Kyle Kellams: Randy Dixon with the Pryor Center. We're going to talk about what we said last week that we'd hear this week.
Randy Dixon: So last week we did just a tame segment on Bozo.
Kellams: Before we go on, I will tell you that the ones we've done in 2026 — and we've done some serious things — I got more emails and texts about Bozo, both from people who grew up watching Bozo and people who didn't. That one really resonated with people.
Dixon: At the end of our conversation about Bozo last week, I was going to do a segment on OG heptachlor, and that was from 1986. I sort of teased that last week. But we had this one clip in the Bozo segment that I admittedly said I didn't know anything about. It was a news story. The only description I had said "Linda Schibli children arrive after kidnapping met by Bozo." We heard that last week. Let's play that again. Imagine a couple of hundred people at the airport. Two young children — one 4 and one 6 — get off a plane, and they're greeted by Bozo. We hear from the mother first.
[KATV, circa 1970:]
[Linda Shibley:] I was thrilled to death to see him. Of course, I was a little upset with the way they looked at first, but they picked up and they looked just great to me.
[Reporter:] Now, how does it feel to be back?
[Shibley:] You just don't know how it feels to be back. Didn't think this day would come. But with the help of the people in Arkansas and the senator and the investigator, we got them back where they belong.
[Reporter:] What are your plans now with the children?
[Shibley:] I don't know. I'm going to take a few days, I think, and just be alone with them for a while.
[Bozo:] How you doing, old buddy? Fine. Are you glad to be home? Yes. Well, good. How are you, Nofa? Fine. Say hi, Bozo. Hi, Bozo. Rub noses with old Bozo there. Sure glad to see you. Now you can watch old Bozo. OK. Hey. All right, darling, welcome home. And thanks for coming out to see old Bozo today. Say thank you, Bozo. You're sure welcome, darling. And shake hands with Bozo. Kenny. Atta boy. You want to shake hands with Bozo, too? Thank you, darling. I'll see you on TV. And welcome back to Arkansas. Thank you.
Dixon: I really wanted to know what the story was. I couldn't find news stories online anywhere under those names or under her name or kidnapping. It happened in 1970. So after I left from us doing the show, I was obsessed with finding out what this was. I went back to the office and found Linda Shibley, from Pine Bluff. Unfortunately, she passed away a couple of years ago. That was the mother. I did read in her obituary that she was preceded in death by a son, Kenneth, who could have been that little boy. But she was survived by a daughter, Dr. Nofa Shibley, of St. Louis. I found her and spoke to her about what happened, and it involved a domestic dispute. Her parents were divorced. This is kind of what she remembers. Of course, she was 4 years old. Her brother, who was older, has passed away. Her mother's passed away. So her recollections are from what she was told as a child.
[Dr. Nofa Shibley:] We were taken on Mother's Day. From what my mom told me, she went to Kentucky Fried Chicken to get a picnic lunch. And my father came and told my grandparents that he was picking us up, taking us to the park. And they didn't think anything about it. He picked us up and took us to the airport. And the rest is — I guess we went directly over to Libya where he was working.
Dixon: So he had passports already made for you?
[Shibley:] Yes. I assume you couldn't get out of the country without a passport. He somehow had passports made. He was definitely had been planning it. I'm not sure how long they had been divorced, and she had custody of us. So I think he was upset over that.
Kellams: So you spoke with Dr. Shibley this week?
Dixon: Yes. And the father, Saul Shibley, was Palestinian. He worked as an engineer, some of it in the Middle East. He had family there. So that's where they went. Linda Shibley was a Pine Bluff teacher, recently divorced. She went to work to find her children. Here's Nofa again.
[Shibley:] She had to go over there with the private investigator. I don't know how long it took them to find us. I think it took maybe a month, a couple of months to even track us down. And then they had to go back and forth to go through the legal system over there. And then they had to have some paperwork to allow the government to let us come back. It took about six months for everything to take place.
Kellams: You spoke with Nofa. But you also spoke with somebody else.
Dixon: She mentioned a private investigator. I found him. He's 89-year-old Fred Myers, who still has the same P.I. practice in Little Rock that he's had for 50 years. He's been a private investigator for half a century in central Arkansas. That's a story right there. We may do one with him because he has other cases like this. And he remembers in great detail the six-month-plus mission he took on to find the children and their father in the Middle East. He talks about one of the many trips he took over there — and he took the mother with him. And believe it or not, lightning struck.
[Fred Myers:] It was about 10 o'clock at night. We had flown in and rode into town. We were just looking for a room for the night, planning to go see the ambassador the next day. And we went in the hotel. Now, I had no idea in the world at this time where the children and the father might be. I just know that I had been told he had gotten a job from the Libyan government out of Benin and was working out of Benghazi. The hotel clerk says, "Why are you here?" And I had told the cab driver why I was there. And he said, "Do you have photos of the people you're looking for?" And I said yes. And I pulled photos of both Saul Shibley and the two children, ages 4 and 6, out of my pocket and handed them to the hotel clerk. And he was excited. He stood up and started pointing straight up with his arm and hand, and he said something in Arabic to the cab driver. The cab driver said, "He says they're in this hotel."
