Speaker 1: School of Humans. The initially interviews were so short too,
Speaker 1: That's the thing. It was so short, so it was
Speaker 1: kind of just like she fell, this happened, It wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know. They just weren't in depth. So far this
Speaker 1: season we've been taking a deep dive into the official
Speaker 1: police file. But ask anyone around Marshall about Janie Ward's
Speaker 1: death and you'll hear a lot of stories and rumors
Speaker 1: that aren't noted anywhere in the official report. It was
Speaker 1: getting dark. The cops are busting up the party as
Speaker 1: soon as that announcement was made, and it wasn't clear
Speaker 1: whether it was right before right after during the chaos,
Speaker 1: but like you know, people start running. Everybody's throwing their
Speaker 1: boos and getting their car out of the air, throwing
Speaker 1: their you know, your primary concern at that point, if
Speaker 1: your teenager at a party are not supposed to be,
Speaker 1: is getting rid of your boos, that's it, and getting
Speaker 1: your house out of there. So it's a little more
Speaker 1: understandable that they might not have noticed her or thought
Speaker 1: there was anything too wrong, But still there were people
Speaker 1: who did know what was going on and who saw
Speaker 1: and who saw she and also seeing that she was
Speaker 1: that bad off, and they could hear her gasping for
Speaker 1: air and rattling, and they still threw in the back
Speaker 1: of the truck and left her back through for herself.
Speaker 1: We have interviews in the case file where party goers
Speaker 1: recounted the events that occurred the night Janie died, but
Speaker 1: some people, including Mike and Janie's family, have warned us
Speaker 1: that we can't necessarily trust the information in the case file.
Speaker 1: Some of the party goers were later caught in lies,
Speaker 1: which to some greed is not surprising. Remember this was
Speaker 1: a high school party with booze and weed. But to
Speaker 1: a lot of people in Marshall, Arkansas, US, relying solely
Speaker 1: on what we've learned from the official case file would
Speaker 1: be seen as naive. On September ninth, nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Janie Ward died under mysterious circumstances after collapsing at a
Speaker 1: high school party at a cabin in the woods near Marshall, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Thirty years later, her death certificates, cause and manner of
Speaker 1: death are still listed as undetermined. It's been thirty years
Speaker 1: and no one can answer the question what killed Janie Ward.
Speaker 1: We're diving into the theory that a lot of people
Speaker 1: in Marshall still believe that Jane was hid in the
Speaker 1: face with a blunt force object, causing a catastrophic injury
Speaker 1: to her spinal cord, and that her death was covered
Speaker 1: up because it affected powerful families in Marshall, families with
Speaker 1: connections to people in the highest offices of Arkansas government.
Speaker 1: I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. Since Jane's death,
Speaker 1: rumors had been flying in the small town of Marshall, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: including the one that Jane got into a fight with
Speaker 1: a girl at the party. Sarah. Sarah was the polar
Speaker 1: opposite of Janey. Jannie was in the high school band,
Speaker 1: a member of Future Business Leaders of America. She worked
Speaker 1: as a waitress. Sarah was rich, popular, and a cheerleader.
Speaker 1: She won beauty pageants, and her father, Jerry, was a
Speaker 1: prominent judge in town. But a lot of people around
Speaker 1: town claim that Sarah's sweet facade hides a fiery temper.
Speaker 1: After Jannie's death, a news channel talked to two other
Speaker 1: teens who claimed that they had been assaulted by Sarah.
Speaker 1: One had her nose broken. In the week leading up
Speaker 1: to her death. Janie's parents said that she confided in
Speaker 1: them that she was having issues with several girls at school.
Speaker 1: Ron talked with Bill Beach about it. In a phone
Speaker 1: call with him. Ron starts by saying that no one
Speaker 1: at the party seemed to help Jannie. He could not
Speaker 1: one pad the hipper in any way. Yeah, I heard
Speaker 1: it like that. Uh, not a kick of her trend.
Speaker 1: Heir of fact. He would have a cowboy that very week,
Speaker 1: football with two of them, and poor girl up to
Speaker 1: pick her. He that has a coup whip, brought a ball.
