Dateline Originals - Murder in Apartment 12 - Ep. 1: Death of a Beauty Queen

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

The murder of 19-year-old Nona Dirksmeyer shakes the community of Russellville, Arkansas to its core.This episode was originally published on September 26, 2023. 

It should have been a season of joy. Choirs and twinkling lights and bright paper packages. And it certainly started out that way in a little place called Dover, Arkansas, population about 1,300, where middle school teacher Janice Jones was in a Christmas frame of mind. Of course she was. Her youngest son, Kevin, was home from college, and had agreed to be Janice's date to her school's holiday party. I laughingly offered him the opportunity to take me on a date Thursday night to our staff Christmas party. Sure. And he accepted, as long as there was a big steak.

Yeah. And made a joke about, is there an open bar? I'd like to see some of my former teachers, you know, a little tipsy. They thought that would be very humorous. What fun it should have been. But no. On this night, December 15th, 2005, the season of light suddenly turned very dark indeed, with a call to 911. I'm not skipping online, okay?

Okay. It was the night of the awful discovery. Is she breathing at all? No, no, she's cold. She's not breathing. She doesn't have a pulse. I think she's dead. The night of all the panic and the confusion and the sudden grief that tore through them like a knife. Give me the name of the apartment! This is the story of what happened on that December night and all that came after. It's a story of a beautiful young woman named Nona Dirksmeyer, a local beauty queen who'd been keeping secrets.

This case probably had more statewide publicity than any criminal case in many, many years, perhaps ever, in Arkansas. You'd probably ask any police officer in town here who did it, and they'll tell you who did it. Everybody has an opinion, but that doesn't convict in our courts. It's the story of three sensational trials. It's a story about police power and the people who wield it. I'm telling you what I see. I'm telling you what I know.

And I'm telling you right now. You did this. It's about gossip, about public opinion. I realized as the time went on that these were lies. It wasn't TV. This was reality. You learn not to read or believe anything you read. It was a case that divided this town.

And it got pretty hot in Arkansas for a while. Too hot for some. It tells me that you don't know. You don't know what you did. You don't have a clue. You don't have a clue. I'm not playing any shit with you. Yes, and it's about pride and prejudice and a tortured search for a killer. There is a cold-blooded killer out there. He knows who he is.

What are we going to do? I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Murder in Apartment 12, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 1, Death of a Beauty Queen. Mother and son left the house that evening in high spirits. Kevin looking good in black crew neck sweater and cream-colored slacks. I'd laid out some clothes for him. Just, you know, to be mom. That's the voice of Janice Jones.

He was going to just wear what he had that day, and I said, oh, please, you know, it's nice. It's Christmas time, let's do this special thing. So he changed. It was after six already. The party began at 6.30. Janice had a singing part in the evening's entertainment and was anxious about being late.

As they bounced along the long driveway that led from the Jones family farm to paved county roads, Janice allowed herself a satisfied smile as she glanced over at her son's face, bathed in dashboard light. At 20, Kevin was a handsome young man. Blue eyes, strong chin, full mouth, his thick mop of reddish blonde hair neatly combed. With her husband, Hiram, down in Louisiana earning a little extra money doing post-Katrina cleanup, Janice was grateful to have Kevin home again, if only for the weeks of his college Christmas break.

I told Kevin I was going to be very dependent upon him to help out. And he was quite agreeable and, you know, willing to do whatever. By the time the family pickup truck reached Highway 7, the stretch of highway that led south from Dover to Russellville, mother and son had settled into silence. Janice glanced again. Kevin's face had taken on a pensive look, worried almost. He'd been unable to reach his girlfriend, Nona, that day,

which was unusual. Texts had gone unanswered. Calls went directly to voicemail. Our conversation basically on the way went, what's the matter? You know, is everything okay? Blah, blah, blah. I'm sure everything will be okay. No, nothing to worry about.

Nona was busy. Music education major at Arkansas Tech in Russellville, wrapping up her semester finals. And on top of that, she had dinner plans that evening with the little girl she was mentoring through the Big Sister Big Brother program. I would say that there wasn't a particular reason for the worry, but there was just a sense of something's not right. She was a person of great regularity when it came to her cell phone.

So I began doing the typical things that mothers do, which is reassure your kid when they're a little worried. And I said, well, you know, there's lots of reasons why she might not be answering her phone. Maybe her plans changed. Kevin, however, was not reassured. He called Nona's mother's cell phone to see if she'd heard from Nona. No answer.

He called her stepdad. He was home, but said he hadn't heard from Nona that day either. And finally, he texted a friend of his, Ryan Whiteside. Ryan had a job delivering pizzas in Russellville. He was working that night. He thought, he just suggested to Ryan, would he go by and check on her? See if, you know, anything unusual.