Dixon: So there's a major break in the case — and a lot of luck. Can you imagine? You check into a hotel in a town with half a million people and you find out the people you're looking for are in that same hotel.
[Myers:] I said, "Linda, you stay here with the cab driver and the desk clerk, and I'm going up to the room." I went up to the room and knocked on the door. He said from inside, "Who is it?" And I told him the truth. I said, "I'm Fred Myers. I'm from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I'm an investigator. I'm here to find the children. I've got criminal warrants for you. I've already been told that they will send you back to the states to be prosecuted when you're arrested. If you will give us the children, we'll take them and get on a plane, go back to Arkansas with the children. And I won't do anything with the Libyan police, if you will give us the children." And he said, "That's not going to happen. I'm going to keep the children here." And he said, "By morning, you may not be alive." He was trying to scare me off where I would take Linda and leave. And I told him, we aren't going to leave without the children. So we're going to be here and pursue it as diligently as we can, because we're not leaving unless we leave with the children.
Kellams: So the children have been located.
Dixon: But as you can tell, they didn't even get to see them. The father was talking through the door. They camped out. So they may have found the children, but their problems were just kind of beginning. There was international bureaucratic red tape they had to go through. It took several months of going through the Libyan courts to gain custody. Arkansas Sen. John McClellan at the time and his Washington office worked tirelessly to add pressure to the situation. And Myers was explaining he needed certain paperwork for the courts there, mainly from the U.S. Secretary of State.
[Myers:] I went to Libya and I stayed there three months, but I made two trips back to Arkansas and one to Washington. While I was there, I got Sen. McClellan involved. McClellan had already built a file on this case. He had a file of all the publicity that had been. And he knew who I was. One of the first things he said: "I've read all the file. So I know everything about you and the case. And I knew you were in Libya, and I knew you had found the children." And his influence: he sent cables once a week until I got the children. That's one of the things he did. He sent cables to the Libyan government telling them this was creating a major international incident between Libya and the United States. There were a total of five court hearings. The first four hearings, Linda was not allowed to testify. As you may know, women had few rights in Libya at that time. He required a letter from the U.S. attorney general's office to tell him that the court gave her full custody rights and there were no appeals left.
Kellams: I'm just imagining the effort and cost that Linda Shibley went through to get her children.
Dixon: That's true. And I've never really found out how she was able to do it as a teacher in Pine Bluff. The father apparently had some money and was traveling overseas with them. What I found interesting is I don't think the father was ever prosecuted. Through the courts, when they gained custody of the children and left, he stayed over there. From what I gather, for at least a decade. And I don't think he ever felt any of the repercussions over here stateside. He did eventually come back, though. And I asked Nofa if the relationship with her father ever recovered. Oh, by the way, I'm kind of burying the lead here — he told his kids that the mother was dead, and that's why he had them. Part of the shock was seeing her for the first time, thinking she had died.
[Shibley:] After we came back, my mother wouldn't let him have any contact with us until we were teenagers. And then we went to visit him. He had a place in London and a place in Dubai, and we visited him in both places. As I was growing up, we never had a good, close relationship. I saw him a couple of times in my teen years.
Dixon: So how would you describe your relationship with your father over the years after that?
[Shibley:] Just not close at all. Very strange. I probably only saw him — I wouldn't even think 10 times — from my teenage years to early 2000.
Dixon: Here's another interesting item. Fred Myers has written a book. It's called Fred Myers' Chronicles, Volume 1, and it's about this case with the children. He wrote up about 400 pages in a journal for his son, Andy, and they ended up hiring a writer and a publisher and got the one book done. But it was just too expensive to continue. I've ordered the book on Amazon. I did leave it with Andy and Fred Myers that I would call back and hear some of the other stories. They may be cases that were news stories covered by Channel 7. So stay tuned.
Kellams: Here's what I like about what you can say about Fred Myers' 50-year career: if he's been involved in high-profile cases and you didn't know his name, he's a good P.I.
Dixon: Yes, he is. He's staying behind the scenes. And what's wild — at 89, his mind. We talked for about an hour and he remembered every detail of that trip.
Kellams: All right. We're not going to make any promises about heptachlor or any other topic.
Dixon: No telling what I'll get obsessed over between now and next week.
Kellams: The rest of us just know we're going to enjoy hearing it. Hey, there's something coming up that you and I are involved in at the Pryor Center in April.
Dixon: Yes. That's correct. It's April 21 at the Pryor Center. We've posted all 25,000-plus hours of the KATV archives, and we're going to have a panel discussion moderated by me. You're one of the panelists. We'll also have Steve Barnes, Amy Oliver Barnes — who were co-anchors at KATV Channel 7 back in the mid to late '70s, early '80s — and Bob Steele, my former boss, reporter, sports reporter, anchor, news director, PR guy. He's done everything. We're going to be on a panel, show some examples of what's in the archives and talk about the history of it. Because from what I understand — and he'll be modest about it — it was all kind of Steve Barnes's idea to do this archive system. Of course, Jim Pitcock implemented it. Anyway, it's going to be an evening, 6 to 7, the 21st at the Pryor Center.
Kellams: Do you need to pre-register?
Dixon: No, just come on out.
Kellams: Plenty of parking around the square. All right. Next week, we'll be back with something else.
Dixon: I'm going to love it.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
