Dateline Originals - Murder in Apartment 12 - Ep. 3: The Talk of the Town

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

When police name a suspect, the court of public opinion all but convicts him.This episode was originally published on October 3, 2023. 

It was cold the day Nona Dirksmeyer was buried. A dismal, gloomy haze settled on the hundreds of mourners who walked to the first Christian disciples of Christ's church that morning, past homes decorated with their usual hodgepodge of sacred and secular, reindeer joyfully perched in one yard, and nativity scenes solemnly settled on the next. It was three days before Christmas, but there was no spiritual or whimsical uplift to be had,

not on this day. It's easy to imagine the sidelong looks Kevin Jones and his family must have gotten as they walked into the old brick church for Nona's funeral. By now, many of the people there knew that Kevin had not shown up for Nona's visitation the night before because he was being questioned by investigators. And it was surely noticed that on this morning, Nona's longtime boyfriend was not seated next to her family for the funeral service. Oh yes, on this morning, everything Kevin Jones did or didn't do was noticed, commented upon. I think he and his friends were the only people who showed signs of laughter and lightheartedness at the entire funeral. I saw on camera one thing where he was smiling.

I guess, you know, is he not allowed to ever smile again? I don't know. Less than a mile away, at that moment, the Russellville police chief, James Bacon, was preparing to hold a press conference. Unable to announce an arrest, the chief wanted to assure the public that progress was being made. The police had a suspect in their sights.

Hours earlier, the chief and the lead investigator, Detective Mark Frost, had already told Nona's parents that Kevin Jones was their primary suspect. I didn't think Kevin had anything to do with it until the police actually told me. That was the night of the visitation. In fact, the police let it be known they intended to make an arrest soon. One of the policemen said to Kevin in three days, you police let it be known they intended to make an arrest soon.

One of the policemen said to Kevin in three days, you know, it was their parting shot, in three days, unless a miracle happens, we're coming after you and you'll be arrested. Yes, it seemed the police assumed. It seemed certain. I know what I know what I know. In this episode, you'll hear from professionals convinced they know the truth. Be honest. Tell the truth. That's what we want you to do. We know the truth. You don't need to be honest about what you mean, to be honest. And from a part-time cop, full-time preacher, who helped uncover a truth that had been hiding in plain sight.

I said, did they check it for DNA? And he said, no. And I said, well, why not? I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Murder in Apartment 12, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 3, The Talk of the Town. The Russellville police were sure they had their man. They alerted the local press. There would be an announcement in the Dirksmeyer case.

9 a.m. sharp, December 22, 2005. The timing was no accident. At 10 a.m. that same day, Nona Dirksmeyer's funeral was scheduled to begin. And maybe someone thought that announcing progress in the case before her funeral would be a good idea. Good way to end a horrible week. Certainly, Chief Bacon had signaled

as much the night before while he was grilling Kevin Jones at headquarters. We're fixing to tell the media and we're fixing to tell the family. And you know, it's you can only keep the evidence concealed for so long

so that for the investigation, and at some point it has to come out. When it came time to step up to the microphone the morning after that long and tortured conversation, Chief Bacon, flanked by Detective Frost and Polk County Prosecutor Jim Gibbons, told the press that his department had interviewed 50 people in the last week,

many of them potential suspects. Interviews were conducted to either prove or disprove the activities of specific people that we were asked to investigate and are developed as persons of interest. The chief implied they were close, very close, to making an arrest. Through these interviews, we have conclusively cleared all but one of these people. Subsequently, this person was administered a polygraph examination by the Arkansas State Police. Though Chief Bacon never uttered this suspect's name, word got around that he was, of course, talking about Kevin Jones. A lot of people in the community did not know who they were talking about. We, of course, knew who they were talking about from that moment on. That's the voice of Janice Jones, Kevin's mother.

