On December 15, 2005, 19-year-old Nona Dirksmeyer, sophomore music major at Arkansas Tech University, was found dead in her apartment. Recordings of two 911 calls were later released to the media. In one recording, a male caller reported that Dirksmeyer wasn’t breathing, and he thought she was dead. In another recording, Janice Jones, mother of Dirksmeyer’s boyfriend, Kevin Jones, said the following, “She’s lying naked on the carpet and she’s got blood all over her face”

In the same call, Janice Jones indicated that Nona Dirksmeyer might have had a “terrible accident.”

Little Rock, AR TV station KATV reported on December 22, 2005 that the state medical examiner’s office had found that Dirksmeyer died from “[M]ultiple blunt- and sharp-force injuries. The injuries included stab wounds to the back right side of the neck and superficial cuts on the front and right side of the neck, shoulder and ear.”

Nona Dirksmeyer’s death was no accident.

In an Associated Press report also published on the 22^nd, it was clear that Russellville Police knew two things Nona’s murder was not a random act, and the authorities had a good idea who killed her.

Otherwise, Russellville Police were playing their cards very close to the vest.

It was on the internet where evidence of suspicion was found.

Posting to an internet message board normally used for discussing events relevant to beauty pageants across Arkansas on December 19, 2005, someone using the name Kevin Jones wrote:

“(…)I am Nona’s boyfriend for about 5 years now and I, along with 2 other people, found Nona when this tragedy happened. I can’t say much about the investigation because we have not been told much about the investigation due to its nature. I can tell you, however, that the report released today about possible strangulation was a misquote from the Pope County Coroner. Just remember that nothing is official until the police release a formal statement, for they are always the first to know any information. Everyone who is close to her appreciates all the prayers that are being made for her and us. It is our one wish that if one of you are approached by the media to simply say you have no comment. Anything said no matter how small could be detrimental to the case and nobody wants that. I would like to thank all of you who supported and who still do support Nona. Please continue to pray for us and her, even though we all know that she is in a much better place than we are.”

Another poster who claimed to be Duane Dipert, Nona Dirksmeyer’s stepfather, wrote on February 10, 2006:

“I am Duane Dipert, Nona’s stepfather. I have a comment for Kevin. Look up “sociopath” on the internet. Then look in the mirror.”

As a beauty pageant contestant, Nona Dirksmeyer’s platform the social issue of most concern to her was child abuse.  Nona did not choose this issue lightly. Reporting in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on January 29, 2006, journalist Debra Hale-Shelton explained why Nona had even entered the world of pageants as a contestant in the first place:

“Nona hoped that ‘if she won Miss Arkansas, she’d be able to go around to the schools and educate people about child abuse,’ [Carol, Nona’s mother] Dipert said.

“Initially, Dipert said, Nona picked sexual abuse of children as her platform but scaled it back.

‘She said people didn’t want to hear’ about sex crimes, Dipert said.

“Dipert believes the competitions helped her daughter, who was the reigning Miss Petit Jean Valley when she died”

The article related that the reason Nona Dirksmeyer chose the issue was because she herself had been a victim of sexual abuse as a child. In high school Nona’s best friend, Chelsea Huckaby, revealed to her mother Margie that Nona was cutting herself. Nona was able to talk to her own mother about the abuse then, and she began to get help. In part, her focus on music as a vocalist and her participation in pageants was directly related to having survived such demons. When she was murdered in December, 2005, Nona Dirksmeyer was really beginning to live.

Kevin Jones has not been mentioned as a person of interest in any mainstream media outlet and the Russellville Police have been publicly quiet where Jones is concerned. In mid-February, 2006, it appeared that an arrest of someone might be imminent, as an AP article was published wherein a local prosecutor stated that a suspect would be arrested “relatively soon.”

A month later, there was still no arrest, and many people close to the investigation were growing anxious over the delay.

A source familiar with the investigation directed me to the message board discussion allegedly begun by Kevin Jones, and also was able to provide me with some information about Kevin’s presence on the internet. Jones was into online games as well as athletics. As a student at Dover High in Dover, AR, Kevin played baseball and was an excellent student. Like Nona, he participated in the music program.

Kevin Jones was “deuce_ace” in his MSN profile. There he listed his age, (20), and stated that his occupation was “professional gas pumper.” This was perhaps a joking allusion to occasionally working at the service station owned by Kevin’s parents, Janice and Hiram.   My source stated that Kevin liked to “drink and play cards” on the weekends, and perhaps the “deuce_ace” nick was a reference to his love of card games.

Using the same e-mail associated with his MSN profile as well as the nickname “Deuce,” Kevin posted to message boards about car audio and online game play. There he used the nick “Warhammer” and at one time ran a gameplay team named “New Age Souljahs.”

