, really easy on her. In the interview tape, Beach fills in Sarah's sentences and says that the interview is just a formality. And at the beginning of the tape you can hear Sarah and her dad, Jerry, laughing about the

rumors going on around the town. Oh yeah, do we talk about the daughter of the elected. I'll tell you what, Well, all we want to do is just go back over a few points and clarify, and that's how we're going to try to do. Is that anything you want to do. Okoy, just how wait can clarify something, Sarah, The first time you and I talk, you talk about being down there with concurring name brain and I I wasn't supposed to be with the person I was in. Okay, but you

think you've corrected that now working each other. Beach says you've corrected that now, so we're in good shape. Initially, it seems troubling that Sarah changed her story, but I've also been a teen girl who was afraid of getting busted for sneaking out with a guy that my parents hated. In the second interview, Sarah gave a few more details

about a conversation she had with Janie. This time, she said that Jane jokingly called her a snob at the party, and then I remember sing her getting out the truck walking forward to the house. She said hello, she said I snob. I thought, I'm sorry, I didn't see it. Janie may have been kidding, but to Janie's parents, this comment illustrated the difference between the people in power and

the ones with none. Comparing Sarah's interviews to the ones of the other people at the party, I noticed She's the only one who says that it was dark when Janie fell. Most people say it happened and around dusk. She's also the only person who said that Janey appeared to be very intoxicated, but according to Jane's autopsy report, her blood alcohol level was only point zero five, or

the equivalent of about one drink. And she said she's she was intoxicated when I saw her her she she acted in about pat well, that's the way everybody saw her as the party. I don't know if she acted that where she really was. Another rumor going around town was that a girl was heard in the bank parking lot on the night Janie died, saying that her daddy

would get her out of trouble. This quote is cited in several newspaper articles, but it's never attributed to anyone in particular, and no one can figure out who actually said it first, but people start to assume it was Sarah. A lot of people it seemed like after everything happened at the party. The party, there was a rumor the

party was getting busted. Everything happened with Jane, there was a crowd of people in that parking lot, and a lot of people ended up going to the Daisy Queen and hanging out, and then Sarah said that she also was in that parking lot, and he asked her something about did you see her, you know, when she's laying there in the back of the truck, and she said, yes, but I didn't touch her. And it was just a weird. It was just weird. It was it was just it just struck me as a lot the way she answered

that question. We'll be right back. People also talked about hearing Sarah and her friends laughing about Jane at school. Attempts to find anyone who actually heard this information firsthand proved feudal. I experienced this several times in Rebecca's case, and it was extremely frustrating. Recently, I was getting some photos for Janie's case processed in Mountain View when someone pulled me aside and told me they you for a

fact that a group of people had killed Rebecca. I know they did it because they described the whole thing. He said. They told me in detail, how they knocked every single tooth out of her mouth. I told him I'd seen Rebecca's autopsy report and their teeth were intact, but he continued to insist that I was wrong. This was only one of hundreds of rumors like this that I heard throughout the course of the case. Bill Beach

tried to track down these rumors about Jane. One person claimed that a woman who worked at Marshall High School told her she heard Sarah talk about pushing Jane out of a moving pickup truck. But when Investigator Beach reached out to the woman, she said she never heard Sara say anything like that, and whoever told him that must be confused. But if Jane and Sarah did get into

a fight, what would they have been fighting about. Janie's parents said that she had a problem at school with the cheerleaders, but many other witnesses say everyone like Janie. There was another rumor going on around that a fight broke out over a guy. According to Bill Beach's interview with Janie's friend Leslie, Janie had been dating a guy

named Don shortly before her death. That's the same friend who said Janie borrowed her deaf leopard shirt and that Jane spent the night with her on Friday before the party. Does she have any boyfriends that she know? She liked this guy? Leslie said. Janie told her that she and Don had broken up a few weeks earlier because he thought she was too young for him and because he'd

started seeing someone else. Jane had also mentioned i Leslie that she dated other people in the past, but said she wasn't dating anyone in particular at the time of the party. Anybody else was school. She talked about night, her girl day. She talked about pay in Ron's boxes. We find an that Janie passed to her friends at school. It reads, Hey girl, I'm so hyper, I can't wait until lunch. I'm going to be loud. Come get me tonight We'll paint Marshall read Oh. According to Carla and Tiffany,

I'm in love with James just because I talked to him. Oh. I hate that they think you can't talk to a guy without having the hots for that guy. It's sickening, don't you agree. Like we said earlier, Jane didn't run with the popular crowd, and that was made explicitly clear in an interview with a woman named Sherry. She was at the party and described herself as a friend of Jannie's.