Go by Nona's apartment. Yeah, go by Nona's apartment. So he said, okay. They were rolling into Russellville when Ryan called back. He was outside Nona's apartment, he told Kevin. And it was, it was weird. Her silver Mustang was there and there was a light on upstairs. And he just told Ryan, you know, I'm coming that way.

And he knew that. So he was going to try to get a little visit on the way. Yes. And he said to me, he said, I can't go and enjoy that party, mom. You know, not knowing if everything's okay with her. And so they raced to Nona's place and life was going to be very different now.

Well, we got there and we tried to open the door and I realized I didn't have my keys. That's the voice of Kevin Jones. And knocked and rang the doorbell, and nobody came. And we started to get a little frantic, and we tried to card the door with a credit card to open it, and we couldn't do that. Kevin knew Nona's two-story townhouse apartment had a patio with a sliding glass door around back. He'd helped her move in.

Though the back door was always latched with a blue broomstick stuck in the sliding track for added security, Kevin and Ryan decided to give it a try anyway. So when we get around to the backside of her house where the sliding glass door is, I noticed the stick wasn't in the door anymore. And there were vertical blinds that were partially open, but I didn't look through them. And so when I was grabbing the handle, Ryan touched me and he said, do you not see her? And I looked at him and he said, dude, there she is. And she was laying in her front room, visible, naked, partially face down, away from us. Kevin yanked the door handle hard as he could,

and it opened. Frantic, Kevin rushed to Nona's side, turned her over. The apartment was dark, with slashes of ambient streetlight coming through the windows. Kevin could tell that Nona was stiff and cold when he touched her. Could tell the carpet beneath her head was wet. The faint, coppery scent of blood hung in the air. I picked her up at first, because all I could think about was I needed to get her to a hospital.

And then I realized that you shouldn't you shouldn't transport someone you should call an ambulance so I put her back down and I everything that happened was just kind of a blur I know what Ryan at one point let my mom in the front door. They called 911 pretty soon after that. At first, Ryan spoke to the operator, his words muffled and hard to understand. Then he handed the phone to Janice. I started to talk to the woman and I was just kind of babbling, I think. I tried to give you the information. I just don't know how. OK, I understand, ma'am.

But if you can give me that home phone number, I can give you the address. She only has her cell phone. At some point, I remember telling the boys, don't touch anything. We don't know what's happened here. Was it obvious she was dead? There was that thought in my mind that it could be.

I've only seen a few dead people in my life. And they were in a casket. They were not laying on the living room floor. These boys had never seen anything like this before. I tried to give her CPR. I tried to give her mouth to mouth. And her teeth were clenched very, very tightly shut. And I couldn't blow any air between her teeth, and there was no air coming out of her nose.

He covered her. He straddled her with his legs on either side of her body, and he just lifted her in his arms and held her to him as if he were warming her. It felt cold in the apartment. Kevin ran his fingers through Nona's blonde hair, trying to comfort her, and felt a large, wet cavity and jagged bone at the base of her skull. And I think at that point, I...

At that point, I just kind of sat up and slumped back because she wasn't breathing. When the first responders arrived, they saw Kevin Jones on the floor kneeling over a young woman who was completely naked except for a pair of white socks. Blood was smeared on his face, his hands, his clothes. A police officer escorted Janice and Ryan to the parking lot. Well, another pulled Kevin to the side for questioning. Yeah, I was sobbing and crying. And at one point, then I heard him cry out. What a howl.

Yeah, that's what it was. And I couldn't go to him because I had to stay outside. What did that feel like? That was horrible. I just kept asking them, where is my son? Can I go to my son? I wanted to hold him and comfort him because I knew he was grieving. And they wouldn't let you?

They wouldn't let me. And so I decided I had better call my husband and tell him what had happened. But just what did happen to Nona Dirksmeyer? No end of trouble about that. It was a warm June evening. Six months before, headlines about a beauty queen's murder splashed across Arkansas. The young women backstage of the Miss Arkansas pageant were busy. Those who happened to be close to a mirror cast long, appraising glances at their hair, their makeup, their gowns.

