Dateline Originals - Murder in Apartment 12 - Ep. 5: Receipts

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

A new suspect says he has an alibi, but can he prove it?This episode was originally published on October 10, 2023. 

A lot of people open their homes during the Christmas holidays, invite friends and neighbors over for some nog and a nosh, and maybe a glass of wine and a slice of cheese and a cracker. Everybody's in good spirits on nights like that, smiling and sociable. But the kind of open house the Russellville police were hosting at the Inglewood Apartments ten days before Christmas 2005, that had a far different vibe. For one thing, there was a dead woman laying on the living room floor, her once angelic face beaten and bloody.

For another, no one who entered apartment 12 that night was smiling. It was a crime scene, crawling with cops and firemen, EMTs, ambulance crews. 17 law enforcement people were logged in to the crime scene that night. Some wore gloves. Some did not. And some touched things. So the crime scene was contaminated. At some point, things were moved.

A lampshade was removed from the floor and placed on the dead girl's foot. And a cell phone that had been lying on the kitchen floor with its battery removed had been picked up and placed on a table. The cell phone? Yeah, the cell phone was found on the floor. He'd seen it on the floor. Left it overnight. He'd come in, and the next day it was moved, and so they discarded it as evidence.

That wasn't all. Fingerprints found on the base of a floor lamp, believed to be the murder weapon, did not match those of the primary suspect. So whose prints were they? And we don't know who. Maybe it was a policeman who picked up the... But then why not fingerprint the police officers and figure that out? Why just leave it?

You know who was there. You've got a log of who was at the scene. All you've got to do is check them. They didn't do that. They didn't do that? They didn't do that. With so many people in and out of the crime scene, it was hard to know who touched what. As for

the blood evidence, well, there seemed to be both a lot of it and not enough. One detective said, I didn't think there was enough blood on the wall to get DNA from. But you could see it in the picture. But the defense's witnesses stated that any blood visible is DNA.

Evidence contaminated. Evidence uncollected. Evidence ignored. His alibi, I just didn't check out. In this episode, you'll hear from the preacher-turned-private-eye determined to finger the real killer of Nona Dirksmeyer. What did you think when you saw that? Um, well, we felt like we were headed in the right direction. You'll hear how a man acquitted remained a man accused. The defense attorney said,

we're going to prove that Kevin Jones did it just because he's been acquitted. Does not mean he's not guilty. And you'll hear how a detective who prided himself on gathering evidence... It's my job to find it, sir, and I'm good at it. ...failed to gather enough of it, and failed to verify the alibi of a potential suspect with a history of violence against women. He could not have thought he had a good alibi. These notes prove that. It doesn't hold up. Not at all. He knew. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Murder in Apartment 12, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 5, Receipts.

Something was up with Gary Dunn that night, though Jennifer, his wife, couldn't quite put her finger on it at the time. He'd picked her up after her shift at Walmart that afternoon, as usual, but when she slid into the front seat of their car, she noticed his hair was wet. He smelled of soap, as if he'd just taken a shower. Gary told Jennifer he'd spent the day cleaning the apartment. Strange, she thought. He'd never done that before.

After picking up the kids and hitting the drive-thru at Sonic, the Dunn family had headed for home. The whole way, Gary was silent as a stone. The only sound in the car, the rustling of paper bags as the kids forged for the last of the french fries. The date was December 15, 2005. Jennifer watched her husband as he stared straight ahead at the road. And then, they rounded the corner

and the red brick Englewood apartment complex came into view. Flashing red lights stabbed the chalky black sky above the complex. Emergency vehicles filled the parking lot in front of their apartment. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the night air. First thing I thought was the drug books. That's Gary Dunn talking. When I pulled up from my driveway, we seen this white van.

It's a corner on the side. And then I started wondering what happened. And we talked to our neighbors. According to neighbors, the young woman who lived in number 12 was dead, maybe murdered. Gary didn't like the sound of that. I've only seen her a couple times. Gary was on parole. Cops made him nervous.

He'd just gotten out of prison eight months earlier, where he'd been doing time for attacking a female jogger back in 2002. Gary knew the cops would be on him like white on rice at the first sign of trouble in his vicinity, an attack on another young woman. Well, that was a recipe for trouble. So when police went around asking neighbors if they'd seen anything odd that day,

Gary told them. Is that where my house is working? Yes, he told the cops he was miles away from the apartment complex that day. Busy, busy, busy. Sanding and painting a room in his mother's house. At around lunchtime, he said, they ran out to Lowe's for some paint rollers and pans. I was lugging something and we went to the Lowe's. We walked around for a little bit.

