Nineteen-year-old Nona Dirksmeyer both sounded and looked exquisite. The college student had a beautiful soprano voice and a body that turned all the boys’ heads. She parlayed her talent and looks into competing in, and winning, several beauty pageants. The teen queen was only eleven days from turning twenty, but the disputed events of December 15, 2005, prevented that occurrence.

That evening, emergency workers responded to a frantic call for help at the Inglewood Apartment Complex in Russellville, Arkansas. Inside Apartment #12 they encountered a gruesome scene: on the floor lay the lifeless body of Pope County’s Beauty Queen. Nona had been stabbed and beaten to death.

Eighteen years after the bombshell’s brutal slaying, Nona Dirksmeyer’s case remains rife with aftershocks, marked by allegations of police incompetence, lawsuits, and three costly and emotionally draining trials resulting in no convictions.

Many fear there will be no justice for Nona.

Nona Dirksmeyer

After Nona Dirksmeyer graduated from Dover High School in 2004, she entered Arkansas Tech University in nearby Russellville, seventy-five miles northwest of Little Rock. She was a sophomore majoring in music education.

Nona had taken the crowns in several beauty pageants: Pope County Beauty Queen, Miss Teen Nebo, and Miss Petit Jean Valley for 2005. That same year, she had also competed in the Miss Arkansas Pageant.

Beauty Queen

Nona and Kevin Jones had been high school sweethearts. The two continued their relationship while students at Arkansas Tech and after Kevin transferred to the University of Arkansas, ninety miles away in Fayetteville, after his freshman year.

Kevin had returned to Russellville on the evening of December 15, 2005, and planned to spend time with his girl. He expected to hear from her after she completed a final exam, but several calls and texts to her went unanswered.

Nona and Kevin  

As he had plans to attend a party with his mother, Kevin asked his friend, pizza delivery driver Ryan Whiteside, to go to Nona’s off-campus apartment to check on her. Kevin expected Ryan to call him saying something to the effect that she had dozed off. But when Ryan did call, Kevin’s concern grew.

Ryan rang Nona’s doorbell but received no answer even though her car was in the parking lot and the lights were on in her apartment. En route to the party, Kevin and his mom, Janice, made a detour to the apartment. Upon arrival, Kevin knocked on the door with a sense of urgency. Nona again did not answer.

Kevin and Ryan went to the apartment’s back sliding glass door. As he peered in, Ryan saw Nona lying naked on the floor. The door was unlocked and the two men rushed inside.

Nona’s Apartment

Nona did not answer Kevin’s repeated cries. He attempted to give her CPR, but she did not respond. When paramedics arrived at the apartment, they too attempted to revive Nona, but their efforts were in vain as well. Nona Dirksmeyer was pronounced dead at the scene, having been stabbed and beaten to death.

Kevin described finding his slain girlfriend as a nightmare; for him, it was only the beginning.

Murdered

After the police were called and conducted their investigation of the crime scene, a distraught Kevin agreed to be questioned at the police station. After a couple hours, he was told he could leave.

Kevin Is Interrogated

In questioning Nona’s friends, police learned she had been casually seeing several other males since Kevin had left Russellville for Fayetteville.  All of the young men were questioned, their alibis were confirmed, and they were eliminated as suspects in Nona’s murder.

Other Boyfriends Cleared

Afterwards, the investigators’ focus returned to Kevin as they believed the crime scene looked staged. In addition, the medical examiner determined Nona had been stabbed and beaten repeatedly on her head, neck, and chest, all signs of a personal attack. Police were certain her murder was not random. When young women are murdered in such a manner, the perpetrator more often than not is the spouse or significant other.

Kevin agreed to take a polygraph test. According to one investigator, he failed worse than anyone to whom he had ever administered the test in his twenty years in law enforcement.

Three-and-a-half months later, on March 31, 2006, Kevin Jones was charged with the murder of his girlfriend.

Kevin Is Charged

The prosecution believed Kevin murdered Nona in a jealous rage. A used condom wrapper was found on the kitchen counter, but although Nona was found nude, she had not been raped.

Prosecutors contended that upon seeing the condom wrapper, an enraged Kevin grabbed a knife and began repeatedly stabbing Nona. In addition, his bloody palm print was found on the bulb of a lamp which the prosecution said he had used to crush his girlfriend’s skull. Kevin said he had not touched the lamp.

The Alleged Murder Weapon

Nona’s autopsy showed she had been killed several hours before her body was found. The prosecution contended that after murdering her, Kevin left the apartment and later made the phone calls and sent the text messages in an effort to appear concerned. He also waited until the evening, the state declared, to return with his mother and friend to “find” Nona’s body.

The state argued Kevin Jones’ claim to be crushed by his girlfriend’s murder was an act; instead, they argued he had crushed her to death.

Is Kevin The Killer?

Kevin’s defense team had answers to all of the state’s claims. First, an independent expert found the questions administered during his polygraph examination were skewed to ensure his failure. The determination was a good start, but it was not of great help because polygraph test results are not admissible as evidence in court. Fortunately for Kevin, this finding was only the beginning.