I read an article in the local paper. We have information here at this newspaper, which we cannot tell you. But trust us, we know what's going on here. And oh, by the way, farther on in the story, the chief suspect is this young man. What did you make of all of this? I found the newspaper to be, to become in my eyes, a completely unreliable source of information. I don't know how you deal with a thing like this when it comes along in life. I spent several months being literally sick at heart, shaking in fear. They were desperately trying to convince people in the community that he was

guilty. It was about that time when the neighboring towns of Russellville and Dover seemed to choose sides. The Jones family was from Dover. They thought their local paper, the Dover Times, tended to be less prosecution-friendly than the Russellville Courier, the paper that served the town where Nona and her parents lived. What did you make of the coverage that this case got in the Russellville newspaper? Well, it was obvious it was one-sided. That's the voice of Hiram Jones, Kevin's father. I don't know why the editor or the newspaper has took it on to do this. It's bewildering to me why people read the paper. Now here's Dwayne Dyford, known as Stepdad.

As far as I'm concerned, the Dover Times is a rag that we use toilet paper here instead of over times. What was your impression of the courier's coverage? I think it was fairly objective, you know, just because, you know, if Kevin didn't want all this publicity, he shouldn't have killed somebody that was in the Miss Arkansas pageant, I guess. You know, too bad, Kevin. You should have killed somebody less famous. As you can probably tell, Dwayne Dyford is a man of strong opinions. And in the

days after Chief Bacon and Detective Frost told him that they suspected Kevin, his opinion swung strongly in that direction. As for Nona's mom, Carol, she followed suit, turning against a young man she had watched grow up alongside her daughter and once considered a future son-in-law. But I just can't understand how Kevin could have done something like this. And I guess he just let his rage get away with him and he couldn't control himself. The first thing that I was told after the police told me that he was their prime suspect, was that he was a sociopath with a narcissistic personality. Who told you that? The police.

And I think he's also a very good actor and very manipulative. It made you rethink a lot of things about Carol. I don't think he ever let his true personality show around me. He was hiding? Probably so, I would think. Carol indicated to the newspaper that she had never, ever seen any sign of the kind of anger or violence toward Nona from Kevin.

That's Kevin's mom again, Janice. Kevin called her the night of the funeral to ask her how she was doing. And they had a brief conversation. I asked him to pass the phone to me, and we had a very brief conversation. And she really would like me to just ask Kevin not to call her anymore. And when she said that, you know, I knew, I knew that whatever had gone on the night before had been, that information had been transferred to them and that they were, they were turning and shutting down.

The very next morning, the Jones family started looking for a lawyer who could defend Kevin in court if it came to that. They hadn't thought they needed one before. But now? Now it seemed only a matter of time. To be continued... a criminal defense lawyer. A family friend recommended they go see a lawyer named Kenny Johnson over in Monticello. Monticello wasn't close, and Hiram suspected the lawyer wouldn't come cheap. This Johnson fellow

was rumored to be one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the state. Still, Hiram considered himself lucky that such a man would agree to see them on such short notice,

on Christmas Eve, no less. If the past week had shown the Jones family anything, it was that the Russellville police fully intended to charge Kevin with the murder of his girlfriend, Nona Dirksmeyer. As Hiram turned onto I-40 for the two-and-a-half-hour ride to Monticello, both he and Kevin reflected on the events that had led them to this point. The discovery of Nona's body. Those long police interrogations. The accusations.

The brow-beating. Up until a few days ago, neither Hiram nor Kevin had thought they'd ever need a lawyer because they believed innocent people didn't need lawyers. At that time, it seemed to me that if you ask for a lawyer, it looks like you have something to hide. And I was scared that might get that perception. That's the voice of Kevin Jones. I thought the only way that I was going out of that room was if I could convince them that I didn't do it.

I had been told by some friends, have you got a lawyer? And I said, no, we don't need a lawyer. That's Kevin's dad, Hiram. We hadn't done nothing wrong. Why would we need a lawyer? Why indeed. For two and a half hours, father and son felt the highway thumping beneath them like an asphalt heart.

Steady, somehow reassuring. Like the man they were about to meet. They came to me first on Christmas Eve. That's the voice of the lawyer, Kenny Johnson. And that was Hiram and Kevin together. First off, I was impressed with them. I was impressed with their sincerity. They kind of gave me a brief synopsis of the facts and what had occurred.

And your expectations based on what you heard were what? Well, I thought they would do a better job of investigating the case. And I think instead of doing that, what they did was concentrate on him from the very beginning and push everything else aside. And that was troubling to me. Very, very little evidence. Now, the only real evidence against Kevin seemed to be a bloody palm print on a light bulb that had been laying on the floor near Nona's body. According to the police, that palm print matched Kevin. And parts of it looked to be tacky or not completely dry. The lawyer figured there was probably plausible explanation for that.

