>> joe, i know we will see each other again. in the meantime, please do watch over our children and do protect them from harm. joe, i thank you for being such a great, loving husband and

with big ambitions. then a brutal attack shattered their dreams. it was a crime that would shake a small southern town to its core and pit a family against the community they called home. here's keith morrison with "what happened to the beauty queen?" >> look at her. look at the young woman at the heart of our story. you can see how lovely she is. the young beauty queen.

can you see her vulnerability? by now your first impression is probably locked in. it's very unlikely to change, and certainly that's how it was in russellville, arkansas, a town where a first impression hardened like a patch of cement. about her and also, for better or worse, about the young man accused of killing her. >> the boyfriend who found the body. >> the boyfriend who found the body. >> first impressions die hard, including first impressions of murder. and years later in this small southern town, we had to ask, can they ever change? of course, that question is quite obvious now to kevin jones, but years ago he didn't give a fig whom he impressed or who didn't. all he knew was this -- he was going places. he was from a good family. lived near a wonderful city called russellville and was well liked. oh, and was adored by one girl

in particular, his high school sweetheart nona dirksmeyer. >> so she was kind of like a soul mate, i suppose. >> yeah. i was closer to her than anybody else. >> he was going to marry her someday. she was, after all, about the prettiest girl in town. local beauty pageant judges were wowed by her looks and poise. they had already crowned her as such. but here's another truth her boyfriend came to realize. beauty really isn't everything. nona was a sometimes troubled girl given to bouts of emotional turmoil. her mother carol was grateful to kevin for making her daughter happy. >> kevin was really interested in helping nona get through some of the hard times she was having. he seemed to be a really caring person. >> he even brought nona into his own family. his mom janice, dad hiram treated her as one of their own.

>> she was not a girlfriend or whatever. she was a -- she was our family. >> when it was time for kevin to go off to college, he and nona stayed in touch and in love through a wireless world of late night chats, texts and emoticons. when he wouldn't respond promptly she'd wag her finger at him. >> she would send me text messages saying "are you still alive?" sarcastically, trying to get my attention. >> which is why he was so taken aback that day a little more than a week before christmas in 2005. it was december 15th. nona uncharacteristically hadn't reached out to him or answered him since morning. at one point he turned her old taunt back on her, texting, "you alive?" even then she didn't respond. this was not like nona. >> 4 1/2 years we had made a pattern, and that's what we did every day. and if that pattern is broken,

it just kind of raised a red flag in my head, why is she not responding? >> were you worried? >> i was concerned. >> who knows why things work out the way they do? on that particular night kevin was supposed to drive his mom janice to a christmas party. she remembers being in the car with him. >> and i said, well, you know, there's lots of reasons why she might not be answering her phone, you know. maybe her plans changed. >> but by now kevin could think of nothing else. he called his buddy ryan, who delivered pizza near nona's apartment, asked him to check on her. and ryan called back with something eerie. nona's car was in the lot. her house lights were on. but she wasn't answering the door. >> and i said, okay, i'm going to come over there. >> they pulled up to nona's front door. ryan was still there. kevin joined him. >> ryan and i knocked and knocked and rang the doorbell. nobody came. and we started to get a little frantic. >> so the two men ran around the condo to nona's back door.

kevin says he rushed up to the sliding glass door without taking a moment to look inside. >> so when i was grabbing the handle, ryan touched me and he said, "do you not see her?" i looked at him and he said, dude, there she is. she was laying in her front room. >> nona wasn't moving. kevin threw open the unlocked door and rushed inside. >> ryan at one point let my mom in the front door. they called 911 pretty soon after that. >> her name is nona dirksmeyer. >> nona dirksmeyer? >> i straddled her midsection. my knees were on the ground above her midsection. >> he tried cpr but she wasn't breathing. in her eyes, usually so luminous, there was no light. there was nothing at all.