Others, standing alone, nervously glanced at note cards as they practiced prepared remarks. Waiting in the wings was Nona Dirksmeyer. She looked stunning in her flowing floor-length evening gown, baby blue, sequined and form-fitting, her hair glistening like poured gold. If she had peeked out of the audience, she might have seen friends from high school sitting together and her mom Carol sitting with her new stepdad,

Dwayne. Had she scanned the audience for her boyfriend, Kevin, she wouldn't really have expected to see him. At least not yet. Kevin almost always showed up late for these things. Nona was 19 years old the night she sashayed in circles across the big pageant stage, this was her moment. The moment when all the pain and struggle of her life could be set aside. When her time came to speak, she confidently stepped up to the microphone. Hi, Nona. Hello, Lacey. What changes would you make in the current education system? I would encourage the teachers to be themselves and let the children experience them for who they are. Make the children want to come to school and learn and make them want to be educated. Had she ever felt more alive than in that moment in June 2005?

Six months later, she was dead. Newspapers played up the beauty queen angle. Pretty blonde girl murdered. Headlines that sold papers. But back in Dover, people who knew Nona Dirksmeyer knew there was more to her than that. Much more. When I think about Nona,

I don't just think of this beauty queen girl, because that's not the Nona we knew. That's just one facet of her life. That is the voice of Margie Huckabee. Margie's daughter Chelsea was one of Nona's closest and dearest friends. They'd been friends since seventh grade. They were best friends. They knew everything about each other, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Margie knew the ugliest chapter in Nona's life had come early, when most little girls are still playing with dolls. But first, a little background. Nona was born on the day after Christmas, 1985, the second child of Paul and Carol Dirksmeyer. The Dirksmeyers were a May-December

pairing that had begun a decade earlier at LSU, when Carol was a music student and Paul was her professor. Nona, like her mom, was pretty and smart, but about the time Nona started school, something happened to her that would haunt her for the rest of her life. It was then, as a little girl, she was sexually molested by her father, Paul. How it happened and when and for how long it went on is unknown. What is known is that after Paul Dirksmeyer died in 1996 at the age of 76, Nona told her best friend Chelsea about it. I don't think Chelsea really knew what to do about it except just be there for her and listen to her.

Margie Huckabee again. That never happened to my kids, thank God. Nothing like that ever happened to them. And for her, you know, to have to even go through that, it's a horrible thing. And it affected her her whole entire life. It really did. Around adults, said Margie, Nona appeared to be a carefree kid with a big smile and a hearty laugh. I can just see her just rolling on this floor literally and laughing and eating at my house. She was at home with us, just as comfortable as my kids. But privately, Nona struggled with nightmares, periods of deep depression and despair. To cope, perhaps, Nona started doing things to herself that her family and friends would not

have understood, even if they had known. But of course, they didn't. It was Nola's secret, until one day in high school, she again turned to her best friend, Chelsea. Sometimes, Nola told Chelsea, she cut herself. Cut herself in places where her clothes could hide the wounds. No one knew. She only told Chelsea that I know of, and Chelsea was really worried about her. Margie learned about the cutting on a hot summer day when Nona, too young to drive, had arranged to have Margie give her a ride. I had to go pick her up, and Chelsea warned

me. She said, Mom, she's got cuts all over, and she's not going to tell you the truth. And I said, oh my gosh. So I drove up, rang the doorbell, and she just had these band-aids all over her legs. I mean, like 10. And I said, girl, what happened to you? She goes, oh, the cat scratched me. I said, I don't think so. And she goes, yeah, really? I said, tell that somebody who believes that it's not me. Tell me what happened. And then she just kind of put her little head down and told me. At Margie's urging, Nona told her mom about the cutting. As one might imagine, Nona's mother was shocked to learn her secret. She got Nona into counseling. Doctors prescribed antidepressants.

And by the time she was a high school senior, the cutting had stopped. Pageant audiences, of course, knew nothing about any of this. For them, Nona Dirksmeyer was one of many beautiful and talented young women who competed on stage to be the fairest one of all. Now, no one would have guessed. But when asked by pageant organizers what issue she cared most about, Nona said, child abuse. She didn't really care about the money she would win from the scholarships, the prestige of being Miss Arkansas or Miss something. That is Kevin Jones. She just wanted to find a way to

enlighten other people about what happens to children who are sexually abused. Kevin Jones was among the few who knew the whole story about Nona's past struggles. The sexual abuse, the cutting, and they had known each other since kindergarten. I remember between ninth and tenth grade, she really just she looked a lot different. She looked a lot older and maybe that's the first thing that attracted me to her being a ninth grade male. Yeah. But the longer that I got to know her, the more that we talked on the phone or talked in person, it just, we became very comfortable around each other. All through high school, Kevin and Nona were close.

Not only sweethearts, but best friends, really. Well, she was real insecure at that time, like when we first started dating. But near the start of our junior year, she'd actually gained some self-confidence. And a friend of hers and mine was in the pageant system, and she really enjoyed doing it. And so kind of took noteona under wing and said, you should do this with me. You will enjoy this and it'll help you. Oh, and it did. In this clip recorded before the Miss Arkansas pageant, Nona describes the song she was going to perform. A song that, in retrospect, seems prophetic. Conte Partiro is a song about love and loss.