Saw back at my mom's house to check on the cats and stuff. Gary assured the cops his mother, Martha, could vouch for his whereabouts, could even show them the receipts from the trip to Lowe's. The police seemed to accept all that at face value as they stood outside the Dunn's apartment that night. But later, five days after the murder of Nona Dirksmeyer, Gary Dunn's parole officer placed a call to the Russellville Police Department. Gary Dunn, he told them, an ex-con with a history

of violence toward women, lived in the same apartment complex as Nona Dirksmeyer, which, according to lead detective Mark Frost, was quite a surprise. I didn't know he was on parole. Okay. I had no knowledge of when he got out of the penitentiary. To be fair, it was another cop who collected Dunn's alibi night of the murder. But if Detective Frost wasn't aware

Gary Dunn was out of prison or where he lived, he certainly knew who he was. Back in 2002, Frost was the lead investigator in the jogger case that sent Gary Dunn to prison. I had been called about a female being assaulted at Bonadio Park while she was jogging, and that they had Gary Dunn in custody, and they believed that he was the one

that had carried out the assault. It was a brutal attack on a warm summer day. Dunn was sitting on a park bench when a slender blonde jogger came into view. She came running by. He was watching her as she ran by, and his statement to me was, she looked at him and said, what are you looking at? And he said, I got mad and I ran her down. According to the jogger, Dunn hit her in the head with a tree branch

and choked her while twisting her head like a bottle cap. Kept saying he was going to effing kill her. Somehow, the jogger got away. She ended up getting back to her car. Gary Dunn was given a six-year prison term for that assault, but was released from prison after 18 months. Detective Frost knew he needed to follow up on Gary Dunn. He was a person of interest to me.

But Frost didn't get around to talking with Dunn's parole officer until December 22nd, two days after learning that a convicted felon had been living across the parking lot from a murder victim. Remember, December 22nd, 2005, was the day of Nona's funeral, the day the Russellville police announced they had a suspect in their sights. In fact, they'd already told Nona's parents that Kevin Jones was their primary suspect. Given that, some suspect the Russellville police may have been reluctant to change course and seriously consider whether anyone other than Kevin Jones could have killed Nona. Gary, this is Bill Glover.

Hello, sir. How you doing? You wouldn't just have a seat over here if you don't care. Yes, sir. But on December 29, 2005, one week after all but publicly naming Kevin Jones as their primary suspect, the Russellville police asked Gary Dunn to come in for questioning. Do you have a right to remain silent? Yes, sir. Where Kevin Jones had gotten a six-hour grilling from three different investigators,

Gary Dunn was treated to a low-key chat with polygrapher Bill Glover. How long have you been living in this apartment? I want to say about eight months. 800-few-pair rent. 385. 385 a month. It's kind of cheap, isn't it? It's a good deal.

I mean, we can pass it up for 385 a month. With a black ball cap covering his red hair and his arms folded across the Phantom of the Opera T-shirt he was wearing, Gary Dunn looked completely at ease as he answered routine medical questions. The last time he was examined by a doctor. Years. It's been years since then. Can't remember for what reason.

Well, it was for my rider. I got rider's simplex. It's a heart and circulation problem. How do you say that? It's rider's simplex. It's a heart and circulation problem. How do you say that? It's rider's simplex. It's heart and circulation. As Bill Glover started hooking Gary Dunn up to the polygraph machine, he noticed a cut on the finger of Gary's right hand. Did you get that somewhere right there? Sure, somewhere. Roofing there.

That's not enough time. No, it's okay. Just roll. Somewhere right there. Somewhere. Roofing there. That's not enough time. No, that's okay. Just roll. Unlike Kevin Jones, whose hand, chest, and forehead were all photographed, Gary Dunn's finger was not photographed at all. Instead, Glover moved on. He told Gary what questions he was going to ask,

assured him there would be no questions he wasn't prepared for. Gary, through this test, just breathe normal. Don't take any deep breaths or anything like that, okay? And then it began. Did you cause the death of Nona Dirksmeyer on December 15th? No. Prior to 2005, did you ever harbor her in freedom? No. When it was over, polygrapher Bill Glover said this.

