AR AR - Timothy Stone, 17, Chidester, 23 Sept 2003

My son 17 year old Timothy Stone was murdered on September 23rd 2003 in Chidester, AR while traveling on Hwy 57. We were notified by Sheriff Paul Lucas that this was a one vehicle accident. Due to several inconsistencies my mother Betty Isom, Step-father Marvin and I hand delivered our written statements that clearly voiced our concerns that this was far more than a one vehicle accident.

After not seeing any efforts by the police, we were forced to hire TOWNSEND INVESTIGATIONS to see justice done. After several months of investigations it is much clearer what happened that night. There was definitely foul play.

We have identified the main suspect. He knows that he is the suspect and he knows we are gathering evidence against him. This suspect has a history of crime, theft and gun theft, and drug abuse.


Timothy was threatened by two young men several times in the days leading up to his death.


Before Tim was murdered, Marvin and Tim asked a Ouachita County Juvenile Probation Office, how to go about getting a restraining order on these boys.


The incident reports states that the car rolled several times. The roof, trunk and hood are completely clean and were not touched.


After calling the Sheriff’s office several times and they said they did not know where the car was and in no way offered to assist my father in finding the vehicle.

We were not able to find out where the car was until September 30th, 2003. This is a full seven days after the accident. By this time the towing company explained they had to charge a whopping 700.00 plus $15 per day storage to get the car back.

We could not understand why we could not find the vehicle for so many days and now couldn’t get the vehicle because the bill was more than we could afford. My parents have lived in Chidester, AR for a very long time.

This is a very small town and it was well known that Timothy was their grandson and the car was his car. The sheriff’s office could have given my parents the choice to have the car towed a couple of miles down the road rather than to Camden to rack up a large tow and storage bill.


There was a suspicious BLACK mark on the passenger side rear bumper. The sheriff’s office dismissed this as GLUE that holds the metal molding on or that Tim had backed into something. My father had waxed that car a couple of days before and it was not there. Tim had not driven the car since until that night.


During an interview with a Ouachita County official, Tim’s mother (Renata Balleza) and Investigator Susan Townsend, the official said that Timothy Stone was a big druggie and homosexual and that as far as he knows this was a one vehicle accident and the case was closed.

He says he saw things at the scene but said they were immaterial. For example, he said he saw pieces of Tim’s clothing in the glass of the car. When Inv. Townsend asked why that wasn’t in any report he said it was immaterial and he wouldn’t have put it in his report.

He also said that he had knowledge of one of the suspects taking items from the accident scene. When asked by Inv. Townsend he said that (used the name of the suspect) told him but added that was immaterial to him. The official said he took photos at the scene and opened his desk drawer, looked through some photos and said they weren’t there.

These photos, as of December 2004, STILL have NOT been located. UPDATE! These photos were located by ASP Inv. Duran in late 2005.


A former Ouachita Co. Investigator and present Deputy Coroner who was at the scene the night of Tim’s death said that he is constantly bothered by the fact that Timothy’s severe head injuries and the position of his body that night DID NOT coincide with an accident and was more like a homicide and voiced this to the Investigating Officer. He knew Tim and said that Tim told him (less than 10 days before he was killed) that the suspects were out to do him harm.


We have already spent over $18000 on Investigations and hired an attorney to help us attain justice but we are still lacking funding to complete the investigation. Hopefully, State LE will do something since they now have all of my investigators' months of work.

*As of June 22, 2006, the killer is still at large, and no one has been arrested.

My goal is to build a Ranch a “Safe Home” for teens to come for free. This will be a totally NON-PROFIT CENTER for them. We hope to purchase a small tract of land with animals (horses, dogs, and other farm animals) that are unwanted or mistreated.

Each teen will be able to “adopt” his or her animal and care for it. The ranch will provide the monetary needs and the teen will provide the love and care.

We have volunteers and are seeking more that have experience in counseling and working with teens. I intend to volunteer the rest of my life to try to help those kids so that no mother has to get that dreadful call at night that her son/daughter is dead. Timothy would want this and God is calling on me.

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This Article Published 12. 30. 04

Death in Arkansas

Kathryn A. Graham

I think every reader would agree that death is never a good thing. However, dying in Arkansas can be particularly awful, especially if foul play is suspected in your manner of death.

Take the case of young Timothy Stone, a 17-year-old boy killed a little over a year ago in an incident which was officially reported to be a one-car accident. Death by misadventure … or was it?

Young Timothy was no stranger to trouble. He lived with his grandfather in Ouachita County. Over the years, he had fallen into a circle of less than desirable friends, and he had become involved in a few things that most parents would want their children to avoid.

The real tragedy is that Timothy was finally trying to change all that.

Some time before his death, Timothy became aware that some of his erstwhile friends had been involved in a home invasion robbery involving the theft of several firearms. He did what any parent would want him to do - he told his grandfather about it. His grandfather set the boys up to prove it and asked the Sheriff to arrest them.

Instead, based on the statements of the boys who were themselves about to be arrested, the nearby Nevada County sheriff arrested Timothy.

When Timothy got out of jail, in early September of 2003, he received a number of actual death threats from the boys involved in the theft, as they believed he had asked for their arrest. Timothy's grandfather visited his probation officer with him to report these threats, so they are officially on record. As one of the boys involved was just old enough to be considered an adult, the grandfather was advised to report this to the Sheriff.

