Hey Ya'll! Julie Mattson here, your host and a forensic death investigator. This week on "Pushing Up Lilies," we're delving into the somber reality of dealing with suicides. I'll be sharing some of my experiences and the emotional challenges faced when investigating these tragic deaths. In addition, we'll journey back in time to examine an old cold case that has haunted many: the mysterious deaths of boys found laid on the train tracks, a chilling act believed to cover up a deeper crime. Join me as we unravel the complexities and heartbreak of these cases, and explore the relentless pursuit of truth and justice in the face of darkness.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True Crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Hi, guys.
0:32 I don't know if I've mentioned that I own a med spa in Denton, Texas.
0:37 I've had the med spa for about eight years, and I do as a nurse Botox injections.
0:43 I do fillers, I do medical grade facials.
0:47 We do IV’s and B-12 shots.
0:50 We have started a weight loss program that we can now offer to our out of state clients.
0:59 If you're interested, you can go on our website and you can schedule a virtual appointment for a weight loss consultation.
1:11 It's not available in every state yet, but it is available in most states.
1:17 If you schedule a weight loss consultation, we can do it virtually, we'll send you an email that will allow you to do a face-to-face visit with a nurse practitioner and they will go over your medical history and make sure that it is a good choice for you.
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3:15 Also, another thing I wanted to ask is we are in the running for Best of Denton, which is our little town here where the med spa is.
3:25 We have been nominated under the beauty category as best spa and best specialty services, under the healthy living category as best med spa and best weight loss treatments and under the shopping category as best women's boutique.
3:43 If you would do me a favor and go on to www.BestOfDenton.com and vote for the filling station, which is the name of my med spa.
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4:02 I would greatly appreciate it.
4:04 And if you live in the area, we would also love for you to stop by.
4:08 I know that many people don't and aren't able to, but it's a really cute little location we're kind of tucked into downtown Denton really close to the square and we would love for you to stop by and visit.
4:22 I don't know why I don't normally plug it on here.
4:24 I just really never thought about it.
4:27 Anyway, come by and give us a visit.
4:29 Look us up online and please, please, please, vote today.
4:33 I wanted to, I guess, say the last couple of weeks have been really busy for us.
4:40 I don't know what's going on.
4:41 I was looking back at my cases that I've had so far this year and a large majority of them have been suicides.
4:51 They've all been gunshot wounds to the head.
4:55 I always kind of look at trends and looking back, it looks like that many of them were just having issues, you know, whether it be girlfriend job.
5:06 Just life in general.
5:08 Life is hard.
5:09 You know.
5:10 I mean, I told my kids that when they were young, we all think that life is just at its worst when we're in high school and we're struggling to get through our classes.
5:21 I always tell my kids this is the easy part, you know, and I think they see that now but back then it was like, yeah, whatever.
5:27 I got this mom, which, you know, I wasn't trying to be discouraging but many, many people struggle.
5:35 There are a lot of agencies that you can reach out to for help.
5:40 I mean, just know that you're not alone.
5:43 We have a lost team here in our area and they send a mental health counselor and someone whose family member has committed suicide to our scenes.
5:56 It's pretty amazing the things that they can do.
6:00 They lost their first survivor this past week.
6:04 This is somebody who was working for their team, helping other people who had lost family members, his son had committed suicide and this week he committed suicide.
6:17 We all know that it's a nationwide issue.
6:22 And I mean, just know that there is help, there's help out there for everybody.
6:28 And that's just been my cases this past year.
6:32 You know, some of them I know we've talked about before are little elderly people that maybe have been diagnosed with a health problem and they are afraid that they're a burden to their family.
6:43 And so they take their own life thinking that they're going to make their family's life easier.
6:50 It's just so sad, you know, to look back at how many I've had, I just couldn't believe it.
6:55 And literally most of them were gunshot wounds.
6:59 Like I said, gunshot wounds to the head.
7:02 We run into issues, and I've run into this a lot lately where family members want to see their loved one.