>> and i talked to her and just prayed that everything was going to be okay until the ems got there. >> soon the little apartment was overwhelmed by paramedics and police. it wasn't long before an officer took kevin aside. janice listened as her son's voice suddenly rose above the chaos. >> then i heard him cry out. >> with a howl? >> yeah, that's what it was. and then he asked them if she was dead. and they affirmed, yes, she was. >> nona was gone. nothing kevin could do about it. and as he tried to absorb the enormity of what had happened, he heard a policeman ask, could he come downtown, please? they had a few questions about what happened to nona. >> coming up -- did kevin know what happened? police seemed to think so. >> did you fight recently? >> we never been in a fight. >> and watch what happened when police were not asking

questions. >> oh, my god! please tell me what am i going to do? >> when "dateline" continues. nus [ fizz ] joining meeting. [ coughing ] [ gasping ] skip to cold relief fast with alka seltzer plus severe power fast fizz. dissolves quickly, instantly ready to start working. ♪ oh, what a relief it is so fast. wthe natural light is amazing. hardwood floors. there is a bit of a clogging problem. (clog dancing)

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powerful relief so you can restore and recover. theraflu hot beats cold. in pictures, nona dirksmeyer forever radiates promise and beauty. but there is something ugly that lives on, too. her death and the way she was so brutally taken. nona's mother carol knew it was bad. the moment she arrived that night to see police at nona's apartment. >> i told them i wanted to see my baby. they told me, of course, you can't. they had the crime scene tape up and everything.

>> the police told carol it was horribly obvious nona had been murdered. but they were on the case, they told her. in fact, they were already trying to break down nona's last moments on earth. >> when had you last spoken with her? >> 1:00 last night i called her from my house phone. >> questioning the man who may have known her best. >> were you in a fight recently? >> we've never been in a fight. >> kevin jones seemed eager to help the police figure out who killed his girlfriend. he readily agreed to go to the station that night to answer a few routine questions. >> i called her all day and she didn't answer. i thought maybe her phone was dead. >> but as kevin careened from what looked like disbelief to grief. to anger. and back again. >> a couple questions. >> a few questions turned into many. >> did you have a key to the apartment? >> yes.

>> and were pointed. >> did you hurt her? >> i promise you, i would never -- i would kill myself before i hurt her. >> they would leave me alone in the room. they would ask me questions. >> oh, my god. oh, please tell me what am i going to do? >> after a while the police told kevin, you could go home. they had other people to talk to, young men nona had been seeing while kevin was away at college. but it wasn't long before the detectives determined the alibis of the other men checked out. and six days later, as he prepared to say good-bye to nona at the funeral home, police asked him to come back to the police station. >> could i get a drink of water? >> you bet. >> after about 20 minutes' worth of questions they asked if i would teak a polygraph test. >> what did you say? >> i said sure. >> so they strapped him up and ran through the innocuous

questions, and then -- >> did you cause the death of nona dirksmeyer? >> and then they went out, analyzed it, came back and said what? >> the man who gave it to me told me that he had not seen anybody fail a test worse in his 28 or-some-odd years of giving lie detector tests. >> kevin, there's no doubt in my mind that you killed her. >> the murder of the beauty queen was very big news in russellville. and given the nature of the crime and the victim so young and pretty and vulnerable, the pressure to solve it was quite intense. imagine how it was for the lead detective mark frost given this was his first homicide case. >> okay? >> we are done -- >> though as he talked to kevin frost sounded leek a veteran who'd seen it all and was disgusted. >> you did this. >> no. i'm telling you, you're dead [ bleep ] wrong. >> you killed her. >> i'm telling you right now. >> point blank.