Translated to English, it means With You I Part or Time to Say Goodbye. I hope you enjoy my version of this classic song. Her self-esteem issues vanished the moment she opened her mouth to sing. Kevin and Nona talked about getting married someday, and the adults who had seen them grow and mature together thought that was a pretty good idea. I saw them eventually marrying. Kevin's mother, Janice. I saw that possibility as very real

because they were very good friends. They were, in the times that I saw them, fairly compatible with one another. They were a couple. They were a couple. And it's like maybe the situation with them with the abuse made what they had together just a little bit more mature and serious than the typical teenage romance. Mind you, the key words here are teenage romance. Kevin and Nona were still teenagers, still in high school.

There were still lots of potential potholes ahead of them on the road to matrimony. For instance, in their senior year of high school, another girl had caught Kevin's eye, so he broke up with Nona to pursue the other girl. I guess when some people start to get married, they get cold feet and they think about, well, you know, what's it going to be like for the rest of my life? I'm only, what, 19, 18? I was 18. Is this it for the rest of my life? Is that what you're thinking? I wonder if this is the best that it can be. I assume that's what I was thinking. I don't know.

It was a pretty dumb mistake. It might have just been a foolish fling for Kevin. But for Nona, that breakup with Kevin must have seemed like an existential crisis. Kevin had been her confidant, her friend and partner. And just like that, he was walking the halls of their high school hand in hand with somebody else.

Nona stayed in bed. She stopped eating. Even skipped school. She was insecure. And Kevin was, to some degree, a part of what made her more secure. Yes. And suddenly he wasn't so secure for her anymore. Yeah, right.

They were apart from each other for, I think, about three weeks, four weeks maybe. That was it? It wasn't that long. What did she threaten to do? Another mother said that she made a threat on herself, that she would kill herself, you know, if he didn't come back into the relationship or if they weren't able to get back together. In the end, Kevin did come back. He asked for a second chance. And Nona gave it to him.

All's well that ends well? Not exactly. Her mom was pretty upset. I don't think her mom trusted me for a while, but Nona had no problem giving me a second chance. Those trust issues with Nona's mom never really went away. They just lay there, watching. But back in December 2003, when a long and happy life together once again seemed possible,

Nona and Kevin picked up where they'd left off. We both expected to spend the rest of our lives together. We had not much doubt in your mind about that? Mm-mm. We'd talked about it. We talked about children's names. Not even asked her to marry me, but we didn't make it

official because we were both poor. And we had already decided that we would wait until we were out of college to do it. Yes, that was the plan. But then came that awful evening in December 2005. No, no, she's cold.

She's not breathing. She doesn't have a pulse. I'm completely dead. The detective's juices were flowing as he retrieved his camera from the car trunk and slammed it shut. A homicide in Russellville? In ten years in law enforcement in Polk County, he'd never worked one of those. Thirty minutes earlier, the detective had been Christmas shopping with his wife, and then came the call. An unattended death at the Inglewood Apartments.

The lieutenant said it looked like murder. Down the hill, the crowd of onlookers in the parking lot was growing larger outside the two-story apartment building. Waiting, perhaps, to see the body brought out of number 12. It was cold down in the 20s, and the night air smelled like a hard frost was coming. If the detective even gave that a second thought, he might have smiled. His name was Frost. Mark Frost. Inside number 12, the detective brushed past a mop-haired kid and a couple of uniformed cops who were on their way out. Down the hall, the detective would have seen activity in the living room. The center of attention? A young woman lying on the floor.

Beside her, he would have seen the chief down on his hands and knees. He was looking at a dismantled floor lamp. His attention focused on the light bulb. It appeared to have blood on it. As he got closer, the detective could see that the victim's face and hands were crusted with blood. There were several cuts on her neck. The ambulance guys were waiting to remove the body, so the detective told everyone to leave the room and then started snapping pictures.