7:11 And I mean, unfortunately, sometimes they find their loved one, right?
7:14 They are the ones that go into the home and actually find them and have to call 911 and initiate CPR if it can help.
7:26 But many people want to see their family member before we put them in a body bag.
7:32 Now, I can say that probably most of our investigators don't do this.
7:38 I kind of go by the family member and what their demeanor is and their emotional state and whether or not I feel like they can handle it, many of them may be in the medical field and they're like, hey, I just want to see him.
7:56 I've seen somebody that shot themselves before it is different when it's your own child or your father or your mother or any family member.
8:05 But many people in the medical field have seen it before.
8:09 And so they just want that finalization.
8:13 I used to say no, absolutely not.
8:16 Now, I do warn them that, you know, it's not really the way you want to remember this person, but I also get it that you just sometimes need that finalization at times.
8:31 I do let family members see their loved one.
8:36 It's more difficult when it's a traumatic death because I mean, it's hard to see your child with a gunshot wound to the head.
8:45 It's not always as messy as it sounds.
8:48 Of course, we're not allowed to lean them off before we send them to the medical examiner's office.
8:55 So at the scene, we can't really do anything to make the person look better.
9:00 We're not allowed to get a wet rag and you know, wipe the face off or any of that stuff.
9:06 We can't really, you know what I call pretty five a scene.
9:10 It's going to be what it is.
9:13 I know this past year I have also with most of these gunshot wounds which were all to the head.
9:20 Had a lot of family members that wanted to view.
9:24 You can tell when you're around family members how they're going to be able to handle it.
9:29 Everybody handles death differently.
9:31 And I know we've talked about that before, but some people are highly emotional and they just can't, I mean, it's too much, they can view them at the funeral home after the medical examiner has done the autopsy and the body is washed and clean and there's no blood and everything just looks not quite as messy, I guess, is a good way to say it.
9:58 That is the option that I offer most people.
10:01 You know, why don't you wait until he's cleaned up or she's cleaned up a little bit so that it's not quite so hard because you don't want to see the injuries and there's a lot of blood, most people are ok with that.
10:17 But again, there's a lot of people at the scene that are just like I want to see him.
10:20 I want to see him and who am I to stop?
10:23 That is kind of the way I look at it.
10:25 I mean, I'm a parent and I'm a grandparent and I totally understand why someone would want to see their loved one again.
10:34 You know, it's a lot easier when they just die in their sleep and they're lying in bed, there's no mess, there's no medical intervention, none of that is present.
10:43 So it's not an issue, but in cases of trauma, it's a big issue.
10:49 I know that the family does normally see them if it's a traumatic death that's pronounced in the hospital because nine times out of 10, once they're transported to the hospital and pronounced by the doctor, they're going to allow family members to come in again.
11:04 They can't clean up the scene either.
11:06 You know, they have to leave the person on the stretcher with the E T tube in possibly blood everywhere, depending on how traumatic the death was.
11:15 And so anyway, it's, it's just hard.
11:17 It's a part of our job that you kind of have to learn to read people.
11:23 It's very emotional and of course you want to stand there with them, and you want to be supportive.
11:30 That's kind of one of the hard parts of the job.
11:32 I guess that we don't really talk about is, when people want to see their family member.
11:37 I was just thinking of that yesterday when I was going through my cases, and I noticed that most of them were traumatic deaths with gunshot wounds to the head.
11:46 And like I said, it's not always messy.
11:48 Many times there's an entrance above the left temple, an exit above the right temple.
11:54 It's not always super bloody, but with like gunshot wounds to the head, you're going to get the bruising around the eyes or the raccoon eyes which indicate a skull fracture.
12:05 That is frightening to some people.
12:07 You know, when they see that many times there's going to be blood from the nose and the mouth.
12:12 A lot of that is just hard to see, especially for a family member when it's their loved one.
12:18 Anyway, just something on my mind.
12:21 But I was talking to my husband the other night and he had mentioned a case to me that he was kind of interested in and we watched an old, old episode of Unsolved mysteries.