If the polygrapher was looking for a reaction, a moment of shock or a loud protest of innocence, he didn't get it. Gary Dunn merely shrugged and yawned and said, That seemed to be enough for polygrapher Bill Glover. He did a sudden 180. And with that. And with that, Gary Dunn is free to go. Appreciate you coming in. As for Gary Dunn's alibi the day Nona was killed, well, that was good.

Or at least, that's what Prosecutor David Gibbons was led to believe. It wasn't until months after the Kevin Jones trial, in the fall of 2007, that anyone even gave Gary Dunn a second look. Remember Todd Steffi, the preacher and part-time cop who'd worked with the Jones defense team? Well, the results of that DNA sample Steffi had collected from Gary Dunn during a burglary investigation were back. And there it was, plain as day. Dunn's DNA matched the DNA taken from the condom wrapper found in Nona's apartment. Todd Steffi remembers the day he got that news and the conference call he had with Kevin Jones' defense attorneys,

Michael Robbins and Kenny Johnson. I told them, guys, I'm no longer just somebody's friend giving input on a case. I am a law enforcement officer with evidence in a murder case. And Kenny Johnson said, by all means, you guys head down to the prosecutor's office. Soon after Steffi and Robbins told Pope County Prosecutor David Gibbons about the DNA test results, Gibbons went to see the state's special prosecutor, Jack McQuarrie, and asked him to take over the case. David Gibbons, when he came up there to me, he said, Jack, I just felt like my stomach had been punched because he had already prosecuted Gary Dunn for the attack of the woman, the jogger, in a park up there in Russellville. That's the voice of Jack McQuarrie. He said, Jack, he said, the guy that they have the DNA on, he said, I sent to the pen. And he said, he fits it to a T. And I could probably try this case, but I'm afraid since we tried Kevin Jones first that everybody's just going to sit there and go, oh, look, he didn't convict Kevin Jones.

So now he's just going down the line. And he said, and that would not be fair to Nona. Back to square one. State Police Investigator Stacy Rhodes was chosen to lead a new investigation into the murder of Nona Dirksmeyer, and Todd Steffi was asked to assist her. Their first step? Review everything the Russellville Police did and didn't do the first time. When you get a DNA match, you then back up and revisit that alibi.

And yes, I did go back and revisit his alibi. Gary Dunn's alibi was that he'd been with his mother all day, painting a room in her house, and later buying paint rollers and pans at Lowe's. Said his mother had the receipt. He had turned in a receipt. Stacey and I found that it was for the wrong time of day and for the wrong product. Not what he said he bought and not when he said he bought it. Right.

It didn't exclude him at the time the murder occurred. Right. So naturally, of course, they wanted to see the security camera video from Lowe's. If Gary Dunn and his mother were there around 11 or 11.30

the morning Nona was killed, they'd certainly show up on camera wouldn't they well maybe but as todd stuffy discovered by the time the russellville investigators got around to asking the store for the video that day it had been recorded over i think for lowes it was like 90 days something like that and so it was well past that when I came on board. There was no hope of me obtaining that. Might have answered a lot of questions for the people who were initially investigating.

I think it could have substantiated some answers that we have already. Yeah. You discovered he did not go to that Lowe's store at the time he said he did. Right. And the video would have proved that. Well, yes.

But even absent that bit of video, they had enough. One year after Kevin Jones' acquittal, Gary Dunn was arrested and charged with murder. For many in Russellville, that news came as a shock. Their impression had been that Kevin Jones murdered Nona Dirksmeyer, and an out-of-town jury had let him, a guilty man, go free. Now they were being asked to believe that their local police had botched the investigation, and that state investigators had actually caught the real killer. A lot of people around town found that hard to believe. The question was, could a special prosecutor prove it? They came from all over Johnson County in their dusty pickups and shiny new sedans,

driving country roads past trees and fields lush with new green. Each had a common destination that April morning. They were headed to the county courthouse in Clarksville, each with a jury summons in hand. For three days, they sat in a 75-year-old courtroom under the distinguished gaze of dead jurists. Some prayed to be dismissed. Others hoped to be chosen.

To hear evidence in one of the most sensational murder cases in Arkansas history. They asked if we had any knowledge of the people involved. Of course, small town, everybody reads the newspaper. That's Corey Highfield, a firefighter in the Forest involved. Of course, small town, everybody reads the newspaper. That's Corey Highfield, a firefighter in the Forest Service, one of the 12 jurors and two alternates chosen out of a field of over 150 potential jurors. I told them early on that I could set aside everything I knew and everything I'd read, and I was going to try to and base it exclusively on the information that was provided. The prosecution's case against Gary Dunn

was essentially a big tent of circumstantial evidence supported by two poles. Gary Dunn's DNA on the condom wrapper and Gary Dunn's lies about where he'd been the day Nona Dirksmeyer died. The DNA on the condom wrapper, Jack McQuarrie told the jury, was a match. Not a 100% match, not one of those quintillion to one things, but close, close enough.