Speaker 1: He'd come all juried. The welfare been up head, he
Speaker 1: bet daddy. But if they don't foot bug a man,
Speaker 1: he don't foot call and I her and I thought,
Speaker 1: I you. Ron is saying that Janie told him she
Speaker 1: was having issues with two girls at school. At first,
Speaker 1: Sarah is not the girl Ron suspects Janie was having
Speaker 1: problems with. But Sarah, along with Gary, Dawn and Billy,
Speaker 1: was one of only three people who claim to have
Speaker 1: seen Janie fall, and there was something else that made
Speaker 1: the word suspicious. Sarah changed her story about what happened
Speaker 1: at the party that night. She was interviewed twice. The
Speaker 1: first one was just a very short statement, like the
Speaker 1: rest of the kids, and they were all about sixteen
Speaker 1: at the time, most of them. And she said that
Speaker 1: she had been at the party with a couple of
Speaker 1: girlfriends and then later there was a Q and A
Speaker 1: with Bill Beach, and it was he went very easy
Speaker 1: on her, and it was very short, but basically she
Speaker 1: admitted that she lied that she'd been there with a
Speaker 1: couple guys and a girl. Looked like a sort of
Speaker 1: double date situation. And she said, you know, I said
Speaker 1: I was with those other people because I wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to be out with the people as we And he
Speaker 1: was like, oh, that's fine, you clear that all up?
Speaker 1: You're fine. I mean he was he was really, really,
Speaker 1: really easy on her. In the interview tape, Beach fills
Speaker 1: in Sarah's sentences and says that the interview is just
Speaker 1: a formality. And at the beginning of the tape you
Speaker 1: can hear Sarah and her dad, Jerry, laughing about the
Speaker 1: rumors going on around the town. Oh yeah, do we
Speaker 1: talk about the daughter of the elected. I'll tell you what, Well,
Speaker 1: all we want to do is just go back over
Speaker 1: a few points and clarify, and that's how we're going
Speaker 1: to try to do. Is that anything you want to do. Okoy,
Speaker 1: just how wait can clarify something, Sarah, The first time
Speaker 1: you and I talk, you talk about being down there
Speaker 1: with concurring name brain and I I wasn't supposed to
Speaker 1: be with the person I was in. Okay, but you
Speaker 1: think you've corrected that now working each other. Beach says
Speaker 1: you've corrected that now, so we're in good shape. Initially,
Speaker 1: it seems troubling that Sarah changed her story, but I've
Speaker 1: also been a teen girl who was afraid of getting
Speaker 1: busted for sneaking out with a guy that my parents hated.
Speaker 1: In the second interview, Sarah gave a few more details
Speaker 1: about a conversation she had with Janie. This time, she
Speaker 1: said that Jane jokingly called her a snob at the party,
Speaker 1: and then I remember sing her getting out the truck
Speaker 1: walking forward to the house. She said hello, she said
Speaker 1: I snob. I thought, I'm sorry, I didn't see it.
Speaker 1: Janie may have been kidding, but to Janie's parents, this
Speaker 1: comment illustrated the difference between the people in power and
Speaker 1: the ones with none. Comparing Sarah's interviews to the ones
Speaker 1: of the other people at the party, I noticed She's
Speaker 1: the only one who says that it was dark when
Speaker 1: Janie fell. Most people say it happened and around dusk.
Speaker 1: She's also the only person who said that Janey appeared
Speaker 1: to be very intoxicated, but according to Jane's autopsy report,
Speaker 1: her blood alcohol level was only point zero five, or
Speaker 1: the equivalent of about one drink. And she said she's
Speaker 1: she was intoxicated when I saw her her she she
Speaker 1: acted in about pat well, that's the way everybody saw
Speaker 1: her as the party. I don't know if she acted
Speaker 1: that where she really was. Another rumor going around town
Speaker 1: was that a girl was heard in the bank parking
Speaker 1: lot on the night Janie died, saying that her daddy
Speaker 1: would get her out of trouble. This quote is cited
Speaker 1: in several newspaper articles, but it's never attributed to anyone
Speaker 1: in particular, and no one can figure out who actually
Speaker 1: said it first, but people start to assume it was Sarah.
Speaker 1: A lot of people it seemed like after everything happened
Speaker 1: at the party. The party, there was a rumor the
Speaker 1: party was getting busted. Everything happened with Jane, there was
Speaker 1: a crowd of people in that parking lot, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people ended up going to the Daisy Queen
Speaker 1: and hanging out, and then Sarah said that she also
Speaker 1: was in that parking lot, and he asked her something
Speaker 1: about did you see her, you know, when she's laying
Speaker 1: there in the back of the truck, and she said, yes,
Speaker 1: but I didn't touch her. And it was just a weird.
