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Steven L. Manson appeared in Marion County District Court on June 1 to answer environmental charges over the condition of his Yellville property, but the case was continued to Aug. 3 after no attorney entered an appearance on his behalf.
District Judge Jodi Carney granted the continuance and warned Manson that his attorney, Eugene Clifford, must enter an appearance and be present on the new trial date. Carney told Manson there would be a problem if Clifford did not show.
Manson told the court Clifford was tied up in another trial and could not appear. He also said he had to complete a mental health evaluation before he could proceed in a separate criminal case.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Russo did not object to the continuance. Russo said Clifford had told him he represented Manson but had not yet filed paperwork in the case. Carney excluded the delay from Manson’s speedy trial calculation.
The citation
Chuck Seaton, director of the Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District, issued the citation May 4. It charges Manson under A.C.A. 8-6-2005 with illegal dumping of solid waste, creating or furthering an illegal dump site, and illegal disposal from household activities that create a nuisance, pose a health hazard, or involve open dumping of garbage.
The Marion County prosecutor’s office later added more charges, including unlawful burning. The charges read in court covered illegal dumping, household disposal creating a public nuisance, open dumping of garbage, and unlawful burning.
The property sits at 761 Marion County Road 8054, the same Yellville address at the center of the family’s criminal cases.
Director says property is the worst he has seen
Seaton said he first visited the property in March 2025. The family told him they had inherited the land, that squatters had lived there, and that they were working to clean it up. He said the place was bad even then.
Seaton said he gave the family time, as he does with others, because he does not want to fine people who are trying to fix a problem. He asked them to send disposal receipts from permitted facilities, as the law requires. The family sent receipts within days, and Seaton said he eased off his checks because he believed they were making progress.
He was later called back out to the property. When he returned, Seaton said, the site had grown into an absolute disaster.
He described more than a thousand chickens running loose, birds in the road, trash across the land, and burning that was still smoldering when he arrived. “The worst I’ve ever seen,” Seaton said.
Seaton said the conditions and the lack of progress left him no choice but to write the citation. The family hauled off a load of scrap and sent one more receipt afterward, he said, but the cleanup stalled.
Seaton said the family has since placed dogs at both entrances, blocking his access to the site. He said they no longer come out to meet him. “I’m an adversary at this point,” he said.
What the Observer found
The Observer visited the property on County Road 8054 on March 23, as the criminal cases against the family were breaking. The one-bedroom house sat at the center of what could only be described as a compound of filth.
An estimated 500 to 700 chickens were scattered across the land the day of the visit. The birds had spilled onto neighboring property and into the road. Truckloads had been hauled in over the preceding days by Steven L. Manson, 56, and Dezarae Manson, 19, both co-defendants who were out on bond at the time.
Dogs were chained around the edges of the property. Neighbors said the family had at times kept more than 40 dogs there, many of them allegedly stolen from people who live nearby.
Dead animals were displayed on structures around the property, including pigs placed on stakes. The Observer photographed the displays. Vehicles were parked in the road, partly blocking access.
The ground was covered in debris and animal waste. There was no grass. The stench was overwhelming.
The cases behind the spotlight
The Manson family has drawn months of Observer coverage since a string of criminal cases surfaced in Marion County. Steven M. Manson Jr., 35, the primary defendant, is a registered Level II sex offender who was convicted in Illinois of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and is barred from owning firearms.
Manson Jr. was first charged in December 2025 with raping a child at the County Road 8054 home. The child was forensically interviewed at Grandma’s House, a child advocacy center in Mountain Home, according to court records.
He was also charged with kidnapping, terroristic threatening, and possession of a firearm by a felon after he allegedly threatened the child and an adult woman with a shotgun in early December. Deputies seized the firearm during a search of the home. His bonds in the two cases totaled $350,000.
Manson Jr. bonded out repeatedly as the charges grew. While out on bond and wearing a court-ordered ankle monitor, he was charged in March 2026 with the rape of a young woman.
Prosecutors charged Steven L. Manson Sr. and Dezarae Manson, 19, as co-defendants in that assault. Manson Sr. faces charges of disorderly conduct, conspiracy to commit rape, terroristic threatening, and coercion, with a habitual offender enhancement based on four or more prior felonies.
Manson Jr. also faces six counts of animal abuse and neglect in Greene County, Missouri, after an officer found about 130 animals in stacked cages on a trailer there in May 2025. He failed to appear in that case.
Where the cases stand
All three defendants pleaded not guilty at a March 31 arraignment in Marion County Circuit Court. All three are represented by Eugene Clifford of Zenith Law in Little Rock.
On May 6, Circuit Judge Andrew S. Bailey denied the state’s motion to try Manson Jr.’s rape case and his kidnapping and threatening case together. The ruling means the two will be tried separately.
Manson Jr. had been set for a pretrial hearing Sept. 15 and a jury trial Oct. 7 before Bailey, though the split of his cases could change that timeline. Manson Sr. and Dezarae Manson are scheduled for status hearings June 23.
Hours after Bailey denied the joinder motion, Manson Jr. was booked into the Carroll County jail at 5:55 p.m. May 6 on a hold for another agency. The booking record did not name the agency.
The mental health evaluation
Manson’s reference in district court to a mental health evaluation points to his criminal cases, which are separate from the dumping charges.
Court records show the state, not Manson’s defense, asked for the evaluation. Russo filed a motion May 1 in cases 45CR-25-82 and 45CR-26-14 seeking a mental health and dementia evaluation under A.C.A. 5-2-304. The request is unusual because prosecutors, rather than defense attorneys, rarely seek a competency exam of their own defendant.
The motion cited an Arkansas Department of Human Services letter dated Aug. 10, 2025, placing Manson at ARChoices Tier Two. A Tier Two finding can result from a dementia diagnosis requiring supervision, a high score on daily living activities, or a condition requiring daily medical monitoring. The letter did not say which applied.
Warnings the sheriff’s office had for months
The Observer’s reporting has shown that the Marion County Sheriff’s Office knew about conditions on County Road 8054 long before the first rape charge. Neighbors said they reported the family to law enforcement and the Arkansas Department of Human Services for about 18 months with little result.
Sheriff Gregg Alexander kept a handwritten log of 16 calls for service from one neighbor between November 2024 and June 2025. Four of those calls came on a single day in April 2025. Deputies logged stolen dogs, a hit-and-run, a reported near-assault, and pigs charging vehicles.
Deputies also documented signs that a child on the property was being mistreated, the Observer found. At one point, the agency pursued a trespass complaint against a neighbor who had been calling for help.
An Illinois resident who held a protection order against Manson Jr. warned the sheriff’s office about him in September 2025, more than a month before the first charges were filed.
“He will talk and talk and talk and talk and talk,” one neighbor said of Alexander. “And never say a damn thing.”
The same neighbor said the family’s animals repeatedly damaged surrounding properties. “Go through 600 pounds of feed. The sheriff came out. They didn’t even write a report,” she said.
Alexander and the prosecutor’s office have repeatedly declined to comment on the case.
The dumping case returns to Marion County District Court on Aug. 3.