You'll never get a DNA true expert to say, oh, it's a match because they just won't do that. And so it was in the numbers that it was well over the population of the United States, which for all intents and purposes is pretty much a match. Pretty much. When you get from a small town and you've excluded everyone else in the United States, as far as that goes. As for Gary Dunn's alibi,

the special prosecutor had no doubt that he lied about going to Lowe's with his mother that day. The receipt that would supposedly have proved he was there when Nona was murdered, it turned out it was for a different day altogether. And even his mother had been a little shaky when pressed by the state investigators. Supposedly his mother was with him. And she told everybody he was with me that entire day.

Yeah. But when the investigator talked to her, she said, well, I asked him, Gary, did you have anything to do with this? And he told me, no, mama, I didn't have anything to do with it at all. But the investigator was sharp enough. He asked her, if he was with you all day long, why would you even ask him if he had anything to do with this? And she started crawfishing, going, uh, well, uh, uh, uh. And the only thing she could say is, well, you know, he's been known to lie before, but no, no, I forgot he was with me. Wow. There might well have been other evidence of Dunn's guilt as well, the prosecutor argued, if not for the original sin in this case, the incompetent handling of the crime scene investigation by the Russellville Police Department. Evidence not secured, surfaces not fingerprinted, DNA swabs never even attempted on items that could very well have had the killer's DNA on them.

There was a tremendous amount of blood in the carpet in that living room. Well, in there by the kitchen sink is a large orange bottle of carpet cleaner with an orange twist-off top on it. And the twist-off top was laying to the side of the carpet cleaner. Now, Nona wasn't real hip on cleaning her own apartment very much. Her mother used to stop by there and clean it for her every so often. But I asked her mom, I said, did Nona ever clean her own carpets? And she's like, oh, my God, no, Jack. But this orange bottle sitting there, fluorescent orange right by the sink, and no one ever tested it for DNA. The special prosecutor intended to ask for the death penalty. And because of that, there was one witness he did not call.

The jogger. The woman Gary Dunn attacked in Bonadilla Park back in 2002. Oh, it was great evidence. But death penalty cases can be very tricky. And Jack McQuarrie said he knew that if he raised a prior conviction like that in a capital case, it might cause big problems down the road. If there's enough there that can connect it to the case that you're actually trying, generally you can use that evidence. But in a death penalty case, the scrutiny on appeals is so strong on that,

we didn't want to make any, you know, large errors on it to have to retry this thing again many years later. Without testimony from the jogger to show a pattern of behavior, the prosecutor turned to another woman who knew how volatile Gary Dunn could be. That was his now estranged wife, Jennifer. Though spouses rarely testify against each other in criminal trials, Jennifer's testimony was allowed under Arkansas law because the court found that Gary had asked her to lie to police about his alibi. She was actually a pretty good breath of fresh air to us on it.

Jennifer Dunn had a story to tell, all right. A brutal story of spousal abuse. Marital rape. Jennifer testified that Gary liked rough sex and choked her. He liked anal sex and used a condom.

Which could be not unlike the condom whose wrapper police found near Nona's body. Sometimes, said Jennifer, she'd wake up in the middle of the night and Gary would be gone. One of those nights was about two weeks before Nona Dirksmeyer was murdered. And she actually testified that there was one time that she caught him down there. At Nona's place? At Nona's at like 2 or 3 in the morning.

Yeah. And she said, I got upset with Nona. And Nona kept trying to tell me, no, there's nothing going on. And she said, I just told her, shut the hell up. Why do you have a married man down here at your place at two or three in the morning? It wasn't till later that the penny dropped, said Jennifer. Nona didn't invite him. Gary invited himself.