>> no, i'm telling you right here. >> at this point it wasn't a questioning. it was more of them yelling at me, telling me they knew that i did it. >> listen. >> yet the police didn't arrest kevin that night. here's what they did instead. they told nona's mother that the young man she thought would be her son-in-law one day was in fact her daughter's killer. >> the first thing that i was told was that he was a sociopath with a narcissistic personality. >> nona had been stabbed repeatedly around the neck and chest and bashed in the head. the medical examiner said that was what killed nona. the police told carol this had to have been a personal attack, not something a stranger could have done, but kevin could have. so now carol had two shocks to absorb. >> i knew he'd done it. i knew in my heart it was someone she knew. she would never let anyone in the apartment she didn't know. >> so now kevin's horrifying discovery was subjected to a dark and troubling spin. detective mark frost said that

to him, the crime scene up there looked staged. and a week later there was a press conference, at which the police told the russellville public, don't worry, we know who committed this crime. police didn't mention the suspect's name just then, but it wasn't long before everybody in russellville knew perfectly well it was kevin jones. this is what appeared in the "russellville courier" three months after nona's murder. nona's killer remains free, and russellville police department has requested formal charges against one suspect. hiram jones is kevin's father. >> they tried, convicted and sentenced kevin within 90 days of it happening. if you was a stranger walking in a coffee shop visiting russellville and you read that, what would you think? >> it bothered kevin's mother janice something awful when bumper stickers "justice for nona" started cropping up. after all, she loved nona, too.

>> the assumption that i formed and i think many people formed was that justice for nona meant -- >> convict kevin? >> convict kevin. >> topping our news, police make an arrest in the murder of a 19-year-old arkansas beauty queen. >> on march 31st, 2006, not long after that courier article, police finally did announce the arrest of kevin jones for the murder of nona dirksmeyer. whether or not kevin was convicted in the court of public opinion was now apparently irrelevant. he was about to stand trial and quite possibly be convicted where it really mattered, a court of law. >> coming up -- a palm print in blood on the lamp used to kill nona. guess whose. >> no question it was his? >> no question it was his. >> but on another key piece of evidence? >> the dna was some other male's. >> when "dateline" continues. i.

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a small southern city. a local beauty queen murdered. her boyfriend accused of the crime. it was hard to be in russellville in 2007 and not be steeped in the story of nona dirksmeyer and kevin jones. >> this case probably had more statewide publicity than any criminal case in many, many years, perhaps ever, in arkansas. >> yet of course kevin had a right to a fair trial and

impartial jury. his lawyers argued that would be impossible in a place like russellville. so the venue was changed to the nearby city of ozark. >> the media spotlight is on the small northwest arkansas town of ozark as jury selection -- >> to the prosecutor the trial's location mattered little. what did matter was the evidence. and he believed there was enough of that to put kevin jones away for years. jeff phillips was the deputy prosecutor. >> we believed and i believed that the morning of her death kevin jones came in unexpectedly. >> when the trial opened in 2007 the prosecutor told the jury the reason for this crime was as old as the bible itself. jealous rage. kevin jones had walked into his lover's apartment that day in december of 2005 and found within it a cheating heart. >> while there discovered either a text message from another

person and/or a used condom wrapper on the counter. and things escalated from there. escalated out of control. >> and then the prosecutor said with jones repeatedly stabbing nona, then crushing her skull with a lamp base, left his palm print on the lamp's bulb. >> no question it was his? >> no question it was his. the defense didn't even make an issue that it was his. >> but it's what kevin did next, said the prosecutor, that showed how calculating he could be. kevin left nona's apartment, he said, with her dead on the floor, then waited through the afternoon until hours later when he could come back with his mother and friend to find nona's body. >> in my opinion an intentional attempt to be -- to have someone else find her but him. >> trying to make himself look innocent. if that wasn't telling enough, the prosecutors said, then surely this was.