The investigator asks her if it would be possible that Jane and Sarah were fighting over a boy no, ok now, quick as the guy that Sarah went to day would not look to one for at Alabia at all. You know, Sarah was pretty, she was a cheerleader. Wladyan Weaven's you know, by all girl, I would glasses. Now, there's no way that they be fine on the same way I go clear. After the funeral, Janie's dad, ron couldn't escape the whispers in town. And that's when he had what he claimed

was a very strange run in with Sarah. What what'd you tell a story about that? So you were coming in and buying a baseball bat? Oh? Yes? A few days after Jennie's death, Ronnie went into Harps. Harps is the grocery store in town, and he went around the corner and there was Sarah looking at baseball bats. And when she saw Ronnie, it scared her immediately and she

ran toward the door. I mean he just saw her and stopped short, you know, and she ran toward the door and backed out the door, looking at him and ran And because what are the odds the timing that, what are the odds? And I don't I'm I never believed to coincidences anyway, you know, But because of the nature, you know. He just he's like, you know, you can't make that stuff up. But he's like, I ain't even gonna tell anybody, you know, because it just sounds preposterous.

At first, this does sound sinister, but as an investigator, I know that there's always a danger of making a theory fit the evidence instead of the other way around. But at the same time, you have to keep an open mind. The smallest detail in an investigation can lead to cracking a case, and that's why several instances throw me off guard. Bill Beach took a group of people to the cabin in the woods to demonstrate how Janie felt.

Among them were Jay who threw the party, Ron Rose, who was driving the truck that took Jannie back to town, and Billy and Gary Dawn, who both said that they saw Janie fall. This is where marry Don backtracks on his statement. Originally he said that he saw Janeye fall. Now at the reenactment, he demonstrates what would have happened if he saw her fall. It's very odd. It's also strange that Sarah was not included in these reenactments, even though she's one of the only people who said she

saw Janie fall. Also, police and prosecutors filed an affidavit for a search warrant for the cabin. Initially, it was denied by a judge. He approved it a couple of hours later. The judge who initially denied the search warrant was Sarah's dad, Jerry. It's just another small detail that made Ron and the rest of the Ward family distrustful of Sarah and Jerry. The Wards also thought that Jerry and Sarah were being treated better by police and by prosecutors.

Jerry was a respected judge in town, and looking at the police file, we find a letter where the prosecutor on Jane's case, H. G. Foster, gives Jerry a heads up on information about Janie's case. It reads, enclosed, please find additional material which was furnished to me by the Arkansas State Police and appears to have something to do with the Jane Ward case. It appears that this will be included within the state police file and will become

freedom of information. At that point, I feel certain that Ron Ward will call the newspapers and make everyone aware of these clearly unsubstantiated allegations concerning your daughter. I wanted you to have this material before any of the press got hold of it, and give you an opportunity to share your thoughts with me about what I need to do,

if anything, with it. It is my inclination at this point that it would be best to go ahead and furnish copies of this material to the press so as to diffuse any allegations that will subsequently be made by Ronnie Ward of a cover up. On the other hand, I'm not going to do anything with it unless and

until I hear from you. But when talking about ron Ward, H. G. Foster finds him more of a nuisance looking at the case file, there are a few examples of when the police and prosecutors grow exasperated by ron Ward's persistence in the case. In one letter, Foster calls ron Ward irate when describing him to another prosecutor who he wants to look into the case. It reads, I was wondering if he would still be interested in fooling around with the

Janey Ward investigation. Investigation is in quotes. There's continued activity and rumbling up here from the father of Jane Ward, who is of American Indian extraction six foot six tall, two hundred and sixty pounds and very irate. The showdown between Jerry and Ron began to spiral after Ron launches the Justice for Janey website in the early two thousands. The forum quickly became a hotbed for speculation and accusation, and Jerry responded to allegations against him and his daughter.

