On Thanksgiving Day in 1986, a couple deer hunting in a remote area adjacent to the Pope-Newton County line stumbled upon what they thought were skeletal remains spread across the forest floor beneath the canopy of intense fall foliage.
Almost immediately, local law enforcement officials thought the remains, which were located at the end of a dead end road near the Brock Cemetery in the PIney community, might be that of three young girls who went missing from the Fairview Estates neighborhood in Russellville on December 2, 1976.
Those hunches proved to be right, at least in two of the three disappearances. But no trace was found of the body of the third missing child and while the same man responsible for the killing of the two that were discovered admitted to killing the third, her body has never been found.
On that fateful day in 1976, Cynthia Renee Maybry, 12, Teresa Williams, 13, and Crystal Donita Parton, 14, went missing from the same general area of Russellville and at first, authorities assumed the girls were all runaways, but none of them ever returned home. Officials now think that all three were killed on the following day, December 3.
Teresa and Crystal's remains were found ten years later at the location in the Piney Community in northern Pope County and an autopsy at the Arkansas State Crime Lab proved they had both been stabbed in the neck. In October 1998, a woodcutter named James B. Grinder was charged with murder in Teresa, Crystal and Cynthia's deaths. He was already serving a prison sentence in Missouri for burglary at the time, and earlier that year, he had been charged with the 1984 rape and murder of Julie Helton, a 25-year-old Missouri woman. Grinder admitted he knew the Russellville girls and initially said he had only given them a ride from Russellville to Pottsville, Arkansas the day they disappeared. He said he gave them $20 and left them on the interstate.
Grinder later admitted to the murders. He said he'd picked up the three girls on the outskirts of Russellville, drove them to Morrilton, Arkansas, bought them alcohol and then took them to the Brock Cemetery, where he raped Crystal and Teresa, strangled and stabbed them to death and covered their bodies with brush.
Afterwards he took Cynthia to another location in Ozark National Forest, raped her, beat her to death, and left her body there without trying to hide it. Grinder was charged with only a single count of capital murder because the crime in Arkansas in 1976 was defined as the premeditated killing of two or more people. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
He later asked for his sentenced to be reduced, claiming he was forced to confess to his crimes and other, unnamed individuals had been involved in the murders, but his petition for clemency was denied. Cynthia's body has never been located. According to social media posts by a woman who claims to be the sister of Cynthia Mabry, the three girls, among others, had all planned to runaway together and Grinder was supposed to "take them to Texas".
The sister posted that the only she didn't go today was that she had been a previous runaway and local authorities had told her she would be put in jail if she ran away again.
Also, comments by a woman claiming to be the daughter of Grinder said she had been given information that Cynthia's body might be in the area known as Scottsville, an unincorporated community in Liberty Township in Pope County,
Grinder died in prison in late 2010, or early 2011 according to sources.