Speaker 1: It was just weird. It was it was just it
Speaker 1: just struck me as a lot the way she answered
Speaker 1: that question. We'll be right back. People also talked about
Speaker 1: hearing Sarah and her friends laughing about Jane at school.
Speaker 1: Attempts to find anyone who actually heard this information firsthand
Speaker 1: proved feudal. I experienced this several times in Rebecca's case,
Speaker 1: and it was extremely frustrating. Recently, I was getting some
Speaker 1: photos for Janie's case processed in Mountain View when someone
Speaker 1: pulled me aside and told me they you for a
Speaker 1: fact that a group of people had killed Rebecca. I
Speaker 1: know they did it because they described the whole thing.
Speaker 1: He said. They told me in detail, how they knocked
Speaker 1: every single tooth out of her mouth. I told him
Speaker 1: I'd seen Rebecca's autopsy report and their teeth were intact,
Speaker 1: but he continued to insist that I was wrong. This
Speaker 1: was only one of hundreds of rumors like this that
Speaker 1: I heard throughout the course of the case. Bill Beach
Speaker 1: tried to track down these rumors about Jane. One person
Speaker 1: claimed that a woman who worked at Marshall High School
Speaker 1: told her she heard Sarah talk about pushing Jane out
Speaker 1: of a moving pickup truck. But when Investigator Beach reached
Speaker 1: out to the woman, she said she never heard Sara
Speaker 1: say anything like that, and whoever told him that must
Speaker 1: be confused. But if Jane and Sarah did get into
Speaker 1: a fight, what would they have been fighting about. Janie's
Speaker 1: parents said that she had a problem at school with
Speaker 1: the cheerleaders, but many other witnesses say everyone like Janie.
Speaker 1: There was another rumor going on around that a fight
Speaker 1: broke out over a guy. According to Bill Beach's interview
Speaker 1: with Janie's friend Leslie, Janie had been dating a guy
Speaker 1: named Don shortly before her death. That's the same friend
Speaker 1: who said Janie borrowed her deaf leopard shirt and that
Speaker 1: Jane spent the night with her on Friday before the party.
Speaker 1: Does she have any boyfriends that she know? She liked
Speaker 1: this guy? Leslie said. Janie told her that she and
Speaker 1: Don had broken up a few weeks earlier because he
Speaker 1: thought she was too young for him and because he'd
Speaker 1: started seeing someone else. Jane had also mentioned i Leslie
Speaker 1: that she dated other people in the past, but said
Speaker 1: she wasn't dating anyone in particular at the time of
Speaker 1: the party. Anybody else was school. She talked about night,
Speaker 1: her girl day. She talked about pay in Ron's boxes.
Speaker 1: We find an that Janie passed to her friends at school.
Speaker 1: It reads, Hey girl, I'm so hyper, I can't wait
Speaker 1: until lunch. I'm going to be loud. Come get me
Speaker 1: tonight We'll paint Marshall read Oh. According to Carla and Tiffany,
Speaker 1: I'm in love with James just because I talked to him. Oh.
Speaker 1: I hate that they think you can't talk to a
Speaker 1: guy without having the hots for that guy. It's sickening,
Speaker 1: don't you agree. Like we said earlier, Jane didn't run
Speaker 1: with the popular crowd, and that was made explicitly clear
Speaker 1: in an interview with a woman named Sherry. She was
Speaker 1: at the party and described herself as a friend of Jannie's.
Speaker 1: The investigator asks her if it would be possible that
Speaker 1: Jane and Sarah were fighting over a boy no, ok now,
Speaker 1: quick as the guy that Sarah went to day would
Speaker 1: not look to one for at Alabia at all. You know,
Speaker 1: Sarah was pretty, she was a cheerleader. Wladyan Weaven's you know,
Speaker 1: by all girl, I would glasses. Now, there's no way
Speaker 1: that they be fine on the same way I go clear.
Speaker 1: After the funeral, Janie's dad, ron couldn't escape the whispers
Speaker 1: in town. And that's when he had what he claimed
Speaker 1: was a very strange run in with Sarah. What what'd
Speaker 1: you tell a story about that? So you were coming
Speaker 1: in and buying a baseball bat? Oh? Yes? A few
Speaker 1: days after Jennie's death, Ronnie went into Harps. Harps is
Speaker 1: the grocery store in town, and he went around the
Speaker 1: corner and there was Sarah looking at baseball bats. And
Speaker 1: when she saw Ronnie, it scared her immediately and she
Speaker 1: ran toward the door. I mean he just saw her
Speaker 1: and stopped short, you know, and she ran toward the
Speaker 1: door and backed out the door, looking at him and
Speaker 1: ran And because what are the odds the timing that,
Speaker 1: what are the odds? And I don't I'm I never
Speaker 1: believed to coincidences anyway, you know, But because of the nature,
Speaker 1: you know. He just he's like, you know, you can't
Speaker 1: make that stuff up. But he's like, I ain't even
Speaker 1: gonna tell anybody, you know, because it just sounds preposterous.