12:35 Richard Stack was on it, and I don't even know if he's still alive, but it was a case that happened back in 1987.
12:45 Although it seems like so long ago, it really wasn't y'all because I mean, I graduated high school in 86. It was just yesterday.
12:52 But these are two kids who were run over by a train.
12:58 This happened in Alexander Arkansas. Again, this was back on August 23rd of 1987.
13:09 I'd never heard this story, but my husband mentioned that it was something that always, I don't know.
13:13 I guess it sparked his interest.
13:16 This is the story of Kevin Ives and Don Henry.
13:23 Don was 16 and Kevin was 17.
13:29 These boys were best friends.
13:32 They were popular seniors at Bryant High school.
13:37 Both of the boys love to work on cars, and they love to hunt, and they were just buddies.
13:43 You know, I'm still buddies with all my high school girlfriends.
13:47 I mean we travel together and it's just great to have those forever friends and that's what these boys could have been had this incident not happened.
13:58 These two teenagers were murdered again.
14:02 August 23rd of 1987 their bodies were placed on railroad tracks at 4 a.m. that morning.
14:11 A 6000-ton cargo train was going through Little Rock, Arkansas.
14:17 The train was over a mile long and was traveling at about 52 miles an hour.
14:23 Don Henry and Kevin Ives were found side by side on the tracks.
14:28 I mean, of course, the train, you know, we're talking about 6000 tons.
14:33 By the time they see the bodies and they put the brakes on, the train is going to travel quite a distance before it can actually come to a stop.
14:44 The boys were lying side by side on the tracks and were run over by the train.
14:52 Now, initially, the medical examiner ruled that they had fallen asleep on the tracks after smoking large amounts of marijuana and that rendered them unable to move or unconscious.
15:07 And they were struck by the train, the train continued for half a mile once it hit the brakes and again, that's just the weight of those trains when we have train deaths.
15:20 It's very interesting because trains have, I don't know if they did back then, but trains now have cameras on the front of them so they can record what happens on the tracks.
15:33 Trains will typically hit animals, you know, cows, coyotes, whatever because they get on the tracks, not knowing what they are.
15:42 But there are also people who fall asleep on the tracks or intend to commit suicide and lay across the tracks.
15:51 But these boys, you know, the parents were not in agreement with the medical examiner.
15:57 This is not what happened on August 22nd.
16:03 These two boys met a group of friends at the Commuter Park which was like a favorite gathering place in the area.
16:10 And then at midnight, they left to go to Don's house.
16:14 Kevin waited on the porch while Don went in to talk to his dad, Curtis Henry.
16:19 And that was at about 1215 in the morning, he told his dad where they were going, and he took his 22 and he took a spotlight.
16:29 That's something that, you know, us country kids did.
16:33 Back in the day, we didn't have electronic devices so they were going to go spotlighting.
16:40 And so the boys chose their usual hunting ground along the railroad tracks that ran just behind dawn's house.
16:48 Three hours later, the boys were struck by this train lying parallel on the tracks with their arms by their side.
16:56 And the train crew said that they were covered by a light green tarp and the raffle was beside them.
17:04 Now, the medical examiner ruled that they had smoked the equivalent of 20 marijuana cigarettes and were in a deep sleep and never heard the train.
17:13 But as most of us would do as parents, a private investigator was hired by the family to try to determine what really happened.
17:24 Five months later, the parents held a press conference trying to reopen the case.
17:29 Now the bodies were exhumed for a second autopsy and the doctor that did that autopsy concluded that the boys had only smoked between 1 to 3, marijuana cigarettes, not 20.1 to 3.
17:43 He also found evidence that one of the boys was already dead prior to being struck by the train.
17:51 The other was most likely already unconscious.
17:55 So a grand jury reversed the medical examiner's original finding and ruled the deaths probable homicides.
18:02 And that's after the bodies were exhumed.
18:04 And a second medical examiner looked over the case.