kevin jones' police interview. right there the prosecutor told the jury was kevin's capacity for violence, in full view. sitting and listening to this, kevin's father worried how easy it might be for jurors to convict his son. >> it was just a nightmare. >> yet kevin's parents never wavered in their belief that their son was just as innocent as he told the police he was. they even bet the family farm on it. >> we put it up as collateral. >> and used the money to buy their son the best defense they could. and he needed it. kevin's lawyers knew, their client had become the local poster boy for evil. >> when you've got something that was this serious, that is this bad, this girl was brutally murdered -- >> somebody's got to pay. >> somebody has to pay. >> somebody. but not kevin, said attorney michael robbins. they sent the readout of that polygraph to an independent

expert who reported that the questions seemed designed to make sure kevin failed. and the rest of the state's evidence, said the defense, didn't wash either. that bloody palm print on the light bulb of the lamp, the murder weapon. attorney bill bristol agreed it was kevin print. and no wonder it was. kevin was frantically trying to save his girlfriend's life. so of course he could have touched the light bulb. >> it is a totally innocent situation. the blood got on the lightbulb at the time the body was discovered. >> when he's trying to revive her or something? >> yes. >> touched the lightbulb. >> the emt said the lamp was within a foot of the body. >> more disturbing? the evidence not collected by the police. said the defense, first-time homicide detective mark frost and the other officers in the department mucked up the case royally. >> the only area that was fingerprinted was the area around the body.

that there was blood near the front door. there was blood on the venetian blinds. empty condom wrapper a short distance from the body. the police go upstairs to see if that's been flushed. do not fingerprint the flush handle of the commode, don't dna that, don't dna anything up there. >> in fact, the defense did its own dna testing, on that condom wrapper. by the prosecution's account it was a key piece of evidence, the thing that likely set kevin off on his murderous rage. but think about it, said lead attorney kenny johnson. if kevin actually saw the condom wrapper, he would have picked it up, would have left his own dna on it. but -- >> we sent the prophylactic wrapper off to a lab, and they found the dna. the dna was some other male. >> someone else's dna, not kevin's. and probably, said the defense, that condom was used by the killer. but who?

neither defense nor prosecution had an answer for that. the dna didn't match anybody in the data base. and kevin's lawyers did have this. an alibi for their client. kevin's grandmother told the court he couldn't have killed nona because he was with her, miles away in the town of dover around the time the state said nona died. >> she is a genuine, down-to-earth, very levelheaded person. she was an incredible witness on the stand. >> but there was one compelling piece of evidence in the prosecution's case, said the defense, and they just wanted jurors to see more of it. that police video of kevin. >> she didn't deserve this. she deserved a life. >> the defense had jurors watch all of it. it was betting this image would convince jurors they should change what may have been that first impression and decide kevin wasn't the killer the prosecutors had painted but a grief-stricken young man who was

innocent. so what to believe? in the courthouse the jury wrestled with its verdict. 50 miles down the road in russellville the town cried for justice. if that meant conviction, well, so be it. >> would jurors convict kevin jones of murder? and whose dna was on that key piece of evidence? coming up -- >> i said it matches. he says, well, it matches gary dunn. >> who was gary dunn, and what if anything did he have to do with nona's murder? when "dateline" continues. the other issue. oh...i'm scratching like crazy. you've got some allergic itch with skin inflammation. apoquel can work on that itch in as little as 4 hours, whether it's a new or chronic problem. and apoquel's treated over 8 million dogs. nice. and...the talking dog thing? is it bothering you? no...itching like a dog is bothering me.

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another life-changing technology from abbott. so you don't wait for life. you live it. hello. i'm dara brown. here's what's happening. covid-19 numbers are on the rise. the u.s. now has over 14.6 million cases and over 280,000 deaths. in idaho boise hospitals

have stretched to their limit. doctors warn they could be over capacity by new year fs the surge continues. the state reached a record high in daily new cases with just over 2,000 on friday. the state also reported 113 deaths from covid since monday, the most in a single week. now back to "dateline." welcome back to "dateline." i'm craig melvin. kevin jones was on trial for the murder of his girlfriend, nona dirksmeyer. prosecutors painted kevin as a jealous boyfriend whose bloody palm print found at the scene was evidence he committed the crime. the defense countered that kevin left the print while trying to save nona's life. it was time for the jury to decide the young man's fate. here again is keith morrison with "what happened to the beauty queen?" >> kevin jones sat in the courtroom, watched the fight for