After all, Kevin had cradled her bloody body when he found her. Maybe he touched the light bulb inadvertently during those first frantic moments. As for the polygraph? According to the lawyer, that was less about finding the truth and more a police tactic for extracting a confession. It was an attempt to get him to confess. That's all it was. It's a technique that's used in this state quite a bit, but you may not be able to use it in court,

but you can sure use it around town. For reporters and editors at the Russellville Courier, this case was catnip. A local beauty queen murdered. The story had sex, violence, and mystery. Though the Courier at times implied there really was no mystery at all. Well, newspapers are in the business of selling newspapers. That's Janice Jones. So anything that captures the attention of the people

is naturally going to be something they, you know, put on their front page. It was my personal opinion that the newspaper was being rather biased to some degree. When we asked the newspaper about that, they denied having any kind of agenda with regards to coverage of the Dirksmeyer case. There's a lot of people that think that we tried to prosecute him in our paper. That's the voice of Sean Ingram. Sean was an editor and proofreader for The Courier back when the Russellville police first focused their investigation on Kevin Jones.

I would say that, you know, we followed the evidence that was provided by authorities. At that point, the authorities, it looked like it was a slam dunk, didn't they? From the early beginning, it appeared that way. And yet, for months, there was no arrest. Instead, Kevin Jones was tried and retried in the court of public opinion, on a loop, like Groundhog Day. Online gossips filled their blogs and social posts with rumor and innuendo and speculation. Kevin failed a polygraph. Kevin's print was on the light bulb. Kevin tried to mislead the police, and so on. Janice Jones again feared for her son's safety, as she had from the beginning. The day after her body was discovered, my good friend Sharon, she just warned me, you know, you really need to keep Kevin close.

There's already talk in the community. The boyfriend did it. Even before the police were questioning him at length? Yes, within two days after her death. The first rumor that started was that she had killed herself. The second rumor that went around was the boyfriend did it. And so as far as any of us knew, in our circle of friends, Kevin was the boyfriend. Then, on March 31, 2006, nearly four months after Nona's death, the other shoe dropped.

Kevin Jones was arrested. Here's how that sounded when reported by NBC's Little Rock affiliate, KARK. At a press conference this morning, prosecuting attorney David Gibbons said little about the evidence in the case, but he did make one thing clear. The lethal blow was administered by the lamp. The lamp is what had the defendant's palm print on it. Police did say they believe Jones tampered with the crime scene, first by placing a condom wrapper on a counter near her body to make the motive appear to be rape. Secondly, they say he placed his hands in her blood when he discovered her body with his mother as a way to cover his tracks when his prints were later found at the scene.

Kevin was released on a $250,000 bond while he awaited trial. And in the meantime, Justice for Nona stickers started showing up on car bumpers around Russellville. If the bumper stickers had been created before someone was charged, I would have easily believed their intent was that they truly wanted the police to continue searching until they found the person who was guilty. However, they were brought out and disseminated in every public arena that they could find after Kevin was charged. Therefore, the assumption that I formed, and I think many people formed, was that Justice for Nona meant convict Kevin. attorney, felt it would be next to impossible to get a fair trial in Polk County where the murder happened and where the Russellville Courier had the most readers. Keep in mind that the murder happened on December the 15th. Kevin wasn't arrested until March the 31st.

The paper had been active during that period of time? The paper had been active, been suggesting there'll be an arrest next week, there'll be an arrest next week. Something'll be an arrest next week. Something's coming. Something's coming, something's coming. They know who the guilty man is. Right. They're waiting on DNA results. They're waiting on test results. In announcing Kevin's arrest, the prosecutor handed out a three-page probable cause affidavit that summarized the state's case against Kevin Jones.

Pretty strong stuff, and printed word for word in the courier and so you're leading your reading audience up to here it comes, here it comes, here it comes and then wham here it comes and that thing is thrown out there then it was a lot of prejudice. On the day Kevin was arrested, Nona's mother Carol and stepdad Dway Dipert, faced reporters outside their home and offered their reaction. Carol said, little. But Dwayne, as one might expect, had plenty to say. I'm sure it's a traumatic thing for both him and his family, but then again, you can't kill somebody and get away with it.

