Death and the Beauty Queen

The murder of Nona Dirksmeyer was a dreadful shock to the town of Russellville, Arkansas.

A sweet, shy beauty queen, with a nightingale voice and a heart as big as the whole town wasn’t supposed to die.  And certainly not this way.

And so the question of who had done this or why.

There was an assumed an immediate urgency as the assistant prosecutor, Jeff Phillips, said.

Jeff Phillips: I think whoever did was a monster and I think the defense would agree with me on that.

Dreadful though it was, the case was assigned to a detective who had never before conducted a murder investigation: Mark Frost.

And Frost was confronted by a few problems. For one thing, of course, Kevin Jones, Nona’s boyfriend - had seriously compromised the evidence by lying on, hugging and holding her body. 

And it didn’t help matters when a slew of paramedics and cops descended on the scene, touching and moving potential evidence.

The condom wrapper found a few feet away from the body... is that where a killer put it?  And Nona’s cell phone..the battery was missing, and somebody—a cop, maybe?  Or a paramedic? -Had picked it up and put it on a table.

Still, over the course of a week, police believed, the crime and the criminal came fully into view.

It was Kevin.  He’d created an elaborate cover-up by using his mother and friend to help find the body.

He’d left that condom wrapper as a ruse to make it look like a stranger raped and killed Nona.

When all along, it was him; a boyfriend’s rage.

Kevin, police told Carol, had discovered Nona’s betrayal.  That she had been intimate with another man.

Carol Dirksmeyer: And I guess he just let his rage get away with him and he couldn’t control himself and it’s still hard to understand something like that.. 

Even through her shock about that news, she remembers what they told her about the boy who would have been her son-in-law.

Carol Dirksmeyer: The first thing that I was told was that he was a sociopath with a narcissistic personality.

And so, at the funeral, carol was watching Kevin with new eyes.

Carol Dirksmeyer:  I knew he’d done it. I knew in my heart it was someone  she knew. She would never let anyone in the apartment that she didn’t know.

The same day,  then Police Chief James Bacon had a press conference.  We have conclusively cleared all but one of these people.

The police did not name the suspect, but before long almost everyone in Russellville knew who it was.

Kevin, the boy from Dover, that town down the road.

There was suspicion, but no arrest.

Morrison: You’ve been a bear in defense of your family,

Duke Dirksmeyer: I will continue to be a bear in defense.

By that time, Duke Dirksmeyer, the patriarch of what had been Carol and Nona’s family, arrived from Texas to offer his support.

Duke Dirksmeyer: It’s my obligation. 

And pretty soon, Duke saw something that seemed to him very wrong indeed.

When he drove past the most popular restaurant in Dover, the Bayou Bridge Care…

Duke Dirksmeyer:  There’s a reader-board sign out.  “Kevin, we support and we love you.”  Well, Nona ate there.  Nona went there.  Why wasn’t it put on the reader-board, “Nona and Kevin, we love you, we support you?”

Then, when Kevin’s mother went to  Russellville, she was startled by  bumper stickers:  ‘Justice for Nona.’ 

Janice Jones: The assumption that I formed and I think many people formed was that “Justice for Nona” meant—

Morrison: Convict Kevin.

Janice Jones: --convict Kevin.

And before long, gossip and speculation starting flying around on the Internet. Vicious stuff, a lot of it.

In the tiny community of Dover, where Kevin’s family was known and liked, stories in the local weekly newspaper seemed balanced, at least to Kevin’s family...

Nona’s stepfather Duane Dipert did not take the same view, at all.

Duane Dipert: The Dover Times is a rag. We use toilet paper here instead of the Dover Times.

And thus began a newspaper war in small town Arkansas, though it was really no contest...

The Courier didn’t name Kevin Jones as a suspect, but published an overwhelming number of stories on the investigation and in Russellville. It was quite clear who the prime suspect was.

Duke Dirksmeyer: The Russellville press has been phenomenal. Very straight, very forward.  And unbiased and extremely fair.

Except, of course, in the eyes of a shrinking minority, led by Kevin’s parents  who believed he was innocent of Nona’s murder.

Hiram Jones: They tried, convicted, and sentenced Kevin within 90 days of its happening.  And if you was a stranger walkin’ in a coffee shop, visiting  Russellville and you read that, what would you think?

This is what appeared in the Russellville Courier 3 months after Nona’s murder: ”Nona’s killer remains free.”  And “Russellville police department  has requested formal charges against one person.”

And everyone knew who that was.

On March 31, 2006, police  finally did announce the arrest of  Kevin Jones for the murder of Nona Dirksmeyer.

Whether or not Kevin was convicted in the press was now, apparently, irrelevant.

Because the evidence made public included what seemed to amount to a smoking gun:  Kevin’s palm print in Nona’s blood was on the very lamp that was used to kill her. And as the family patriarch, Duke Dirksmeyer, watched it go to trial, he  too felt satisfied that it was a good case.

Duke Dirksmeyer: I felt it was a slam dunk. We had a guilty verdict.

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