During the days leading up to his death, Timothy confided to several family members and friends that he was frightened of these boys.

September 23, 2003, was the last day of Timothy Stone's life. He spent most of the afternoon helping his grandfather with yard work, then made and received several phone calls. Timothy had been forbidden to drive the new car his grandfather had purchased for him as a reward for turning his life around, as he had no insurance, but his grandmother granted permission for him to run a quick errand to a friend's house. Timothy was supposed to return within fifteen minutes, but that was the last time we know for sure that anyone saw him alive.

At 9:40 that night, a call came in concerning a fatal single-car accident on Hwy. 57. Timothy's short life was over, but this is where the strangeness really begins.

On the next day, one of the boys responsible for the earlier threats, turned up with stereo equipment removed from the car Timothy was driving after the accident. The man who told Timothy's mother and grandfather that this lad had the stereo equipment turned up dead under unknown circumstances only a few days afterward.

There are only three large wrecker services in the county that might be called to remove Timothy's grandfather's car from the scene of the accident. One of them was called by the Sheriff. When Timothy's grandfather asked the Sheriff's Dept. where he could retrieve his vehicle, he was told that they "had no idea." By the time he located it - which he had to do by actually snooping around, as the car was stored well out of plain sight - a week had gone by, racking up a total bill of well over $1000. The car was about to be demolished, and the private investigator hired to look into Timothy's death, Susan Townsend, had to buy the car back out of her own pocket to prevent its demolition. At that point in time, there were two black marks on the vehicle consistent with an unpainted bumper. Timothy's grandfather flaked a tiny bit of one mark off with a pen knife and tasted it. He later stated that it tasted like rubber.

A few hours later, both marks were completely gone, showing only scraping by some sharp instrument.

Official accident reports show two different locations for this accident, separated by two miles!

The official accident report diagram also indicates that the car flipped three times and wound up resting on the vehicle's top. There was no damage of any kind to the top, hood, or trunk of the vehicle, not even scratches.

Timothy's body was found outside the vehicle, 48.7 feet in front and to the left of it, but the only broken window was the back window of the vehicle. That would seem strange to anyone.

The deputy coroner stated that the position of the body as found did not appear to be consistent with being thrown from the vehicle. He also stated that the crushing of Timothy's skull was consistent with "blows from a shovel." When said deputy coroner also suggested that an autopsy should be performed, the request was curtly refused with the feeble excuse that Arkansas could not pay for it. When Timothy's mother went so far as to offer to pay for the autopsy out of her own pocket, her request was also refused.

Since Timothy's death, a number of individuals, some of them very credible, have come forward to state that one of the boys known to have threatened Timothy before his death has since repeatedly bragged about beating Timothy to death with a shovel and getting clean away with it. To date, although this boy has been questioned and repeatedly failed a polygraph test in regard to Timothy's death, no arrest warrants have been issued. Meanwhile, at least one witness's home has experienced a break in, and shots have been fired at the home of Timothy's grandfather while Timothy's mother was visiting.

FOIA requests for the case file concerning this accident have turned up only one fact. The entire file is missing.

Finally, when the Sheriff was advised that there were additional witnesses, all he seemed willing to do was threaten to arrest the witnesses as accessories.

Does anyone besides me smell rotting fish here?

I have been a private investigator myself for several years, and one of the first things my mentor in this business taught me was to take nothing for granted. I may believe with all my heart that Timothy Stone was murdered, but I cannot prove it, and I may even turn out to be wrong. However, there is no question of any kind in my mind that a proper investigation into this boy's death should have been done immediately by the appropriate law enforcement agencies - and it was not done by either the Sheriff's office or the Arkansas State Police.

Why was such an investigation not done? I can think of several possible reasons:

• Timothy was not well liked by local law enforcement because of his legal history. This is a small community, and small communities have their prejudices.

• Timothy had some amount of alcohol in his system, which he did. Different metabolisms, however, handle alcohol differently. There is no certainty that he was severely impaired, or even if he was, that this was the cause of the accident.

• Sheer, criminal laziness. Homicide investigations are messy, expensive and time consuming.

• Vague rumors are rife of a flourishing trade in the manufacture and sale of meth-amphetamines in this county. The real truth might involve some occurrence that we know nothing about.

• Unbelievable incompetence on the part of commissioned officers of the law.

• One boy likely to have been an accessory to this murder, if murder it was (the one who had possession of the equipment out of Tim’s car), is the grandson of a former game and fish officer who is probably quite a good friend of the Sheriff.

I can't be certain, of course, but my money is on the last choice.

The family's next options are limited. Horrible though it may be for the family, there is only one remaining crime scene where evidence can be gathered - Timothy Stone's own body. Timothy's family members are raising money now for a private exhumation and autopsy of his remains. His mother is also founding a ranch for working with troubled youth in this part of Arkansas, in the hope that she may one day be able to help save someone else's son. If you would like to volunteer money or time toward these efforts, please visit http://www.timothystonefamily.com.

Let us hope that some answers may still be found that will bring Timothy's bereaved family some measure of peace and closure.

At the same time, let's also hope that Arkansas voters will find themselves just a bit motivated to clean house. Voters anywhere only have themselves to blame when they continue to vote for lazy and corrupt public officials, election after election.

Copyright 2004 The Sierra Times

To see this article click on the following link:



http://www.sierratimes.com/04/12/30/graham12302004.htm

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