The defense refuted the relevance of Kevin’s bloody palm print being on the lamp’s light bulb. The lamp was presumed to be the murder weapon because an EMT recalled it being within a foot of where Nona lay. The defense, however, contended Kevin had likely touched it without recalling have done so in his panic of trying to revive Nona.

Fingerprint on the Lightbulb

Another weapon in the defense arsenal proved to be those in uniform: the Russellville Police. The examination and investigation of the crime scene was headed by first time homicide detective Mark Frost. He and his team of investigators were accused of mishandling the investigation into Nona’s murder from the moment they arrived at the apartment.

The defense emphasized that the only area investigators fingerprinted was around Nona’s body even though blood was near the front door and on the Venetian blinds. The front door to Nona’s apartment was locked, but the back glass sliding door was unlocked, suggesting the route the killer had exited. The back door had not been fingerprinted. Also, although the killer would had to have walked across the kitchen floor to exit the apartment through the back door, the floor was not checked for footprints.

Detective Mark Frost

While prosecutors acknowledged mistakes had been made by police in their crime scene investigation, they still felt the empty condom wrapper was the key piece of evidence against Kevin Jones. They contended that when Kevin found the condom, he believed his girlfriend had been with another man and killed Nona in a fit of rage. Again, however, Kevin’s defense team was ready.

Kevin said he never noticed the condom wrapper, and his lawyers argued if he had, he would have picked it up and left his fingerprints on it. While the prosecution did not have the wrapper tested, the defense did. Fingerprints and DNA were found on the condom wrapper, but they were not Kevin’s. They belonged to another male whose profile did not match any on file.

The Condom Wrapper

In addition to the relevance of the fingerprint and DNA findings, and the insufficient police investigation of the crime scene, Kevin’s grandmother testified he was with her in Dover at the time Nona was believed to have been killed.

After eight hours of deliberation, Kevin Jones was found not guilty of Nona Dirksmeyer’s murder in July 2007.

Many agreed with the jury’s verdict, but some believed Kevin had gotten away with murder. Three months later, the arrest of another man for another crime led to his arrest for Nona’s murder. That arrest seemingly vindicated Kevin, but he was in for a rude awakening.

Although another man would be charged with the murder of Nona Dirksmeyer, Kevin Jones would, in a sense, be put on trial again.

Kevin Cleared, But Still Suspected 

In September 2007, two months after Kevin’s acquittal and over a-year-and-a-half since Nona’s murder, twenty-eight-year-old Gary Dunn was arrested for burglary. Dunn had lived in the same apartment complex as Nona and had been questioned and cleared by police of any involvement in her murder. He agreed to submit his fingerprints and a DNA sample.

The DNA tests were completed several weeks later. They suggested, but could not meet the legally-required standard of certainty, that the DNA on the condom wrapper found in Nona’s apartment was Dunn’s. The fingerprints found on the wrapper were also consistent with Dunn’s but were also insufficient to be deemed a legal match.

When questioned again by police, Dunn said he had an alibi for December 15, 2005, the day Nona was murdered. He told them he was shopping with his mother, Martha, who corroborated his story. They told investigators the items they had purchased and from which stores. Investigators, however, found receipts from the stores showing the items were purchased on December 13, not the 15th.

A new prosecutor found the suggestive DNA evidence and faulty alibi enough to charge Gary Dunn with the murder of Nona Dirksmeyer. His trial began in April 2010.

Gary Dunn

The new prosecution team argued the same theory as their predecessors, that Nona Dirksmeyer was killed in a crime of passion, but the accused was now Gary Dunn. The state painted him as a sexually violent man who had his eyes set on the beauty queen.

Dunn’s former wife, Jennifer, testified against him. She was married to Dunn and lived with him in the apartment across the small parking lot from Nona’s at the time of the murder. By the time of Dunn’s trial, she had divorced him.

Jennifer testified her former husband was often violent toward her and that in the weeks before the murder, she had caught him lurking at Nona’s front door and looking in her bedroom window in the middle of the night.

The prosecution contended that Dunn, whom Jennifer also said had violent sexual habits, entered Nona’s apartment with the intent of forcing a sexual encounter and that he brought a condom which he discarded but had left the wrapper behind. He forced all of her clothes off but killed her without raping her.

Nona’s Neighbor

And Killer?

Like the prosecutors in Kevin Jones’ trial, the state attorney’s evidence was attacked vigorously by Gary Dunn’s lawyers. They argued the DNA on the condom wrapper was only a mixed partial match to him, and that it could be that of thousands and perhaps millions of men.

Dunn’s attorneys conceded their client was not, as he had earlier claimed, shopping with his mother on the day of Nona’s murder, but that he had not lied to the police. On the contrary, they contended, he cooperated fully by telling investigators where he had shopped and what he had purchased.

In being questioned two weeks after Nona’s murder, Dunn’s lawyers argued he had simply forgotten the day on which he had gone shopping, and they instead contended he was in his apartment at the time of Nona’s murder.