If there's any justice at all in the world, he's going to have to pay for the crime. Irem Jones watched as his son was pilloried in the press and with considerable effort held his tongue. Our lawyer, Kenny Johnson, stated early on this case would not be tried in the media. And he told us, he said, you will have your day. And he said, don't make it today. Pretty hard to wait for that, huh? Times it was.

Hard lessons in the law. There were more. Kenny Johnson told the Jones family he needed help. Couldn't take on a long trial all by himself. So he asked to bring in two more attorneys, Michael Robbins and Bill Bristow, to join the defense team. Each was an experienced attorney, but lawyers cost money. Hiram could see it was going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars, money the Joneses did not have. Where do you find money like that? Well, it's a good bank.

My mom, we have a farm that we worked extremely hard for, my father. We put it up as collateral. My wife's mother had some money in savings. Everybody pooled the money and said, here it is. And we took it, put it in an account, and told Kenny, run these tests to the end. You know, to send it wherever you want to send it, whatever you think needs to be done, do it. If not enough here, you call me. Because this is the truth. We're not running fairy tales.

We're not hunting fish. This is the truth. We don't want something run out somewhere and fish. This is the truth. We don't want something run out somewhere and quit. The attorney took Hiram at his word and started from scratch investigating the investigation. Examining the evidence, double-checking everything Detective Frost and Chief Bacon did and did not do. Nobody from the police had performed any testing to see how long it takes blood on a light bulb to become dry or tacky. That's Bill Bristow, a member of the Kevin Jones defense team. Nobody had asked any expert how long does it take blood on a light bulb to become dry or tacky. And, you know, it's so unfortunate that that wasn't done early on to have seen, you know, what was involved.

For lead defense attorney Kenny Johnson, that lack of thoroughness spoke volumes about the police investigation. Well, the quality of the investigation was, to me, jumped to a conclusion at the beginning. And they did do everything you could to justify that conclusion. One thing now seemed pretty clear. If Kevin Jones stood a chance of staying out of prison, his lawyers were going to have to do an investigation of their own. The End The two men arrived at the little yellow building in downtown Russellville at about one in the afternoon. The slimmer, bald one, wearing a tie, looked to be about forty, his face festooned with a dark brown goatee. The stocky one, wearing glasses, held the door as they entered under a brown awning that read,

Brick Oven Pizza. It was April 2005, a few weeks after Kevin Jones was arrested. The bald guy was Michael Robbins, one of Kevin's new defense lawyers. The other one was Todd Steffi, a preacher, part-time community college professor, and part-time investigator for the city of Dover Marshal's office. What an odd combination, though.

Oh, I used to say it's the ultimate good guy. That soothing, pastoral voice belongs to Todd Steffi. I started in law enforcement as a police chaplain. As the years went by, I went back to more police training in the other state that I moved to and eventually ended up here. Here, in this case, being Russellville, Arkansas, where he met Michael Robbins. Over time, the two became friends who shared a mutual interest in everything

from outdoor recreation to criminal investigations. I valued his opinion, and I went to lunch with him one day, and I got to talking to him about my case, and he was interested in it. That's Michael Robbins, the lawyer you hear talking. I said, well, why don't you come by and let's go over some crime scene photos, and you tell me what you think. And so he came over and started pouring over things with me. At one point in our conversation that day, he said they had found a condom wrapper in the crime scene. And I asked him about that. She had been,

her body was disrobed. And I asked him what they had done with this condom wrapper in terms of forensic analysis. And he said that they had analyzed it for fingerprints. I said, did they check it for DNA? And he said, no. And I said, well, why not? Why indeed? Well, according to the police, the state crime lab told them they could either test the condom wrapper for fingerprints or DNA, but not both. The process of testing for one, the lab claimed, would destroy any chance of testing for the other. And I said, well, that's not correct. You guys need to send that to a DNA lab. Wait a minute, a police department that didn't realize it could do both things? I mean, what did that say to you?