In one way comment on the forum, he says he wants to sue the Wards and the journalist Mike Masterson for libel and slander, and at one point he offers up ten thousand dollars to cover court expenses for a grand jury. In an interview with investigators, Jerry is exasperated by all of the Wards allegations. Then they started getching about a grand jury. We need a grand jury, and nobody has some line for grand heere. I said, hey, I'll give you the line for a grandjury. I'll give you.

I'll give you ten thousand dollars. You match it. I all that. Well, they didn't do it. We're not going to do it. All right, let's just follow that logic. They're not going to assume me when I tell him, you know, let's do it. You know, I'm a sarious very serious. Uh doue me see my daughter, and let's get on with that and we'll see how it. I'll say that nantaisi incredit any evidence which comes out in a cub case, then pop, you're going to have that information. Hello,

all right. So they didn't even want to do there, and then they start talking about a grand jury, and I said, okay, I'll go that way with you too. You mass the money? What did they do? Now? Why? Why? What's the logical conclusion? The logical conclusion is is that I want to why Why don't they want to because they want to keep the story going. Why because they want to make people feel that hell my daughter and I felt that says the damn thing. First sight. You

can't make me feel any worse. So that's not the reason. Jerry suspects that the words don't have any incriminating evidence to accuse his daughter of anything. In his interview with investigators, Jerry said that Ron was ruining his daughter's life. They are so ridiculous that they have done nothing but enhance my faster and her. The person that's hurt by this is my daughter. I feel so bad for her. He

quit coming home or not. She felt like people were talking about her I knew they were talking on the Wednesday. In the last episode, we talked about how Fammy Mallet botched autopsies and some people said he deliberately lied to cover up cases. Journalist Mike Masterson and the Wards think that Janey's death was covered up and that the cover up could have gone all the way to the top

of Arkansas's government. Looking at the case file, Mike and the Wards both voiced their suspicions about how many pieces of mail were addressed to the Governor's office. They asked, why would the governor's office be interested in the death of a sixteen year old girl in a small town. We did find one peculiar envelope addressed to Ron Ward. Inside was a typed letter that offered the Wards of dollars to stop investigating. The return address was torn off

as we try to separate fact from fiction. In Jennie's case, what we know for sure is that Marshall had become a breeding ground of paranoia and the Wards were under huge amounts of stress. You might say something about living

there in that environment in Marshall, Chersey County. We might talk a little bit about why people wouldn't come forward, what what would keep them from coming forward to tell what they knew to authorities or to whoever it was, the law, the powers that be, and it went all the way to the governor, went all the way to the straight State crime Lab, which the governor ran. I mean, they covered all of his bodies. You know, they knew where the bodies were buried. Literally, you knew where all

the bodies were buried. Literally, not only the witnesses. They threatened us. They even called our house and told my dad if he didn't quit looking into it, he had two other kids to worry about. Dad had to pull us out of school right after Johnny died. He did, and he took me in, Matthew out of school, my little brother, and we were out for quite a while. But over the years, you know, we all suffered from PTSD. But of course we were all paranoied and worried and

freaking out and stuff. Because you're lose one daughter and you have some woman call your house and threaten your other two children if you investigate the death of your daughter. Now, if that doesn't make it suspicious, I mean, there was just death threats, you know, to witnesses, our family, reporters. You know it's all little paranoid or a lot of paranoid. Not so much meat, not so much Ronnie. But we was afraid to let our other two children out of

our sight. Worried about a fire, about your house being burned. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't like to leave the house unattended because of his records and things. You know he did. He did get with him. It was like moving everywhere we went. We also reached out to several journalists who have covered Janney's case. One said he never received any threats, another stopped responding, and another said they received a voicemail box full of death threats for looking into Janie's death. All

of them declined to give an interview with us. The Wards grew suspicious because Sarah's dad, Jerry, was the district judge, and they are convinced he called in a favor for his daughter. In his interview with police, Jerry calls the entire theory nonsense. I know that there are those who some kind of the cause of this rule. I can tell you now that no fact that supports the theory

of the cover. What I will here that he is my belief, and my belief is that there are those individuals in this county who are either ignan are very, very envious and much better. And because my daughter were present at this particular party, they have created reasons to assess and point to her as being a principle as far as the build for this real concerned. He says, it's a ludicrous that anyone would think he has enough power in the state to cover up Janie's deaths. The

point I have ludicrous this accusation. Our comment is is that I am supposed to be so powerful that I reach not only into the County Poor of Office and the city police department, but into the states as well as the governor of Arkansas. Are a very very powerful man, if you believe somehow. There's another word that keeps getting brought up in connection with Janie's death or any death when our Kansas suspect to cover up. It's called arkansis.

