Olivia Jane "Janie" Ward of Marshall died Sept. 9, 1989, during a teen party at a cabin in the woods outside that small Ozark's town.
I began writing about the 16-year-old's violent death in 2004 and continued over four years and some 200 columns that described alarming omissions, alterations, inadequacies and falsehoods surrounding her death.
Readers familiar with the circumstances of Janie's fatal broken neck suffered after supposedly stumbling off a 9-inch-tall rock patio into the front yard learned the relevant details as I discovered them.
This week, more than a decade after this disgraceful case was examined by a special prosecutor who spent four years leading full circle back to undetermined cause and manner of death, a national real-time podcast with iHeart Radio called Hell and Gone, which delves into unsolved cold cases, launches its series about Janie's death Wednesday.
Host, writer and bulldog private investigator Catherine Townsend, with family ties in Mountain View, has dug deeply into the disturbing case.
Being officially labeled as closed allowed Townsend to access Janie's files and understand the nuances of the police investigation, the controversy at the Arkansas State Crime Lab and the rumors of cover-up and corruption.
"We've been working on Janie's case for around six months, talked to a lot of people and pored over 7,000 pages of the police case file," Townsend told me. "We have also been diving into audio tapes and hundreds of pages of research left behind by Janie's late father, Ron Ward."
Former U.S. Marine Ron died of natural causes in 2018 after dedicating the years since 1989 to seeking justice for his daughter. The family had ample cause to believe Janie had been violently killed at the party on Zack Ridge several miles out of town.
Hell and Gone will feature eight fact-driven podcast episodes each Wednesday. Townsend's initial podcast investigation in 2018 had involved the September 2004 murder of 22-year-old college student Rebekah Gould of Melbourne, whose unresolved case remains open.
"One way Hell and Gone is different is no one has been arrested or charged with the crimes we cover when we begin investigating," said Townsend, who lives in New York.
"In a very real sense, we are covering the stories in real time, as we release each consecutive episode even while new information is still coming to us. Last season, after the program's initial podcast aired about Gould's case--cold almost 15 years--we were able to interview witnesses no one had spoken to and uncover information now made part of the police file. In Rebekah's case, several new people came forward with crucial information."
That's one way Townsend's widely popular podcast (over a million downloads worldwide, she says) is unique. "Every week, listeners are invited to join our investigative team in tracking down suspects and trying to help achieve justice.
"I want to talk to everyone who was at the party on Sept. 9, 1989--and anyone who was in town that night, saw something, or who may have information about Janie's death," said Townsend. "Please contact me anytime at [email protected] or (213) 453-2165. Contacts can remain anonymous. My goal is to gather as much information as possible. No piece of accurate information is too small. The smallest details can end up breaking the case wide open."
Each free podcast installment will be available to listeners at their leisure by visiting hellandgonepodcast.com, then clicking on the latest podcast icon. It's also available on iTunes.
Asked her feeling about Janie's case that received national media attention between 2004 and 2008, Townsend said: "Primarily I feel very sad and disgusted by how the family was treated by many people in authority whom they trusted to help them. I think that if they had had the impression [authorities] cared in the beginning, the outcome could have been very different. I believe that Janie--and the Ward family--were failed on multiple levels, which is heartbreaking."
Well stated. Yet it was always clear to the Wards and me that even a reasonable level of caring was not the case, as best evidenced by the actions of those responsible for seeking justice.
By the time Janie's body had undergone two exhumations and three autopsies, several things were apparent. First, the Wards believed Janie had been killed at the hands of another student and fellow classmates had been too frightened and intimidated to discuss it.
Also it appeared the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory back then had altered the side-view X-ray a former lab director initially had shown them in Little Rock. That film clearly revealed a separation in Janie's upper neck. But the crude version of the film Ron received weeks later from the lab's director wasn't what they had seen initially, had Janie's neck whited out, and was missing the lab's official evidence seal.
Ron went to a premature natural death convinced of a wide-ranging cover-up to protect the person who took Janie's life. Townsend's podcast in 2019 validates poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant's adage: "Truth crushed to Earth shall rise again."
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Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 07/23/2019