CLEBURNE COUNTY, Ark. – This week marks six years since a platinum-selling recording artist was found dead outside a home near Heber Springs.
On February 17, 2013 authorities found Mindy McCready dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was lying on a front porch outside a home in Eden Isle.
The outdoor furniture that sits outsdie the home today looks eerily similar to the furniture shown in crime scene photos.
“Around here, it doesn’t get brought up very much,” Chris Brown says.
Brown is currently the sheriff in Cleburne county, but back in 2013, he was a detective.
He was one of the first to find McCready on the day of her death.
“Mindy was a very sweet person,” Brown says.
“She had demons like everybody else does, but she was a sweet lady.”
Exactly one month prior to McCready’s death, her boyfriend, David Wilson was found dead on the same front porch. He had also been shot. The sheriff believes it was likely self-inflicted, but investigators never ruled it that way. His case remains open but inactive, according to Brown.
McCready’s country music career peaked in the 1990s. Several of her songs found success on the Billboard charts.
Later in life, McCready’s celebrity became more synonmous with reports of drug abuse and child custody battles.
Brown says the sheriff’s office was called out to the Eden Isle home where she lived about six months prior to her death. She was reportedly keeping her children there amid a child custody battle.
You never know what someone else is going through,” Brown says.
“Sometimes it takes a turn for the worse.”