The investigation into the 1989 death of teenage girl who reportedly fell from a 9-inch-high porch should be made open and resolved to comfort her family, Gov. Mike Beebe said Monday.
Beebe, appearing Monday night on the Arkansas Educational Television Network's "Arkansans Ask" program, acknowledged his own curiosity in the ongoing investigation of how Olivia "Janie" Ward died. He said he's asked officials to keep him informed about the case, only months after officials exhumed her body to conduct an extraordinary third autopsy.
"Everybody feels confident about the justice system, but only if you just lay everything out," Beebe said. "Just open the file. Just show everybody what it is. Hopefully, it will be forthcoming."
The third autopsy of Janie's body included CT scans and a several-hour examination by out-of-state medical examiners and a forensic anthropologist. Special Prosecutor Tim Williamson, assigned to the case after the Ward family exhumed the body for a second autopsy in 2004, has remained tightlipped on what investigators found. However, he has said the case will be "ultimately presented to a grand jury."
On Sept. 9, 1989, sheriff's deputies found Janie's body in the back of a pickup truck in Marshall, a small town in the hills of the Ozark Mountains. Investigators later said Janie fell backward off a rural cabin's 9-inch-high porch while attending a party.
The original 1989 autopsy by Dr. Fahmy Malak, the state's chief medical examiner, concludes that Janie died from hitting the back of her head in a fall, an injury that should have snapped Janie's neck forward. But by 1991, Malak had quit over allegations that he botched autopsies.
Dr. Harry Bonnell, an independent medical examiner, examined Janie's body after a 2004 exhumation. He said a tremendous force snapped Janie's head backward - as if she'd been hit from the front.
Beebe's predecessor, then-Gov. Mike Huckabee, gave $10,000 to help with the investigation. Monday, Beebe said the case "really needs to come to a conclusion, whatever the facts are."
"The family deserves for it to be resolved, one way or another," Beebe said.