his life swirl around him, and felt in that uncomfortable chair the withering stares of the jury. >> they can all look at you, and if you do one thing wrong, that they deem is wrong, that might sway them the opposite way. >> one facial expression. >> one click of a pen. one bite off of your fingernail. you never know how people are going to take things that you do. >> he had every reason to worry. later the jurors would recall how the images of this crime haunted them. >> blood all over him in the pictures. >> the palm print in her blood. >> but to the jurors the evidence or the lack of it looked bad for police too. >> the glass door, for example, where the perpetrator went out was not fingerprinted inside or out. the kitchen floor would have been excellent for footprints. he obviously walked across there. no prints were taken. >> they said that kind of sloppiness made them wonder,

what else did the police miss? what other suspects? >> the police claimed that they had checked the alibis of all these potential suspects. >> as well as they gathered evidence? >> but what really stuck with them was kevin sitting in the police interrogation room looking to them genuinely distraught. >> i felt bad inside that i was watching him in this little cubicle of a room. >> on balance they agreed. the evidence pointed more to innocence than guilt. after eight hours they had their verdict. not guilty. kevin was freed. relieved of course but also furious at detective mark frost and the russellville police. >> it frustrates me. it angers me that the police didn't care enough to do their jobs the right way. it frustrates me that they didn't find the person who did this.

>> but nona's mother, carol, believed her daughter's old boyfriend had quite possibly just gotten away with murder. >> if you think somebody else did, it why aren't you out there trying to find them? >> who could begrudge a grieving mother's bitter challenge? certainly not the jones family. on the day kevin was acquitted they stood here on the steps of the courthouse and they vowed they would do whatever it took to find nona's killer. kevin's father hiram, financially wiped out by the cost of all this, asked his son's legal team for one more favor. >> i said, this is what i've got. don't know how much i need. don't know how i can pay you. but i need this. >> the lawyers agreed to help. they asked an investigator, this man, to keep working the case. his name is todd steffy. he's a part-time policeman in kevin's hometown of dover, just outside russellville. part-time detective and full-time preacher. >> what an odd combination. >> oh, i used to say it's the ultimate good guy. >> and right away steffy knew there was a key piece of

evidence that demanded a closer look. that condom wrapper found in nona's apartment. it held somebody's dna, but whose? steffy wondered if police cleared those male friends and neighbors of nona too quickly in the early days of the investigation. >> do they have a valid alibi? because either i'm missing something or, you know -- and so i began to feel like that some of those people maybe needed to have their dna compared. >> so kevin's legal team rolled up its sleeves and slacks and went diving through trash belonging to those young men. and they got some dna samples. but none matched the dna on the condom wrapper. steffy, the policeman preacher, needed a lead. you could say he needed a miracle. and wouldn't you know, he got it. it came in the most mundane way. two months after kevin's acquittal and more than a year after nona's death steffy's police chief told him to

question a suspect in a recent burglary, a man by the name of gary dunn. steffy's eyes widened at that. >> my chief looked at me and i said do you know who he is? he said yes. he was one of the neighbors to nona dirksmeyer. >> gary dunn, a neighbor of nona's. he was among that handful of men who'd been questioned, then cleared by police. steffy knew that dunn certainly would have had the opportunity to kill. his bedroom window looked directly across a small parking lot at nona's bedroom window. now, steffy had to get that man's dna. >> how'd you do that? >> i asked him for it. >> and he said yes? >> basically. i just asked him if he would be willing to give me his fingerprints and a dna sample. if i can rule them out, then we're done. >> but there was a problem. to get that sample tested steffy needed the cash-strapped jones family to pay for it.

at first kevin's mother hesitated. the test would cost about $600. but the investigator insisted. >> what did she say? >> eventually, she just kind of said something like "oh, shucks, it's just money." >> so she paid for it. and what a good investment it turned out to be. because weeks later steffy got a call from one of kevin's lawyers. the dna tests were back. and wouldn't you know. >> i said it matches, doesn't it? he said, well, it matches gary dunn. >> the results strongly suggested the dna on that condom wrapper was left by nona's neighbor, gary dunn. now steffy needed to check out dunn's alibi for the day nona was killed. dunn had told police he was out shopping with his mother around the time of the murder, december 15th. that was his alibi. so steffy went looking for copies of receipts from those stores to back up the alibi.