Aside from the blood and the body, the room was a mess. There was a great mound of clean, unfolded clothes piled high on the blue-checked couch. Beside the couch, there was an upended table lamp. Not far from the body, the detective noticed a bra. Near one wall, he saw a pair of jeans, inside out, underwear rolled up inside, as if both had been pulled off in one hurried motion. On the floor near the body lay a broken floor lamp with a dented base and a bloody candle jar. Blood smears on the blinds that covered the sliding glass door. Around the corner, in the kitchen, more signs of a struggle. A blood splatter on the oven door. A bag of cat food and a flip phone lay on the

floor as if they'd fallen from the kitchen table during a struggle. The back of the phone had been removed. The battery was missing. And then there was this. On the kitchen counter, a torn condom wrapper and a steak knife lay side by side. Given that the victim was naked and had cuts on her neck and shoulder, that seemed like something to pay attention to. Upstairs, where the bedrooms were, it was also a mess. Dirty clothes all over the bed and floor in one room, sheet music all over the floor in the other. Sorted in a way that might make sense to a musician. To the detective, the messiness didn't seem to have much to do with the crime.

No, more likely this is just the way the girl lived. No sign of forced entry. No sign of anything stolen. The detective had a hunch. The dead girl had known her killer. They usually do. But in that moment, the detective's thoughts about the crime mattered little.

It wasn't even his case. At least, not yet. Well, Detective Mark Frost documented the crime scene at Nona Dirksmeyer's apartment. Kevin Jones was three miles away at the Russellville police station. He was there to give a statement to the police, but for 30 minutes, he simply sat alone with his thoughts in a cold, stark, white interrogation room.

Then the door opened. Kevin? My name's David Harden. Okay. David. This is Gary James. How you opened. Kevin? My name's David Verdon. Okay. David. This is Kerry James. How you doing, Kevin? All right.

We're both detectives with the Russellville Police Department. Detective Verdon was all business. Nothing touchy or feely about him. Shaved head, gray hoodie, he did all the talking. Okay, I wanted to ask you some questions, all right?

Before I can do that, I have to come and prove you your rights, all right? You're not under arrest this time or anything like that. The detective began by asking Kevin to tell his story. How was it that Kevin had come to find his girlfriend's body? I just kept calling her and calling her and calling her, and she never answered. I figured I might as well just stay clean. The detectives leaned forward, and Kevin unspooled his story about driving to his mom's party,

worrying about Nona, enlisting the aid of the pizza guy, and finally seeing Nona on the floor through the sliding glass door. She was laying there, face up, opened the door, and I started to pick her up and I got her out and she was kind of stiff so I just laid her down. With that, Detective Verdon

photographed Kevin's hands. Then he asked Kevin to push his hair back from his forehead so his face could be photographed and inspected for scratches. Something on Kevin's forehead caught the detective's attention.

What happened? Fire. What appeared? I don't have any clue. I didn't know there was anything. What does it look like? Bruising, maybe. You've been in a fire recently? Where is it? Right here?

No, it's okay. No? Okay. The questioning went on for more than two and a half hours. Frequently, the detectives left the room to confer, and then they returned with more questions. There were questions about his relationship with Nona. They were very, very exquisite. Questions about his alibi. Where had he been that day? When had he been there? Who had he seen?

Who had seen him? Then they asked all those questions again. Start from your day again. I woke up somewhere between 9 and 10. My grandma called me. According to Kevin, his day had basically consisted of errands and emails. Lots of people had seen him, talked to him that day, he said. Just ask them.

Got something to eat, talked to my friend Jeremy Huggins. And what time that was? Just ask them. As for Nona, she texted him around 9 a.m., he said, just to say good morning. But he didn't respond because he was trying to sleep. He told the detectives that he knew Nona had finals that morning, so he didn't try to contact her till afternoon. The first time I called, I think it rang once and then went straight to her voicemail. Every time after that, it just went straight to her voicemail. I didn't see any cause for alarms. I thought she might be at school taking a test or something.

Kevin told the detectives that when Ryan, the pizza guy, told him Nona appeared to be home but wasn't answering the door, that's when he became alarmed. It was close to midnight when Kevin and his mom walked out of the police station, both exhausted, neither with any idea how many exhausting days, terrifying days, were still to come. This season on Murder in Apartment 12. She just warned me there's already talk in the community.

The boyfriend did it. There are people out there who think that I did it. And I don't know how you would change their minds. Listen, I process crimes and I'm good at it. It's what I do, okay? It became obvious that when things didn't fit with the Russell Police Department's theory of the case, that they ignored it. She said he is free to go, but he doesn't really realize that. I thought, well, I'll get their attention. So I stuck a chair through the wall. I have been brutalized over nationwide

that I'm an inept investigator, that I don't know what I'm doing. I've had enough of that. It is a lot. They're all three-line. It took several years of my life for me that I'll never get back. Murder in Apartment 12 is a production of Dateline on NBC News. Tim Beecham is the producer.

Brian Drew, Deb Brown, and Bruce Berger are audio editors. Keanu Reid is associate producer. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Liz Cole is executive producer. And David Corvo as senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes as technical director,

sound mixing by Bob Mallory.