Speaker 1: At first, this does sound sinister, but as an investigator,
Speaker 1: I know that there's always a danger of making a
Speaker 1: theory fit the evidence instead of the other way around.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you have to keep an
Speaker 1: open mind. The smallest detail in an investigation can lead
Speaker 1: to cracking a case, and that's why several instances throw
Speaker 1: me off guard. Bill Beach took a group of people
Speaker 1: to the cabin in the woods to demonstrate how Janie felt.
Speaker 1: Among them were Jay who threw the party, Ron Rose,
Speaker 1: who was driving the truck that took Jannie back to town,
Speaker 1: and Billy and Gary Dawn, who both said that they
Speaker 1: saw Janie fall. This is where marry Don backtracks on
Speaker 1: his statement. Originally he said that he saw Janeye fall.
Speaker 1: Now at the reenactment, he demonstrates what would have happened
Speaker 1: if he saw her fall. It's very odd. It's also
Speaker 1: strange that Sarah was not included in these reenactments, even
Speaker 1: though she's one of the only people who said she
Speaker 1: saw Janie fall. Also, police and prosecutors filed an affidavit
Speaker 1: for a search warrant for the cabin. Initially, it was
Speaker 1: denied by a judge. He approved it a couple of
Speaker 1: hours later. The judge who initially denied the search warrant
Speaker 1: was Sarah's dad, Jerry. It's just another small detail that
Speaker 1: made Ron and the rest of the Ward family distrustful
Speaker 1: of Sarah and Jerry. The Wards also thought that Jerry
Speaker 1: and Sarah were being treated better by police and by prosecutors.
Speaker 1: Jerry was a respected judge in town, and looking at
Speaker 1: the police file, we find a letter where the prosecutor
Speaker 1: on Jane's case, H. G. Foster, gives Jerry a heads
Speaker 1: up on information about Janie's case. It reads, enclosed, please
Speaker 1: find additional material which was furnished to me by the
Speaker 1: Arkansas State Police and appears to have something to do
Speaker 1: with the Jane Ward case. It appears that this will
Speaker 1: be included within the state police file and will become
Speaker 1: freedom of information. At that point, I feel certain that
Speaker 1: Ron Ward will call the newspapers and make everyone aware
Speaker 1: of these clearly unsubstantiated allegations concerning your daughter. I wanted
Speaker 1: you to have this material before any of the press
Speaker 1: got hold of it, and give you an opportunity to
Speaker 1: share your thoughts with me about what I need to do,
Speaker 1: if anything, with it. It is my inclination at this
Speaker 1: point that it would be best to go ahead and
Speaker 1: furnish copies of this material to the press so as
Speaker 1: to diffuse any allegations that will subsequently be made by
Speaker 1: Ronnie Ward of a cover up. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do anything with it unless and
Speaker 1: until I hear from you. But when talking about ron Ward, H. G.
Speaker 1: Foster finds him more of a nuisance looking at the
Speaker 1: case file, there are a few examples of when the
Speaker 1: police and prosecutors grow exasperated by ron Ward's persistence in
Speaker 1: the case. In one letter, Foster calls ron Ward irate
Speaker 1: when describing him to another prosecutor who he wants to
Speaker 1: look into the case. It reads, I was wondering if
Speaker 1: he would still be interested in fooling around with the
Speaker 1: Janey Ward investigation. Investigation is in quotes. There's continued activity
Speaker 1: and rumbling up here from the father of Jane Ward,
Speaker 1: who is of American Indian extraction six foot six tall,
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty pounds and very irate. The showdown
Speaker 1: between Jerry and Ron began to spiral after Ron launches
Speaker 1: the Justice for Janey website in the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: The forum quickly became a hotbed for speculation and accusation,
Speaker 1: and Jerry responded to allegations against him and his daughter.