18:08 Now the green tarp that was over the boys is a pretty good indicator to me that this was not an accident.
18:18 This was a homicide.
18:20 You know, you don't lay across railroad tracks and cover yourself with a green tarp.
18:25 This is something that everyone on the train had seen when they first visualized the boys on the tracks before, they were struck.
18:34 The weird part of this is that about one week before the boys were killed, a man in military fatigues was spotted near the tracks and this is just a week prior when he was questioned by police, he opened fire because he had a weapon.
18:51 And so by the time the police were able to try to start pursuing him, he could not be found.
19:00 But on the night of the boy's death, witnesses reported seeing a man in military fatigues about 200 yards from where the bodies were found.
19:10 It's unknown who this person is still to this day and whether they had anything to do with the murders, the green tarp, you know, I mean, who knows a tarp is something commonly used in the military.
19:24 It could have been his again, nobody knows where it is.
19:28 But Don's t-shirt was analyzed when this second autopsy was done, and an expert pathologist indicated that it appeared he had been stabbed at that point when that was noticed the deaths were changed from probable homicide to homicide.
19:49 This is something that should have been noted on the first autopsy.
19:54 It's strange to me that that was missed sometimes when someone is struck by a train, obviously, there's going to be a lot of injuries and it's easy for the medical examiner to assume that all the injuries are from being struck by the train.
20:11 But one thing that's important on autopsy is especially in a case like this where it's two young boys, you know, are there any injuries indicating that they could have been murdered and placed on the tracks by someone who's thinking that they're actually covering up a murder?
20:28 It's kind of interesting, but Kevin's skull may have been crushed prior to him being hit by the train as well.
20:36 The theory is that the deaths involve drug trafficking, and they were murdered after witnessing a drug drop from an airplane.
20:46 There was a kid named Keith Coy who came forward in 88 couple years later and said that he gave the boys a ride that night to a pay phone at a nearby grocery store.
20:59 But Keith died months later in a motorcycle accident.
21:03 And witnesses say that he was chased down and run over.
21:07 So it's kind of, I don't know, it's all just a weird conspiracy.
21:12 Witnesses had reported that the boys were being harassed at the grocery store by two officers who beat them up and hit them with the end of the rifle and put them in a truck.
21:24 The injury to Kevin's skull is consistent with that story.
21:28 We really don't know what happened.
21:31 I mean, in this again, I don't know if all this is true and if you are tied to this story in any way, I would absolutely love for you to reach out to me, Julie @ PushingUpLilies.com
21:41 Let me know.
21:42 I would love to talk to somebody who was around and was somewhat tied to this story.
21:47 But there is a little bit of a belief that maybe drugs from the drop were stolen by the teenagers.
21:56 No one really knows.
21:58 I went back, and I watched the episode of unsolved mysteries and of course it's old but they're still good.
22:04 Even those old ones are still good, but I went back, and I watched it and, you know, I hate that they just never found, I felt so bad for the parents because they never really, I mean, they were ruled a homicide, but they never caught the person that did it and they don't really know the real reason.
22:23 I mean, like I said, they're suspect that they witnessed a drug drop.
22:27 Evidently there was an area around where they were, that was well known for drug sales.
22:35 And so that very well could have been it.
22:38 I don't know.
22:39 But this many years later, I mean, we'll probably never know.
22:43 I hate the cold cases.
22:44 I mean, I always wish that there was something I could do, especially, you know, the missing persons.
22:50 Natalie Holloway is one that, you know, always gets to me.
22:55 I'm just like, I want to just pack my bag and go look for them.
22:59 But this many years later, you know, we, we may never know.
23:03 The cold cases have always been intriguing to me.
23:07 I know I have several friends that work in law enforcement who are assigned to cold cases, and I'd love to just go to work with them sometimes and just sit and watch them, go back through files I think would be interesting to go back and talk to family members and just try to get more clues.
23:24 But again, you know, the further we get away from the time they were murdered or missing, the less likely it is that we'll ever know what happened because we get to the point where all the witnesses and even the perpetrators are deceased.
