TEXARKANA, Ark. (AP) - Jan. 28, 2006, was chilly, dreary and overcast with intermittent rain in De Queen, Ark. Then it became depressing and eerie, even for an Arkansas State Police investigator.
Three children_5-year-old twins Samantha Morales Mendez and Samuel Morales Mendez and Elvis Morales Mendez, 7_had been poisoned and smothered by their mother, Paula Mendez.
“The house was eerie,” ASP Special Agent Hays McWhirter told the Texarkana Gazette (https://bit.ly/1UF8YRM ). He is retiring March 31.
Officers found the bodies of the three children lying side by side on a queen-size bed in the master bedroom near the rear of the wood-frame house.
“All the kids were in one bed, fully clothed with their arms crossed. It was an eerie feeling while working the crime scene,” McWhirter said.
“You just kept thinking the kids would wake up and ask what are we doing in the bedroom. We knew they were dead, but we had this feeling they would start talking,” he said.
Within 24 hours, it was a global story.
Media outlets_including CNN, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The Associated Press, Fox News Network and television affiliates from CBS, NBC and ABC_converged on De Queen, according to a Texarkana Gazette news story.
Within five days the story of the tragic deaths had been published and broadcast in India, Singapore and throughout the United States.
Paula Mendez confessed and is serving a life sentence in prison. The motive was retaliation against her husband.
The murder of the three children is just one of the 167 death cases McWhirter has helped investigate. The special agent will retire after 43 years and 4 months with the ASP. He has been a dispatcher and a state trooper, and has served as a criminal investigator since Oct. 28, 1985.
McWhirter has a few unsolved mysteries, such as the headless body found in the Sulphur River in Miller County.
It was suspected the man was killed in Mena and his family had reported him missing.
The man’s body had been carved up.
“He was found in the river without a head, no fingers, no toes and the tattoos had been cut off. Rumors were he was dumped in the river and the alligators would eat him up,” McWhirter said.
The man was identified when the family mentioned he had a broken bone. An X-ray confirmed the fracture. No one was ever arrested in the case.
Another grim murder was solved within six hours near Horatio, Ark., with the help of Sevier County Sheriff’s Department and the De Queen police.
Wendy Zapata Hernandez, 19, of De Queen was kidnapped from a store where she was working in Horatio in 2011 and had her throat cut in a car near Horatio. She bled so profusely the cupholders near the front console were full of blood.
Hernandez had opened the Horatio store about 9 a.m. Sept. 15, 2011. Surveillance video shows the man attacking Hernandez and cutting her shoulders.
McWhirter said Cody Shane Griffin of Sevier County forced the woman to drive her 1999 Ford Mustang to a cemetery on Piney Road, where Griffin allegedly cut the woman’s throat while in the front seat.
About 1:40 p.m. Sept. 15, then Sevier County Deputy Chuck Emmerich spotted Griffin walking in the Beacon Hill community wearing only boxer shorts and arrested him.
Her car was found near the cemetery, hidden in a brush thicket and concealed from the nearest road.
Court documents state Griffin got on top of the woman in the car and cut her neck with a knife. Griffin said the woman started gasping for air, and he stabbed her to keep her from suffering.
The keys had been hidden in the exhaust pipe, McWhirter said.
“He told us where to find the keys. When we opened the trunk. She looked so small,” McWhirter said.
Griffin is also serving a life sentence.
In 2011, McWhirter assisted Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia with a theft investigation involving several horses.
After following leads, three people were arrested including a mother and daughter who were convicted of theft of property. Some of the horses were recovered; one horse was killed by the suspect.
Besides stress and absurdity, investigative work can also have humor and irony.
McWhirter was on assignment in Northwest Arkansas with John Bishop and the ASP SWAT team watching a paramilitary survivalist compound.
The officers were told to report if anyone was leaving the compound. A state police airplane would circle out of sight and tell officers on the ground whether any movement occurred and if it appeared anyone was leaving the compound.
The officers couldn’t use flashlights to avoid the risk of being spotted, and Bishop lay down on a snake. He grabbed it and threw it toward McWhirter. The men never found the snake, but expected it to crawl on them during the night.
“I cussed him for the rest of the night for throwing the snake,” McWhirter said.
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Information from: Texarkana Gazette, https://www.texarkanagazette.com
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