Dunn’s Defense

The Double Jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits a person from being tried a second time for a crime for which he or she has been acquitted. At least officially.

Although Kevin Jones had been acquitted of Nona Dirksmeyer’s murder three years earlier, he was unofficially put on trial again as he became the focus of Gary Dunn’s defense team. Dunn’s counsel argued Jones, as well as his mother, grandmother, and friend, all gave conflicting statements to the 911 operator, the paramedics, and the police. They offered that Kevin, who admitted to using Marijuana, Xanax, and Adderall, may have killed Nona while high on the drugs.

In an ironic twist, Gary Dunn’s defense team also used the same argument as Kevin Jones’ prosecutors in that Kevin knew of Nona’s seeing other boys and, upon finding the condom wrapper, killed her in a state of fury.

Drilled By Prosecutors

And Now By the Defense

The attacks on Kevin Jones were enough to dent the prosecution’s case against Gary Dunn. After three weeks of deliberation with the jury deadlocked, a mistrial was declared. Undeterred, prosecutors filed charges to try Dunn again.

The state felt confident this time would be different, largely because the testimony of Kelly Jo Harris was allowed to be admitted as evidence. In 2002, three years before Nona’s murder, Dunn had attacked her as she jogged along Russellville’s isolated Bona Dea Trails Park and Sanctuary. He approached her from behind and hit her over the head with a large stick, knocking her down. Dunn then pinned her to the ground and threatened to kill her, but Kelly was able to break free and summon help. When police arrived at the scene, they found Dunn hiding in water nearby.

Dunn was convicted of the attack and served eighteen months in jail. After being released, he moved into the apartment across from Nona’s.

Dunn Did Time

Dunn’s lawyers again successfully offered the same arguments they had used in his first trial.

Despite the admission of his criminal past as evidence in his second trial, prosecutors were again unable to get the job done as the second trial of Gary Dunn resulted in another hung jury.

If at First You Don’t Succeed,

Try Getting Dunn Again

In 2017, Dunn was sentenced to ten years in prison for a firearms offense. He was paroled in August 2018, after serving only one year. Four months later, however, he was in trouble again as he was arrested on two counts of attempted kidnapping and one count of indecent exposure. Each of the incidents occurred in Russellville. In each of the attempted kidnappings, he had tried to carjack women.

In November 2019, Dunn accepted a plea deal in which he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison with ten years suspended. He will have to serve seventy percent of his sentence before he is eligible for parole.

Prosecutors could again, for a third time, charge Gary Dunn for the murder of Nona Dirksmeyer, but they have not given any indications of plans to do so.

Is The State Done With Dunn?

Gary Dunn, now forty-four-years-old, is incarcerated at the Wrightsville Hawkins Prison in Wrightsville, Arkansas. A search of the records through the Arkansas Department of Corrections says he was eligible for parole on August 11, 2023, but that the date may be affected by other laws and regulations. I am not sure if the parole hearing was held.

If Dunn is required to serve his full sentence, he will be released in November 2024.

Behind Bars . . . For Now

Kevin Jones sued former Russellville Police Department Detective Mark Frost, former Police Chief James Bacon, and the City of Russellville, claiming all had conspired to conceal evidence and deprive him of his constitutional right to a fair trial. The actions, he claimed, resulted in his malicious prosecution under federal and state law.

In October 2014, the Eighth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals upheld the District Court’s ruling that the claims were time barred by the statutes of limitations.

Mark Frost, the lead detective accused by defense lawyers of not conducting a sufficient crime scene investigation of Nona Dirksmeyer’s murder, is now a Captain/Assistant Police Chief in Dardanelle, Arkansas, near Russellville.

James Bacon now works for a security company.

                                Mark Frost                       James Bacon

Nona Dirksmeyer, the Dover beauty, was killed by a beast. Eighteen years later, no one has been convicted of the crime.  Many fear the state of Arkansas, after three attempts, has struck out in its attempt to get a conviction in the murder of the Beauty Queen.

Her story is ended with a question: Will there be no justice for Nona?

No Justice for Nona?

Many believe Gary Dunn to be the killer of Pope County Arkansas Beauty Queen and Miss Arkansas competitor Nona Dirksmeyer. One of the women he attempted to attack in 2018 was Arkansas Tech student Rylie Wagner. Dunn had followed her as she was driving and had blocked her from backing out of a parking space. He attempted to force his way into the vehicle, but she was able to lock the door before he could do so. Dunn fled when he saw Rylie using her cell phone to call police.

Rylie Wagner was crowned Miss Arkansas in 2022.

Rylie Wagner

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12773827/nona-carol-dirksmeyer

 

SOURCES:

• Arkansas Democrat Gazette
• CBS News
• KATV Channel 7 ABC Affiliate Little Rock
• Dateline NBC
• NBC News

SOURCES:

• Arkansas Democrat Gazette
• CBS News
• KATV Channel 7 ABC Affiliate Little Rock
• Dateline NBC
• NBC News