Arkanss is the conspiracy theory that claims that people in the Arkansas government would kill their political enemies and have the medical examiner rule it a suicide. It's particularly linked to Bill Clinton, who is governor of Arkansas at the time of Janie's death. To better explain it, we talked to an expert in conspiracy theories, writer and researcher Mike Rothschild.

He's written on tons of conspiracy theories, including Arkansis and the Clinton body count, and we wanted to talk to him about how these stories get started and how they can become ingrained in a small town. Arkanside is the mistaken belief that the Clintons have a four decade long trail of dead bodies behind them, that all of these people in their orbit who have died of natural causes or committed suicide, or been killed in accidents, or who have actually been killed in some sort of crime have

all been victims of the Clintons. And this sort of like, oh, he died by shooting himself three times in the head kind of seeing has been given this nickname of Arkanside, that anybody sort of in the Clinton circle is sort of bumped off once they're no longer necessary for them. I'm in no way endorsing this theory, but in Marshall, I can see how a conspiracy theory could take on

a life of its own. When there's a lack of communication and distrust between the police and the public, there's always the risk of an investigation turning into an echo chamber. The facts aren't straight or available, speculation intensifies, so much of what is called a conspiracy can be written off as just in competence. You have a lot of people who just aren't good at their jobs and a lot

of people who are lazy. And I think that need for answers, I think is very prevalent in conspiracy theories. We don't want to believe that things just randomly happen. We don't want to believe that the universe is sort of cold and indifferent. We want to believe that someone has it out for us. I mean, as bizarre as that found, it's much more comforting to think that a loved one was killed because of a plot, or because someone was getting back at us or whatever. Then it

was just just bad timing. And there are a thousand ways it might not have happened, but it did happen this one way, and so we need answers, We need explanations, and we need things to make sent Mike also explains that it's human nature to need someone to blame, and in Jamie's case, where the family isn't getting answers, it's no wonder there needs to be a villain. There's always someone that you want to blame. And it's really easy

to blame powerful, wealthy people rather than looking inward. And most conspiracy theories do have a grain of truth to them, you know, they're not just completely made up. There is one small thing about them that's true. And then if well, if that could be true, what about these other twelve things? It sort of grows bigger and bigger and bigger, and it's it just becomes harder and harder to contain. And yeah, people who are wealthy and powerful have it easier than

people who are not. I mean, that's just that is just the way it is. As Mike said, sometimes there is a grain of truth and conspiracy theories. It might be as simple as someone doing a favor for someone else. When people with money and power are treated differently from everyone else, even a situation that didn't start out as a conspiracy can become one. And like I said, paranoid people aren't always wrong. We'll be right back. The conflict between Jerry and Sarah and the Wards split the town

in two. Some people think that Sarah killed Janne with a baseball bat. Other people think this is totally unfounded and ridiculous. But Ron and Mona Ward kept her story alive and took her case statewide with the help of reporter Mike Masterson. Mike uses his platform as a writer

to tell Janie's story every week in his column. This brings more attention to the case and puts more pressure on Arkansas officials to do something about it, especially when the Wards find a forensic pathologist to exhume Janie's body and do another autopsy. They find the pathologists through the

nonprofit organization Parents of Murdered Children. It has a service called Second Opinions where volunteer prosecutors, pathologists, and law enforcement review cases that families feel are not completely figured out.

This is Bev Warnock, the executive director the Parents of Murder Children, and what they would do if they would call us, We would ask them to get as much information as they can, the autopsy, the police reports, anything else that you know, they can get their hands on, send it to us and then leap forward it to our volunteers and they'll look at the case, they'll read it, you know, and they'll come back with an opinion. And

that's really all we can offer. The family. You know, it's not like we can go there and have them open the case or anything. It's just an opinion that might answer some of the questions that they have, and it might be you know, it definitely wasn't an accident, It definitely wasn't an overdose, or it was, and the family has to try to accept that it really was.