Speaker 1: In one way comment on the forum, he says he
Speaker 1: wants to sue the Wards and the journalist Mike Masterson
Speaker 1: for libel and slander, and at one point he offers
Speaker 1: up ten thousand dollars to cover court expenses for a
Speaker 1: grand jury. In an interview with investigators, Jerry is exasperated
Speaker 1: by all of the Wards allegations. Then they started getching
Speaker 1: about a grand jury. We need a grand jury, and
Speaker 1: nobody has some line for grand heere. I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll give you the line for a grandjury. I'll give you.
Speaker 1: I'll give you ten thousand dollars. You match it. I
Speaker 1: all that. Well, they didn't do it. We're not going
Speaker 1: to do it. All right, let's just follow that logic.
Speaker 1: They're not going to assume me when I tell him,
Speaker 1: you know, let's do it. You know, I'm a sarious
Speaker 1: very serious. Uh doue me see my daughter, and let's
Speaker 1: get on with that and we'll see how it. I'll
Speaker 1: say that nantaisi incredit any evidence which comes out in
Speaker 1: a cub case, then pop, you're going to have that information. Hello,
Speaker 1: all right. So they didn't even want to do there,
Speaker 1: and then they start talking about a grand jury, and
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I'll go that way with you too.
Speaker 1: You mass the money? What did they do? Now? Why? Why?
Speaker 1: What's the logical conclusion? The logical conclusion is is that
Speaker 1: I want to why Why don't they want to because
Speaker 1: they want to keep the story going. Why because they
Speaker 1: want to make people feel that hell my daughter and
Speaker 1: I felt that says the damn thing. First sight. You
Speaker 1: can't make me feel any worse. So that's not the reason.
Speaker 1: Jerry suspects that the words don't have any incriminating evidence
Speaker 1: to accuse his daughter of anything. In his interview with investigators,
Speaker 1: Jerry said that Ron was ruining his daughter's life. They
Speaker 1: are so ridiculous that they have done nothing but enhance
Speaker 1: my faster and her. The person that's hurt by this
Speaker 1: is my daughter. I feel so bad for her. He
Speaker 1: quit coming home or not. She felt like people were
Speaker 1: talking about her I knew they were talking on the Wednesday.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we talked about how Fammy Mallet
Speaker 1: botched autopsies and some people said he deliberately lied to
Speaker 1: cover up cases. Journalist Mike Masterson and the Wards think
Speaker 1: that Janey's death was covered up and that the cover
Speaker 1: up could have gone all the way to the top
Speaker 1: of Arkansas's government. Looking at the case file, Mike and
Speaker 1: the Wards both voiced their suspicions about how many pieces
Speaker 1: of mail were addressed to the Governor's office. They asked,
Speaker 1: why would the governor's office be interested in the death
Speaker 1: of a sixteen year old girl in a small town.
Speaker 1: We did find one peculiar envelope addressed to Ron Ward.
Speaker 1: Inside was a typed letter that offered the Wards of
Speaker 1: dollars to stop investigating. The return address was torn off
Speaker 1: as we try to separate fact from fiction. In Jennie's case,
Speaker 1: what we know for sure is that Marshall had become
Speaker 1: a breeding ground of paranoia and the Wards were under
Speaker 1: huge amounts of stress. You might say something about living
Speaker 1: there in that environment in Marshall, Chersey County. We might
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about why people wouldn't come forward,
Speaker 1: what what would keep them from coming forward to tell
Speaker 1: what they knew to authorities or to whoever it was,
Speaker 1: the law, the powers that be, and it went all
Speaker 1: the way to the governor, went all the way to
Speaker 1: the straight State crime Lab, which the governor ran. I mean,
Speaker 1: they covered all of his bodies. You know, they knew
Speaker 1: where the bodies were buried. Literally, you knew where all
Speaker 1: the bodies were buried. Literally, not only the witnesses. They
Speaker 1: threatened us. They even called our house and told my
Speaker 1: dad if he didn't quit looking into it, he had
Speaker 1: two other kids to worry about. Dad had to pull
Speaker 1: us out of school right after Johnny died. He did,
Speaker 1: and he took me in, Matthew out of school, my
Speaker 1: little brother, and we were out for quite a while.
Speaker 1: But over the years, you know, we all suffered from PTSD.
Speaker 1: But of course we were all paranoied and worried and
Speaker 1: freaking out and stuff. Because you're lose one daughter and
Speaker 1: you have some woman call your house and threaten your
Speaker 1: other two children if you investigate the death of your daughter. Now,
Speaker 1: if that doesn't make it suspicious, I mean, there was
Speaker 1: just death threats, you know, to witnesses, our family, reporters.