Well, that somebody was mistaken, somebody was wrong. So the defense team had the condom wrapper sent to a DNA lab in Florida, which had better equipment than the Arkansas crime lab. And in December of 07, the results came back. There was male DNA on the condom wrapper. And it did not match Kevin. It could be used to exclude Kevin. And so honestly, at that point, I thought I would be through with this. They dropped the case and move on. Well, that they would at least reconsider and try to determine

whose DNA it was. You were wrong. Apparently. Never did Kevin's defense attorneys ask me to help get Kevin off. They simply asked for my input. And Michael knows me well enough that if you ask for my opinion, I'll give it, even if it's not good for your interests. At some point, I just decided, I think they've got the wrong guy. So whose DNA was on that condom wrapper? Oddly, the Russellville police didn't seem all that interested in finding out. In the week after Nona's murder,

investigators had interviewed half a dozen men who might have been considered suspects, might have left their DNA on that condom wrapper. Investigators now knew that Nona had been seeing other young men, young men Kevin hadn't known about. To be fair, they also knew that Kevin hadn't exactly been true blue either while he was away at college. But that's the thing about murder investigations. All kinds of secrets inevitably get dragged out into the sunlight. Anyway, the police did not take DNA samples from those other potential suspects. Nor did they take a sample from another potential suspect, an ex-con who had recently done time for attacking a female jogger. The guy, it turned out, happened to live right across the parking lot from Nona's apartment.

Of course, with no DNA samples from any of those suspects to compare with the DNA on that condom wrapper, the defense had no way of knowing who the mystery man was. When the DNA was found, Michael Robbins called me and said, well, they have a new theory. And the theory now is that, okay, Kevin didn't place the condom wrapper in the scene. It was, he found it there.

He came over and found it. And flew into a rage. And it became a trigger. And I said, well, Michael, that's not a bad theory. But you need to know whose DNA that is to know if that theory flies. I felt like the condom wrapper was there as part of the crime. And therefore, I felt like the DNA was a key to the case. Yes, it was. But finding the door that key would unlock? Now that would be a challenge.

They tried every which way. At one point, the defense even hired a high school kid to sift through the trash of the other men police had brought in for questioning. But that effort came up empty. And as the trial moved ever closer, the defense team prepared, best they could, and contemplated a town that seemed to have made up its mind. This was a case that cried out under any sort of justice for a change of venue. And a change of venue in Arkansas is not something that's just routine. That's defense attorney Bill Bristow again. The judge granted a change of venue to Franklin County, which is not within the ambit of the Russellville newspaper. Right. of jury selection, every person on the prospective jurors who had relatives in Pope County,

when they were called, stood up and disqualified themselves saying they had heard so much about this that they could not initially be fair, which is to their credit that they would do that. But it also bespeaks the amount of prejudice that was in Pope County. So it was that in the wilting heat of an Arkansas summer, the murder trial of Kevin Jones opened in the little town of Ozark, about an hour west of Russellville. The jurors in Ozark had not been following the case because the Russellville Courier was not widely distributed in Franklin County, where Ozark was the county seat. At least, not until July 9, 2007. On that day, the day Kevin Jones went on trial, a Russellville Courier newspaper box mysteriously appeared in front of the Franklin

County Courthouse. When you came here and saw that somebody had moved a Courier newspaper box out in front of the courthouse, what did you think? I was pretty angry. That's Michael Robbins again. He and the other defense attorneys couldn't be sure who put the newspaper box there, but of course they assumed it was someone from the courier. They put that box on the front steps of the courthouse where the jurors would see it every day when they walked in. They're not allowed to read it though, so why would it make a difference? No, they were instructed not to, but they see the headline facing them as they were coming in the door. And it just created a situation where there was more potential that the jury could be tainted. The defense team had done all they could to ensure Kevin Jones got a fair trial.

They would soon find out whether that was enough. Next on Murder in Apartment 12. They found the DNA. The DNA was some other male. We're supposed to pursue the truth, and regardless of where that leads. What possible excuse would be offered for not doing fingerprint checks?

Don't know. I was disturbed because they did not gather all the evidence. They didn't cross their T's and dot their I's. I stared at Kevin Jones right in the eyes. I did too. I looked him right in the eyes. I did too. We made eye contact.

If it was somebody else, who is it? My chief looked at me and I said, do you know who he is? And he said, yes. He was one of the neighbors to Nona Dirksmeyer. And a person of interest. And a person of interest. 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. Keone Reed is associate producer. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer.

Liz Cole is executive producer. And David Corvo is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes is technical director. Sound mixing by Bob Mallory.