And she said, now I realize, no, it wasn't her. It was him. And so she had no doubt whatsoever. A compelling story, yes. But here's the thing about Jennifer Dunn. She had lived a hard life, and on the stand, it showed. Mind you, she had two kids to support. Her husband had been in prison. By the time of the trial, to pay the rent, she was working as a stripper in Oklahoma. I hate to try and say that, you know,

gosh, if you have tattoos, they're not going to believe you, or if you were a stripper, they're not going to believe you. But I can tell you this, that Jennifer was doing everything and anything she could to put food on the table for her child. And part of that was being a stripper. Sure. People will make moral judgments whether it's appropriate or not. Yeah. Right. Though she likely knew she'd be discredited by the defense, and perhaps others too, Jennifer sat there on the stand and testified to the terrible things her husband had done to her. As he sat, just a few feet away, watching her. And when it was time for his defense, it boiled down to this. Gary Dunn couldn't have killed Nona Dirksmeyer, his lawyers argued, because Kevin Jones did.

There was no case against Gary Dunn to start with. It was some hopped-up numbers on DNA and some confused family members that said things that didn't completely jive two years later. That's defense attorney Bill James. There was certainly sufficient evidence, really more evidence than Kevin did it, than actually that Mr. Dunn did it. And so began the second trial of Kevin Jones.

The alleged argument over another man, the timeline, the bloody palm print, the whole works. In the defense's telling, practically everyone who supported Kevin's alibi was a liar. It is a lie. They are lying. Pizza Boy's lying.

Kevin's lying. His mother's lying. Absolutely. Even Kevin's grandmother, according to Bill James, was lying. She knows everything he does that particular day, but nothing he does the day before. You don't believe her? Not at all. She was protecting her grandchild. To say that Bill James is a combative defender, well, that would be an understatement.

He's a sumo wrestler in a suit, bulky and ponderous and ferocious as a raging bull. His partner in this case, Jeff Rosenzweig, was more nuanced but no less aggressive when discrediting witnesses against his client, Gary Dunn, especially Jennifer. Well, the wife story is ridiculous. That's Jeff Rosenzweig. She was lying? Absolutely, she was lying. Wait a minute. She was lying when she said he liked rough sex and violent sex.

That he liked to sodomize her, raped her. So when she's saying he treated her really horribly. Can we take a break for a minute, please? Yeah, sure. It was at this point that Bill James, unprepared perhaps for this line of questioning,

unclipped his microphone and walked away. Our cameras kept rolling, of course. What? Bullshit. What's bullshit? I mean, this is not, I understand who I represent. Right.

And I understand that y'all can put whatever spin you're on it, but I'm going to sit here and feel like I'm on Nancy Grace. I mean, this is, I'm not, I'm not. I'm challenging your client's story. I understand that. And you can respond in any I'm not. I'm challenging your client's story. I understand that. And you can respond in any way you want. I understand I can respond. You can respond by walking out the door like a chicken too, if you want.

Okay. Come on, you're an attorney. After a few minutes, tempers cooled and Bill James returned to his seat and our interview resumed. And we turned our attention to Gary Dunn's alibi. That trip to Lowe's with his mom. They asked for receipts. They found receipts. That's Jeff Rosenzweig again.

They gave it to the police department. He did what they asked him to do. Except it wasn't for that day. Well, he did what he cooperated in full. Certainly there were some conflicts, and it didn't absolutely solidify where he was in the time frames. As for the issue of Dunn's DNA on the condom wrapper, the defense countered with an expert of its own who questioned the math and method of the prosecution's expert. There were two sets of calculations.

One is the minifiler stuff, and then second the so-called Y-fraction. For a full day, the warm courtroom buzzed with talk of alleles and racial groups and statistical comparisons. It was dense testimony and an effective

sleep aid, frankly. But as a defense strategy, it seemed to work. And I think Jeff did a very good job in teaching them and showing them. But if you do it long enough, the glaze over problem occurs. Absolutely. And people discount it, but you want them to discount it. It depends on what you're discounting. However, how did that condom wrapper get into the apartment?

I mean, did it just fly across the parking lot or something? You know, Ms. Turchmar had many friends, and you know, and who knows? And again, the DNA was not, it was never said that it was Gary's. He just could not be excluded. Now that doesn't mean it's Gary. After two weeks of testimony,

the jury began reviewing all that they had heard. It was just one catch. One of the jurors couldn't stop thinking about something that was never mentioned at trial. Something that might just sway the other jurors. The End glanced around the room with the other jurors. He wondered how many knew what he did about Gary Dunn's past. But he didn't know how to ask without getting into trouble. When we got into deliberation, I was under the impression that the previous conviction that Gary Dunn had was probably not something that could be discussed.