Speaker 1: You know it's all little paranoid or a lot of paranoid.
Speaker 1: Not so much meat, not so much Ronnie. But we
Speaker 1: was afraid to let our other two children out of
Speaker 1: our sight. Worried about a fire, about your house being burned. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't like to leave the house unattended because of
Speaker 1: his records and things. You know he did. He did
Speaker 1: get with him. It was like moving everywhere we went.
Speaker 1: We also reached out to several journalists who have covered
Speaker 1: Janney's case. One said he never received any threats, another
Speaker 1: stopped responding, and another said they received a voicemail box
Speaker 1: full of death threats for looking into Janie's death. All
Speaker 1: of them declined to give an interview with us. The
Speaker 1: Wards grew suspicious because Sarah's dad, Jerry, was the district judge,
Speaker 1: and they are convinced he called in a favor for
Speaker 1: his daughter. In his interview with police, Jerry calls the
Speaker 1: entire theory nonsense. I know that there are those who
Speaker 1: some kind of the cause of this rule. I can
Speaker 1: tell you now that no fact that supports the theory
Speaker 1: of the cover. What I will here that he is
Speaker 1: my belief, and my belief is that there are those
Speaker 1: individuals in this county who are either ignan are very,
Speaker 1: very envious and much better. And because my daughter were
Speaker 1: present at this particular party, they have created reasons to
Speaker 1: assess and point to her as being a principle as
Speaker 1: far as the build for this real concerned. He says,
Speaker 1: it's a ludicrous that anyone would think he has enough
Speaker 1: power in the state to cover up Janie's deaths. The
Speaker 1: point I have ludicrous this accusation. Our comment is is
Speaker 1: that I am supposed to be so powerful that I
Speaker 1: reach not only into the County Poor of Office and
Speaker 1: the city police department, but into the states as well
Speaker 1: as the governor of Arkansas. Are a very very powerful man,
Speaker 1: if you believe somehow. There's another word that keeps getting
Speaker 1: brought up in connection with Janie's death or any death
Speaker 1: when our Kansas suspect to cover up. It's called arkansis.
Speaker 1: Arkanss is the conspiracy theory that claims that people in
Speaker 1: the Arkansas government would kill their political enemies and have
Speaker 1: the medical examiner rule it a suicide. It's particularly linked
Speaker 1: to Bill Clinton, who is governor of Arkansas at the
Speaker 1: time of Janie's death. To better explain it, we talked
Speaker 1: to an expert in conspiracy theories, writer and researcher Mike Rothschild.
Speaker 1: He's written on tons of conspiracy theories, including Arkansis and
Speaker 1: the Clinton body count, and we wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: him about how these stories get started and how they
Speaker 1: can become ingrained in a small town. Arkanside is the
Speaker 1: mistaken belief that the Clintons have a four decade long
Speaker 1: trail of dead bodies behind them, that all of these
Speaker 1: people in their orbit who have died of natural causes
Speaker 1: or committed suicide, or been killed in accidents, or who
Speaker 1: have actually been killed in some sort of crime have
Speaker 1: all been victims of the Clintons. And this sort of like, oh,
Speaker 1: he died by shooting himself three times in the head
Speaker 1: kind of seeing has been given this nickname of Arkanside,
Speaker 1: that anybody sort of in the Clinton circle is sort
Speaker 1: of bumped off once they're no longer necessary for them.
Speaker 1: I'm in no way endorsing this theory, but in Marshall,
Speaker 1: I can see how a conspiracy theory could take on
Speaker 1: a life of its own. When there's a lack of
Speaker 1: communication and distrust between the police and the public, there's
Speaker 1: always the risk of an investigation turning into an echo chamber.
Speaker 1: The facts aren't straight or available, speculation intensifies, so much
Speaker 1: of what is called a conspiracy can be written off
Speaker 1: as just in competence. You have a lot of people
Speaker 1: who just aren't good at their jobs and a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are lazy. And I think that need
Speaker 1: for answers, I think is very prevalent in conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: We don't want to believe that things just randomly happen.