>> so this is the store where supposedly gary dunn came to do some shopping. >> this was one of the places we had to check out in his alibi. the store had boxes and boxes of records, of receipts. it was the old-fashioned sign the slip kind of receipt. >> he's not kidding. boxes going back years. steffy rooted through piles of forgotten paper. >> how many boxes did you go through? >> i have no idea. i don't remember. >> hours and hours? >> i think i have tried to forget that. >> and just when steffy thought it was all a wasted effort, he pulled out this scrap. >> did you find it? >> i found it. i found it. >> there it was. a receipt that showed gary and his mom were out shopping, all right, on december 13th. not the 15th when they said they were, when nona was murdered. >> it wasn't the same day at all. >> no. >> in fact, none of the receipts

from the stores where dunn and his mother said they were shopping gave him an alibi for the time nona was killed. police and the prosecutor didn't mention that at kevin's trial. but now a new prosecutor was on the case and he found the dna results and faulty alibi compelling. and one year after kevin's acquittal gary dunn was charged with murder. many people in russellville struggled to know what to think. their first impression was that kevin jones murdered nona dirksmeyer. did they believe this latest arrestee was the real killer? and could the state of arkansas prove it? coming up -- gary dunn was the one on trial. so why did it seem as if kevin jones was as well? >> the first thing you get hit with is your son is on trial again. even though he's not on trial, he is. >> when "dateline" continues. is, it's time to get the care you need.

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kevin jones's parents had won and lost. they had won freedom for their son kevin but had lost a young woman they considered a daughter. they wanted justice so badly for nona, they spent their last dime to find her killer. and they believed their sacrifice finally paid off when police arrested her neighbor, gary dunn, for her murder. >> i believe he committed this crime. but that's my belief. based upon what i saw in this

trial. >> dunn's trial opened in april 2010. hiram jones listened as the state, which had already tried his son, now argued that dunn was a sexually violent man who'd been stalking the young beauty queen whose bedroom window he could see across the parking lot. his own wife testified he was violent in bed with her and that weeks before nona's death she'd caught him hanging around nona's front door in the middle of the night. so, said the prosecutor, the jury could be sure dunn killed nona after entering her apartment with the intent of forcing a sexual encounter. and the condom wrapper proved it. >> this condom wrapper that was found that had the dna on it that did not have kevin's dna on it, that had his dna on it. >> so dna evidence, a disturbing background, an alibi that turned out to be no alibi at all. in short, it was hard to see how dunn's public defenders, bill

james and jeff rosenzwag, could argue against their client's lies and dna. but that's exactly what they did. and with gusto. >> what you're saying is the state was simply wrong. >> the state was simply wrong. >> what's more, they told jurors, they could prove it. for starters, they said, the state wasn't being honest about the dna on that condom wrapper. it was only a mixed partial match to gary dunn, they said, which meant -- >> any thousands, millions, billions of people are also not excluded. >> let me ask you, then, is what you're saying, gary dunn didn't touch that condom wrapper? >> that's what we're saying. >> he never was anywhere near that condom wrapper -- >> well, he was across the parking lot in his apartment. >> minding his own business when nona was murdered. it's true, the defense said, dunn was not out shopping as he first claimed to police. he'd simply gotten his days mixed up. it was, after all, two weeks