It's just devastating for them to not really know and feel that they're you know, they feel in their guts that it wasn't what you know, they said and what the police are believing. Among all the whispers conspiracy and crazy rumors, we have to go back to basics, to the one piece of evidence that the parents have, Jane herself. In two thousand and two, the Wards took advantage of

the Second Opinion Service. In their letter, they laid out everything they found suspicious, the sand under the clothes, the fact that her clothes were wet, the bruising and injuries ron saw, the x rays, and the rumors about Sarah, and it didn't take long before they received a letter from doctor Harry Bannell. Doctor Benel was a forensic pathologist. He has performed thousands of autopsies and been involved in many high profile cases, including the Green River killer investigation

and the Challenger's Space shuttle crash. In his letter to the Wards, he agreed that the circumstances surrounding Jane's death were suspicious. He wrote that he found no objective evidence to prove she died from the fall described by witnesses. He offered to conduct a second autopsy pro bono. The Wards and their lawyer were able to convince a judge

to order an exhumation of Jane's body. After so many years of fighting, the Wards were feeling hopeful that they might get answers, even though the last thing they wanted to do was pull their daughter out of the ground. They believed that to get justice they needed another autopsy. Ron and Mona stood beside the cement vault as workers

pulled Jannye's casket out of the ground. Her body was delivered to the University of Arkansas Medical Facility in Little Rock, and on October eighth, two thousand and four, fifteen years after her death, doctor Burnell performed a second autopsy, and he came to a completely different conclusion. Mike Masterson met with doctor Burnell and was suspicious of the fact that the Arkansas State Crime Lab did not allow Banell to

use their facilities. Doctor Harry Barnell was a pathologist at the Beckoning Call of Parents of Murdered Children because he was on their board, so he was involved in cases around the country that needed answers. So doctor Burnell showed up expecting to be greeted as sybyl as the doctor's forensic pathologists. But that's not how Arkansas received him. They told him he could not use crime lab to do a second autopsy, that he'd have to do it on

his own somewhere. So he found a private place. And this is doctor Burnell was a very respected, confident forensic pathologist. He was very credible to me. He had no dog in his hunt. Doctor Bernaldus came in to do an honest job. He didn't know what he was going to find.

That's what he found, that's what he announced. Well, you know then that really hit the fan in Arkansas because now you have a guy coming in who's qualified giving a manner of death which had never happened, and so all of a sudden, the system went into full They circled all the wagons pretty quickly. They realized they're going to have to do something because it was laying out there as homicide. Ron finally heard what he had thought to be true all along. Someone killed Janie. Remember that.

In the first autopsy report, doctor Malleck notes that he didn't see any bruising on Janie's body except for a small bruise on her lower back. He also said she sustained a hyper extension neck injury from falling on the back of her head. He didn't note that anything was broken. Doctor Burnell also says that Jane has a hyper extension injury, but he says it's because something hit her in the face.

Doctor Burnell writes her head was not too far backwards and there's a fracture of the spine in the neck. Doctor Burnell also notes extensive damage to Jane's face and neck. He notes an abrasion and contusion on the left cheek and left forehead, a fracture with hemorrhaging of nasal cartilage, and maroon discoloration across the face. He also agrees with the two pathologists who were reviewed doctor Malick's autopsy. He thinks the lateral X ray of Janey could be a male.

On the front page of his report, doctor Burnell says the cause of death is blunt impact to the face. The manner is homicide. ABC did an episode of their show Primetime about Janie's case. They interview Sarah. During the interview, Sarah was shown playing with her baby and sitting with her father on a port swing. She completely denied any involvement in Janie's death. I'm Katherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint production between School

of Humans and iHeartRadio. It is written and recorded by me. Katherine Townsend. Taylor Church and Gabby Watts are our producers and story editors. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, and Elsie Crowley for School of Humans and Connell Byrne and Chuck Bryant for iHeart. Our Field producer is Miranda Hawkins. Theme and original score are by Ben Sale, available wherever you get your music. Please visit us at Helen gonpodcast dot com or follow us on social media. School of Humans