Speaker 1: We don't want to believe that the universe is sort
Speaker 1: of cold and indifferent. We want to believe that someone
Speaker 1: has it out for us. I mean, as bizarre as
Speaker 1: that found, it's much more comforting to think that a
Speaker 1: loved one was killed because of a plot, or because
Speaker 1: someone was getting back at us or whatever. Then it
Speaker 1: was just just bad timing. And there are a thousand
Speaker 1: ways it might not have happened, but it did happen
Speaker 1: this one way, and so we need answers, We need explanations,
Speaker 1: and we need things to make sent Mike also explains
Speaker 1: that it's human nature to need someone to blame, and
Speaker 1: in Jamie's case, where the family isn't getting answers, it's
Speaker 1: no wonder there needs to be a villain. There's always
Speaker 1: someone that you want to blame. And it's really easy
Speaker 1: to blame powerful, wealthy people rather than looking inward. And
Speaker 1: most conspiracy theories do have a grain of truth to them,
Speaker 1: you know, they're not just completely made up. There is
Speaker 1: one small thing about them that's true. And then if well,
Speaker 1: if that could be true, what about these other twelve things?
Speaker 1: It sort of grows bigger and bigger and bigger, and
Speaker 1: it's it just becomes harder and harder to contain. And yeah,
Speaker 1: people who are wealthy and powerful have it easier than
Speaker 1: people who are not. I mean, that's just that is
Speaker 1: just the way it is. As Mike said, sometimes there
Speaker 1: is a grain of truth and conspiracy theories. It might
Speaker 1: be as simple as someone doing a favor for someone else.
Speaker 1: When people with money and power are treated differently from
Speaker 1: everyone else, even a situation that didn't start out as
Speaker 1: a conspiracy can become one. And like I said, paranoid
Speaker 1: people aren't always wrong. We'll be right back. The conflict
Speaker 1: between Jerry and Sarah and the Wards split the town
Speaker 1: in two. Some people think that Sarah killed Janne with
Speaker 1: a baseball bat. Other people think this is totally unfounded
Speaker 1: and ridiculous. But Ron and Mona Ward kept her story
Speaker 1: alive and took her case statewide with the help of
Speaker 1: reporter Mike Masterson. Mike uses his platform as a writer
Speaker 1: to tell Janie's story every week in his column. This
Speaker 1: brings more attention to the case and puts more pressure
Speaker 1: on Arkansas officials to do something about it, especially when
Speaker 1: the Wards find a forensic pathologist to exhume Janie's body
Speaker 1: and do another autopsy. They find the pathologists through the
Speaker 1: nonprofit organization Parents of Murdered Children. It has a service
Speaker 1: called Second Opinions where volunteer prosecutors, pathologists, and law enforcement
Speaker 1: review cases that families feel are not completely figured out.
Speaker 1: This is Bev Warnock, the executive director the Parents of
Speaker 1: Murder Children, and what they would do if they would
Speaker 1: call us, We would ask them to get as much
Speaker 1: information as they can, the autopsy, the police reports, anything
Speaker 1: else that you know, they can get their hands on,
Speaker 1: send it to us and then leap forward it to
Speaker 1: our volunteers and they'll look at the case, they'll read it,
Speaker 1: you know, and they'll come back with an opinion. And
Speaker 1: that's really all we can offer. The family. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like we can go there and have them
Speaker 1: open the case or anything. It's just an opinion that
Speaker 1: might answer some of the questions that they have, and
Speaker 1: it might be you know, it definitely wasn't an accident,
Speaker 1: It definitely wasn't an overdose, or it was, and the
Speaker 1: family has to try to accept that it really was.
Speaker 1: It's just devastating for them to not really know and
Speaker 1: feel that they're you know, they feel in their guts
Speaker 1: that it wasn't what you know, they said and what
Speaker 1: the police are believing. Among all the whispers conspiracy and
Speaker 1: crazy rumors, we have to go back to basics, to
Speaker 1: the one piece of evidence that the parents have, Jane herself.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and two, the Wards took advantage of
Speaker 1: the Second Opinion Service. In their letter, they laid out
Speaker 1: everything they found suspicious, the sand under the clothes, the
Speaker 1: fact that her clothes were wet, the bruising and injuries
Speaker 1: ron saw, the x rays, and the rumors about Sarah,
Speaker 1: and it didn't take long before they received a letter
Speaker 1: from doctor Harry Bannell. Doctor Benel was a forensic pathologist.
Speaker 1: He has performed thousands of autopsies and been involved in
Speaker 1: many high profile cases, including the Green River killer investigation
Speaker 1: and the Challenger's Space shuttle crash. In his letter to
Speaker 1: the Wards, he agreed that the circumstances surrounding Jane's death
Speaker 1: were suspicious. He wrote that he found no objective evidence
Speaker 1: to prove she died from the fall described by witnesses.