after the crime when detectives asked for a detailed alibi. >> they asked for receipts. they found a receipt. they gave it to the police department. >> except it wasn't for that day. >> well, he cooperated in full. he gave them what they asked him to do. >> the defense told jurors it wasn't gary dunn's alibi they should question anyway, if anything, the lawyers said, they should take a look at someone else for nona's murder. her old boyfriend. and at that moment hiram jones realized with dread just where this trial was heading. >> first thing you get hit with is your son is on trial again even though he's not on trial, he is. that's part of the defense that they use. >> how right he was. dunn's attorneys tried to persuade the jury that kevin jones, the first suspect in the case, had one shaky story after another. the 911 call where kevin's mother is crying? >> her name is nona dirksmeyer. >> the defense said janice jones

and kevin's friend gave police conflicting details of how they came upon nona's body and what they were doing to save her. >> it is a lie. they are lying. they're all three lying. >> the pizza boy's lying. kevin's lying. his mother's lying. >> absolutely. without any question. >> in fact, the defense attorneys tried to claim, you couldn't keep up with the joneses and all their lies. even kevin's grandmother who said she was with kevin in another town the morning of nona's death couldn't be trusted. >> kevin's grandmother knows that kevin murdered nona? >> i don't know if they know, what they know. but i know they're covering for him. >> but the lawyers said kevin jones couldn't explain one thing away. that bloody palm print in nona's apartment. it was his and not gary dunn's. did it work? yes, it did. after three days of deliberations the jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked. the judge declared a mistrial. but the prosecutor wasn't giving up.

he promptly refiled murder charges and gary dunn's second trial began in 2011. >> now gary dunn being tried a second time after his first trial ended in a hung jury. >> this time the judge allowed the prosecutor to reveal a very dark fact about gary dunn. he was a convicted felon. before nona was murdered. jurors heard from a woman named kelly jo fitzharris, who happened to have the grave misfortune of jogging past gary dunn on the wrong day in the wrong place in 2002. >> it's a popular trail with runners but very isolated. kelly jo came running by herself from that direction. she saw a man sitting here on this bench. as she ran up the trail this way she heard footsteps behind her, turned around, and the man had a huge stick. he hit her over the head with it. he knocked her down. he hit her repeatedly. and as he beat her she realized the only way for her to escape was to wriggle free.

so she ran up the trail that way as quickly as she possibly could, calling for help, pretending there was someone nearby. the police came a little later. they found gary dunn hiding in the water. they arrested him. he spent 18 months in jail. and then, newly out on parole, he moved into nona's apartment complex, set up house directly across the parking lot, months before nona's death. dunn's lawyers admitted it was a blow to their defense. >> so we had to deal with it and make it -- not make it any worse, do no harm. >> or was it already done? this time jurors knew the man sitting in the defendant's chair wasn't just a man prone to violence. he was a convicted criminal. so would a town's first impression that kevin jones murdered the beauty queen finally be undone? >> the 12 people who will decide gary dunn's fate weigh the evidence. coming up -- the verdict. >> he don't have no alibi.

and then that looks really bad. it looks really bad. >> will there be justice for nona and her family? >> i knew that they were waiting to see if there would be closure. >> when "dateline" continues. wn "the upper hands"... special guest flo challenges the hand models to show off the ease of comparing rates with progressive's home quote explorer. international hand model jon-jon gets personal. your wayward pinky is grotesque. then a high stakes patty-cake battle royale ends in triumph. you have the upper hands! it's a race to the lowest rate, and so much more. only on "the upper hands." who've got their eczema under control. with less eczema, you can show more skin. so roll up those sleeves. and help heal your skin from within with dupixent. dupixent is the first treatment of its kind that continuously treats moderate-to-severe eczema,