23:41 And then that's when you just kind of hit a brick wall and you can't do anything else.
23:45 But this story again, we do have train, pedestrian deaths and I always worry about the mental health of the people in the train.
23:56 I mean, to know you tried to stop it and you couldn't and you ran over them.
24:01 I mean, I guess it would give me peace of mind to know that they were already dead and that I didn't kill them.
24:07 You know, it's the same as when we were talking about this at work the other day, when someone jumps out in front of a moving vehicle in an attempt to kill themselves.
24:16 I mean, it usually works but the poor driver of the car, I mean, to me, things like that are very selfish.
24:27 I understand you want to take your own life but, you know, get in your car and run off a bridge but don't jump in front of somebody who has small Children and a great job, and you basically ruin their life.
24:40 I mean, you change their life forever.
24:43 They live with that guilt that they killed someone, even though, I mean, they had no idea that was going to happen that morning on their commute to work, right.
24:52 That somebody who was suicidal was going to jump out in front of their car.
24:56 It always makes me really sad to think about that.
25:00 That's something too.
25:01 I would love to talk to somebody who's been through that to see how it messes with your mind and how hard it is to deal with the fact that you killed somebody, and it wasn't your fault, but you still have to live with it.
25:17 On that note.
25:18 I mean, a couple of different topics this week, I like to share with you all kinds of what's happening at work as far as what kind of cases that we're dealing with.
25:26 Because, I mean, that's real life.
25:28 That's what we do every day.
25:30 I hope that you find that interesting and then just throw this case of these boys in there.
25:37 I just wish I'm assuming the parents are like in their seventies now, they've spent all these years rallying to try and find out who killed their Children, and they'll never know.
25:49 I mean, again, nine times out of 10, the perpetrator is deceased and many, if not, most of the witnesses are deceased anyway, I hate that I am headed to work again this morning.
26:03 Hopefully everybody behaves.
26:07 The only death I had yesterday was again, suicide, gunshot wound to the head.
26:13 It seems like many times we'll have the same kind of death in a row.
26:17 You know, like us individually there for a while.
26:20 It was all car accidents and then it was, you know, all natural deaths which, you know, I like those when they're an elderly person and they lived a great life, and they die of natural causes in their sleep.
26:33 Like that's how we all want to go.
26:34 Right?
26:34 I mean, that would just be ideal, still hard for the family but easier to know that someone didn't struggle or suffer.
26:44 And that's usually the first thing family members ask me.
26:47 And that was the first thing I was asked yesterday when I was on the suicide is, did he suffer?
26:52 I never, as a death investigator, I never want to say.
26:55 Well, yeah, absolutely.
26:57 I mean, it hurt, and he was, they're struggling to breathe for minutes, that probably seem like hours.
27:04 I'm not going to say that.
27:05 I mean, even if I think that, you know, that's just inhumane to tell a family member that that was a possibility.
27:13 If you ask me, I'm going to say it was quick, but nine times out of 10, it is.
27:19 I mean, most of the time I'm not lying nine times out of 10, it is quick, especially in gunshot wounds to the head.
27:26 I mean, obviously it's going to be fast.
27:29 You know, we're able to tell if there is a struggle or a lot of movement afterwards.
27:34 And most of the time there is not, I hope y'all have an amazing week.
27:39 This is my Friday at the medical examiner's office.
27:42 I will be at the med spa after today.
27:45 Hopefully everyone behaves, and I think that maybe the weather has finally gotten a little bit better for all of us.
27:54 Hopefully we haven't had any tornadoes recently and I know my hometown of Valley View is still struggling to put it all back together and many donations, it's so grateful because it could happen to any of us at any time.
28:10 And it's just kind of scary to think about us being at the mercy of the weather.
28:14 I hope you all have an amazing week and I look forward to talking to you next week.
28:18 Bye.
28:20 Thank you so much for joining me today on pushing up Lily's.
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28:35 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.