Speaker 1: He offered to conduct a second autopsy pro bono. The
Speaker 1: Wards and their lawyer were able to convince a judge
Speaker 1: to order an exhumation of Jane's body. After so many
Speaker 1: years of fighting, the Wards were feeling hopeful that they
Speaker 1: might get answers, even though the last thing they wanted
Speaker 1: to do was pull their daughter out of the ground.
Speaker 1: They believed that to get justice they needed another autopsy.
Speaker 1: Ron and Mona stood beside the cement vault as workers
Speaker 1: pulled Jannye's casket out of the ground. Her body was
Speaker 1: delivered to the University of Arkansas Medical Facility in Little Rock,
Speaker 1: and on October eighth, two thousand and four, fifteen years
Speaker 1: after her death, doctor Burnell performed a second autopsy, and
Speaker 1: he came to a completely different conclusion. Mike Masterson met
Speaker 1: with doctor Burnell and was suspicious of the fact that
Speaker 1: the Arkansas State Crime Lab did not allow Banell to
Speaker 1: use their facilities. Doctor Harry Barnell was a pathologist at
Speaker 1: the Beckoning Call of Parents of Murdered Children because he
Speaker 1: was on their board, so he was involved in cases
Speaker 1: around the country that needed answers. So doctor Burnell showed
Speaker 1: up expecting to be greeted as sybyl as the doctor's
Speaker 1: forensic pathologists. But that's not how Arkansas received him. They
Speaker 1: told him he could not use crime lab to do
Speaker 1: a second autopsy, that he'd have to do it on
Speaker 1: his own somewhere. So he found a private place. And
Speaker 1: this is doctor Burnell was a very respected, confident forensic pathologist.
Speaker 1: He was very credible to me. He had no dog
Speaker 1: in his hunt. Doctor Bernaldus came in to do an
Speaker 1: honest job. He didn't know what he was going to find.
Speaker 1: That's what he found, that's what he announced. Well, you
Speaker 1: know then that really hit the fan in Arkansas because
Speaker 1: now you have a guy coming in who's qualified giving
Speaker 1: a manner of death which had never happened, and so
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the system went into full They
Speaker 1: circled all the wagons pretty quickly. They realized they're going
Speaker 1: to have to do something because it was laying out
Speaker 1: there as homicide. Ron finally heard what he had thought
Speaker 1: to be true all along. Someone killed Janie. Remember that.
Speaker 1: In the first autopsy report, doctor Malleck notes that he
Speaker 1: didn't see any bruising on Janie's body except for a
Speaker 1: small bruise on her lower back. He also said she
Speaker 1: sustained a hyper extension neck injury from falling on the
Speaker 1: back of her head. He didn't note that anything was broken.
Speaker 1: Doctor Burnell also says that Jane has a hyper extension injury,
Speaker 1: but he says it's because something hit her in the face.
Speaker 1: Doctor Burnell writes her head was not too far backwards
Speaker 1: and there's a fracture of the spine in the neck.
Speaker 1: Doctor Burnell also notes extensive damage to Jane's face and neck.
Speaker 1: He notes an abrasion and contusion on the left cheek
Speaker 1: and left forehead, a fracture with hemorrhaging of nasal cartilage,
Speaker 1: and maroon discoloration across the face. He also agrees with
Speaker 1: the two pathologists who were reviewed doctor Malick's autopsy. He
Speaker 1: thinks the lateral X ray of Janey could be a male.
Speaker 1: On the front page of his report, doctor Burnell says
Speaker 1: the cause of death is blunt impact to the face.
Speaker 1: The manner is homicide. ABC did an episode of their
Speaker 1: show Primetime about Janie's case. They interview Sarah. During the interview,
Speaker 1: Sarah was shown playing with her baby and sitting with
Speaker 1: her father on a port swing. She completely denied any
Speaker 1: involvement in Janie's death. I'm Katherine Townsend and this is
Speaker 1: Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint production between School
Speaker 1: of Humans and iHeartRadio. It is written and recorded by me.
Speaker 1: Katherine Townsend. Taylor Church and Gabby Watts are our producers
Speaker 1: and story editors. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin,
Speaker 1: and Elsie Crowley for School of Humans and Connell Byrne
Speaker 1: and Chuck Bryant for iHeart. Our Field producer is Miranda Hawkins.
Speaker 1: Theme and original score are by Ben Sale, available wherever
Speaker 1: you get your music. Please visit us at Helen gonpodcast
Speaker 1: dot com or follow us on social media. School of
Speaker 1: Humans