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so when a hand specialist told me about nonsurgical treatments, it was a total game changer. like you, my hands have a lot more to do. learn more at factsonhand.com today. welcome back. did gary dunn murder nona dirksmeyer? the first jury was deadlocked over that question. but at dunn's second trial jurors learned he was a convicted felon and heard

gripping testimony from the victim he attacked. the defense countered that the real killer was still on the loose. nona's loved ones had waged a five-year battle for justice. was their fight finally coming to an end? here's keith morrison with the conclusion of "what happened to the beauty queen?" >> this was the third time the state of arkansas had tried someone for the murder of nona dirksmeyer and the second time gary dunn stood accused. but when they started to deliberate, his jurors weren't thinking about second or third. they were thinking the first. kevin jones, the first suspect in this case. >> were any of you suspicious that maybe it was actually kevin who did this? >> i believe the whole jury thought in the beginning that it was, you know, a high probability that it was kevin because the defense did a really good job of getting us to believe it could be kevin. >> once again dunn's defense had retried kevin jones for the

murder of nona dirksmeyer. but the jurors eventually came to a sort of peace with that. >> this is gary's trial, and we need to look at the evidence that's against or for him. >> and once they did they were troubled. on the witness stand that jogger described just how brutally dunn attacked her, just as nona had been attacked. >> that was really a big factor in my thinking, you know, about whether he was guilty or innocent. it tied into everything else. because that's what happened to nona. all those things. >> it showed dunn was a brutal man who was also a convicted felon when nona died. he even lied about where he'd been that day. >> he don't have no alibi. you know, and then that looks really bad. >> it does. >> it looks really bad. >> they also talked about the dna on the condom wrapper found in nona's apartment. some believed the dna probably did belong to gary dunn. but that made them wonder too. >> if this guy was supposedly so

careful to not leave no other dna or no other fingerprints in this whole crime scene, then you'd think he would have been smart enough to take the condom wrapper with him. >> so there it was. dna evidence against dunn. interesting if perhaps not proof. circumstantial evidence which was compelling. they took a poll, guilty or not. several polls, actually. and then on the last go-round they knew they were finished. they went back to the courtroom and looked at nona's family. >> coming up and being in front of her parents was the hardest thing for me. i was -- it made me very sad because i knew that they were waiting to see if there would be closure. we couldn't do it. we couldn't give them closure. >> once again the case of arkansas versus gary dunn ended in a hung jury. the more powerful reason for that? that first impression among many

here in russellville that it was kevin jones who killed nona dirksmeyer. in the aftermath of the trial kevin headed back to court. not for anything he did but for the damage he said was done to him. by police. >> they just looked at me and said he's the one that did it. >> kevin jones always believed the police zeroed in on him as the suspect in nona's death and never seriously considered anyone else. >> you did this! >> no. >> you did it. >> i'm telling you you're dead [ bleep ] wrong. >> you killed her. >> kevin sued mark frost, the detective who built the case against him, and others too for withholding evidence. a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit because the statute of limitations had passed. through his lawyer frost denied making mistakes and withholding evidence and neither the russellville police department nor the prosecutor would comment on the investigation. meanwhile, kevin has moved on.

for reasons you may understand he became a criminal defense attorney and, get this, decided to practice law in of all places russellville. the last time we spoke kevin told us he'd made peace with the one person whose opinion really does matter to him, nona's mother. she no longer believes kevin killed her daughter. in fact, she says she loves kevin. as for the others who are more cynical, he tries not to dwell on what they think or whisper about him and the girl he once loved. nona dirksmeyer, the songbird, the beauty queen, the girl for whom justice is denied. in 2018 gary dunn was charged found himself in handcuffs again after two incidents that occurred on the same night. both unrelated to nona dirksmeyer. dunn pleaded no contest to attempted kidnapping and indecent exposure. he was sentenced to 15 years.

barring new evidence, the state does not plan to file charges against him for a third time in the nona dirksmeyer killing. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. i'm craig melvin. >> and i'm natalie morales. >> and this is "dateline." >> i was shocked. things just didn't add up. >> it was the last place you would expect to find a gruesome crime scene. a quiet neighborhood, the lovely home, this friendly couple. >> i think it's hard not to have loved tammy. >> they were very happy. very happy. >> it seemed to be a simple case of a robbery gone horribly wrong. >> you realized that she was dead or dying. >> but nothing about this case was simple. not the marriage and not the murders. >> it just kept getting more red flags come up.