But you assumed that everybody in the room probably knew about it. I assumed that at least half probably did. The elephant in the room seemed to be sitting on Corey's chest. It was one of those deals that I couldn't talk about without kind of spilling my guts. You know, I couldn't say, guys, can we talk about this? Because then we'll talk about it. Yeah. It was significant enough that I couldn't

just put it away. So Corey decided to write a note to the judge. A note that asked if Gary Dunn's prior conviction might be considered common knowledge and discussed in deliberations, since it had been widely reported in the press. Sent it to the judge. It shut everything down. We got to go home that night. Came back late the next morning. Who wrote this note? The judge asked the jurors. Corey raised his hand.

Then one by one, the judge called each juror to the bench, fishing in a delicate way to determine who knew about Gary Dunn's prior conviction for attacking the jogger. I didn't know, and nobody else knew. That's the voice of the jury foreman, Gary Upton. Gary had recently retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He did say, can you render this verdict on the evidence, not anything else? One by one, all 12 jurors returned to the jury room. And then, number 13 came through the door.

Right at the last, this other girl walked in and said, I'm alternate to take Corey's place. I thought, what? I was kind of shocked. What happened? After sitting through two weeks of testimony, Corey Highfield was out. He didn't deliberate. But later he reunited with three other jurors to talk about the trial.

I had no idea that some of the stuff we would see and be forced to consider would have the effect it did. Really? Like what? Crime scene photos, the autopsy, stuff like that. I didn't think that would bother me like it did. That was my biggest surprise. It was hard to see, especially such a pretty young girl. That's Tanya Ways, another juror.

Tanya is a married mother of two. You had to ask for a little guidance to kind of help you through it. When I'd get up in the morning, when I left home, the minute I got where I could drive with one hand, I put the other hand on the Bible. And that's Dane Arbaugh, a retired construction worker. You wanted to do what was right. You were searching for the truth. Make the right decision.

Make the right decisions, if any way possible. For 15 hours, these honest and well-meaning people struggled to find consensus. Well, it got pretty loud a few times. Some people say, we don't have enough evidence. Yes, we do. What about the timeline? They rehashed the case against Kevin Jones and reviewed Gary Dunn's alibi.

And that was a little confusing. Both of the alibis, they both had holes in them. They groped for clarity in the deluge of conflicting DNA testimony. The DNA placed him at least touching that condom wrapper in some fashion or another. They talked about the holes in Gary Dunn's alibi, yes, but they debated also the credibility of his estranged wife, Jennifer.

I didn't think she was very credible. You know, there are going to be very few people with more hostile witnesses than the estranged wife. Everyone, it seemed, had strong opinions. But without overwhelming physical evidence to sway them, the jurors dug in. We couldn't get enough together to make a definite agreement as to what we should do. I felt in my heart he was guilty, and I wasn't going to move. I wish the state would have had more evidence. And they didn't.

They didn't. The prosecution believed what they were selling. They just didn't have enough. In the end, the jurors deadlocked. Eight not guilty, four guilty. The judge declared a mistrial. Had testimony been presented to show that he attacked that girl on a jogging path and appeared to be trying to rape and kill her, choke her, would that have significantly influenced the way you looked at the evidence?

Probably. Well, it didn't me because I was saying guilty all along. It would just reinforce what I already felt. Dean, what about you? It could have. We tried hard. I don't think you could pick a better jury in Arkansas. Well, you take it this way.

You go get 12 more, and you go through the same thing we did. There's going to be one, I'm afraid, that's not going to go with the verdict of duty. So what to do? Well, for months, Special Prosecutor Jack McCrory stewed about it, worried about what had gone wrong, what he might do differently.

What wasn't in doubt was his determination to convict Gary Dunn for that horrible murder of Nona Dirksmeyer. And after nine months, he once again seated a Clarksville jury. But this time, his strategy would change. This time, the jury would hear from the jogger, who said she'd barely

escaped death at the hands of Gary Dunn. Next on Murder in Apartment 12. I think there's a couple things that should be known about the case against Kevin Jones. I mean, it's sort of clear.

We had to fight not only to find someone guilty, but we also had to fight to find someone not guilty again. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, how did this other jury, you know, 12-0, you know, acquit Kevin Jones? My feeling is that he'll never have any involvement with the criminal justice system again. He followed her all the way to her house. He blocked her in. He got out of his car and tried to open her driver's door.

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 Corbo Cole as executive producer, and David Corbo

as senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes as technical director, sound mixing by Bob Mallory.