In short, there was nothing sinister about his online presence, unless one considers a large majority of twenty-something college guys sinister, in general.

Chelsea Huckaby, Nona’s best friend who brought out the truth about Nona’s cutting and the abuse she’d endured as a child, does not believe Kevin had anything to do with his girlfriend’s death, either. If she ever did, she has yet to write about it.

Shortly after Nona Dirksmeyer’s murder, Chelsea wrote poetically of her murdered friend in an online journal (using the words from the Broadway musical, Rent):

“how do you  measure a life?

“in daylights? in sunsets? in midnights? in cups of coffee? in inches? in miles?  in laughter?  strife?  in truth that she learned?  in times that she cried? in bridges she burned? or the way that she died?

“how about love?”

Then a few days later Chelsea Huckaby was more openly emotional, writing in part:

“i want to talk to her again.  i want her to talk back to me.  i want to pull god out of the sky and make him look me in the face and tell me why.  i want to know why.  i want to get really drunk but i can’t.  i want to sleep forever but i can’t.  i want to stop this cycle of denial.  i want to understand my feelings.  i want to go far far away and stop thinking about this.  i want to be with jim and kevin and nobody else for the rest of eternity”

As often happens with those who cared for someone who was murdered, the pain Chelsea felt from losing Nona did not appear to abate in the months following the beautiful young soprano’s murder. In February of 2006 small things still stung:

“you know what makes me feel like absolute shit?  when i open my phone and i see old text messages from nona.  when i see her name in my phonebook, and for one split second i think “god i should call her, havent seen her in a long time.. i miss her” and then i realize i can’t hear her voice.  i realize and for a few more seconds, my heart shatters.  and then it goes away because i make it ()

“nobody really understood how close we were.  nobody will ever know what kind of friendship we had.  i don’t care who you are, you will never ever get it because you didnt experience it.  i dont want to be bitchy, but i was there for all the stuff that nobody else had to see.  and it was terrible.  i just want someone to see that, someone to recognize that i put so much effort into keeping her happy and now it’s for nothing.  i miss her”

In January of 2006 it was clear from Chelsea’s blogging that dealing with the police for any reason related to the investigation into Nona’s murder was stressful and depressing. In an otherwise scattershot online journal entry Chelsea wrote the following:

“i have 3 more things to say:

1)  i hate rumors

2)  i hate talking to lawyers/police… its depressing as hell

3)  i hate when lawyers/police ruin things for me.. like moving back into my dorm or seeing my friends or my life in general”

Police have been very close to the vest on details of their investigation, which leaves the public, especially on the message boards and in blogs, to speculate over some of the unusual details of the case:

Nona was found nude, but she had not been sexually assaulted.  Kevin Jones, Friend Ryan Whiteside, and apparently Janice Jones discovered Nona’s body. She’d been brutally battered about the upper body and stabbed, which made Janice Jones comment that Nona was the victim of an “accident” seem strange in retrospect. 

There was another odd thing. The same day someone using Kevin Jones’s name posted to Miss Arkansas Pageant message board was reportedly the date of Nona’s funeral. Perhaps the poster wasn’t Kevin Jones at all since it seemed like a strange thing to do around the time his girlfriend of 5 years was buried.

Chelsea Huckaby, a week after Nona’s murder, didn’t seem to suspect Kevin Jones she was a prolific enough blogger that some discussion of any suspicions she had would surely have made it into her weblog. She wrote instead of wanting to just be with “Jim and Kevin.”

Police have said that they don’t believe that Nona’s murder was a random act, which causes people to speculate that it could have been someone she knew. The messages left under the names Kevin Jones and Duane Dipert on the beauty pageant message board have further fueled the rumor mill.

Whoever it really is that posts on the Miss Arkansas message board as Duane Dipert has increased the speculation. This individual left this message shortly after the “sociopath” post:

“Anybody who reads the papers and reads between the lines knows who the murderer is. Carol (Nona’s mom) and I, as well as the cops, know who he is, too, after hearing the evidence. The part of “sociopath” you need to read is the part about showing no remorse….as well as other characteristics Read between the lines!”

Television drama teaches the viewer that crime investigation can seem neatly wrapped up in an hour. Nothing is further from the truth. Many murder investigations take decades to come to a resolution. Sometimes there will people of interest who seem utterly convincing to the public reading newspapers or watching TV then DNA will be tested or some new breakthrough in forensic science will render all suspicion moot.

Some who are privy to details about the investigation into Nona Dirksmeyer’s murder believe there will be an arrest very soon but to many of them, the days, weeks and months since Nona’s murder have already stretched beyond what their need for answers, their need for justice, can stand.

source:http://www.crimelibrary.com/news/original/0306/2201_beauty_queen_murder.html

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