Murder in Apartment 12 - Ep. 6: Another Night in December
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Nona Dirksmeyer has been dead almost as long as she was alive. In hindsight, it seems like her murder was eminently solvable. After all, there were signs of a violent struggle. There must have been noise. With so much blood, there must have been a boatload of physical evidence.

But no. It became obvious real early that when things didn't fit with the Russell Police Department's investigation and their theory of the case, that they ignored it, pushed it to the side. There were half a dozen suspects. One was the boyfriend. He seemed like a logical choice to the police. I'm telling you what I see. I'm telling you what I know. And I'm telling you right now, you did this.

But then there was the parolee with the history of violence against women who lived 30 steps from Nona's front door. His apartment was a little bit higher than Nona's and he could stand out his front door and see Nona come and go. I mean, he was just right in front of her apartment. In this episode, you'll hear from the third set of jurors who heard this case. It was intense. I really came in the first day and

with a nervous wreck. You'll hear from Mark Frost, the detective who was charged with gathering that evidence. I have been brutalized nationwide that I'm an inept investigator. I've had enough of that.

You'll hear how the investigators became the investigated. We want to demonstrate to the public what's happened here. We want to bring them to court and let them have their day and their say. And what we say happened, I think, will be what the jury will believe. And you'll hear how women today live in fear because of a botched investigation 18 years ago.

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. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is the sixth and final episode of Murder in Apartment 12, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 6, Another Night in December. On a chilly gray day in late January 2011...

A third set of jurors gathered at the Johnson County Courthouse in Clarksville to hear evidence in the Dirksmire murder case. It was the second trial in just nine months for defendant Gary Dunn. And this one would follow a familiar script. Same evidence, same courtroom, same judge, same lawyers and witnesses.

but with one big difference. This time, Special Prosecutor Jack McQuarrie had taken the death penalty off the table. This time, he intended to call the female jogger who'd been assaulted by Gary Dunn back in 2002.

She was more than willing to help to try and send Gary Dunn away. How did she do telling her story? She did great. You know, the defense couldn't do too much on it because he'd been convicted of it. Sure. They still had the state's previous charges against Kevin Jones that we were having to fight against still. Yes, once again, the core of Gary Dunn's defense was to try to pin the crime on

Kevin Jones, even though he'd already been tried and found not guilty of killing Nona Dirksmeyer. Not only did we have to try and prove that Kevin was not guilty, just as the jury had found...

But we were going to have to use him anyway in the case because he and his mother were the ones that found Nona. Yeah. So, yeah, we had to fight not only to find someone guilty, but we also had to fight to find someone not guilty again. That called for a new strategy, one not available to the special prosecutor during the first Dunn trial.

In a show of solidarity, Nona's mom, Carol, sat next to Kevin and other members of the Jones family. It had taken five years, but after seeing and hearing the evidence in the first Dunn trial, Carol changed her mind. She no longer believed Kevin killed Nona. She holds no ill will towards me, and I don't hold any towards her either. That's Kevin Jones. I think before the second, Gary Dunn's second trial,

She and I met and talked. She approached you or you her? It was kind of a mutual thing. You remember that conversation? To tell you the truth, it was, she said that, you know, she was sorry and she never really thought that I'd done it. The Dunn defense team, however, was hell-bent on accusing Kevin of murder every chance they got. I think there's a couple things that should be known about the case against Kevin Jones. Let me just sort of clear.

That's Bill James, Gary Dunn's defense attorney. This whole starts with the whole story about his mother and they're having this plan for dinner that night as an explanation for why his mother's there. All right. Just didn't happen. OK. Why is mama just having to be there when you find your dead girlfriend? So it was a lie that they were on their way to a Christmas party? They may have been, but they didn't have permission for Kevin to even go to the party till four o'clock that afternoon. So you're saying she's lying about it? Absolutely. Absolutely.

So it went, with defense attorneys doing what defense attorneys do. Anyone who defended Kevin was a liar, according to Gary Dunn's lawyers. Any evidence that pointed to his guilt, the God's honest truth. On the other hand, all evidence that suggested Gary Dunn might be guilty was suspect. The DNA evidence, inconclusive, they said. Gary's wife, an exaggerator.

Dunn's mother simply confused about her son's whereabouts the day his neighbor was beaten to death with a floor lamp. We're talking about the Dunn family. These people are not sophisticated. They are barely scraping along in terms of education. That's the other half of Gary Dunn's defense team, Jeff Rosenzweig.

They descend on these people two and a half years after the event and say, where was Gary two and a half years ago at noon? And their stories don't exactly match up. Not two and a half years, but two weeks later. But they say, what were you doing two weeks ago? Right. And the point is, he knows that they went to Lowe's.

So when he provided receipts, he knew it wasn't for that day. They asked him receipts. He did what they asked him to do. Except it wasn't for that day. Well, he cooperated in full. He gave them what they asked him to do. After two weeks of testimony, a jury of eight women and four men began their deliberations. The three jurors I spoke with later told me their early discussions focused almost entirely on...

Kevin Jones. I believe the whole jury thought in the beginning that it was, you know, a high probability that it was Kevin. That's Steve Jacobs, the jury foreman. The defense was Mr. James was outstanding. You know, he did a really good job of getting us to believe that it could be Kevin. It was like the elephant in the room, even if we were trying not to look at it.

That's Anita Ashlock, the second of our trio. The defense was giving us all this information and putting all this out here and so-called muddying the water, basically, you know. That's the third juror, Clay Bryant.

And in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, how did this other jury, you know, 12-0, you know, acquit Kevin Jones, you know? It was in the back of my mind. Oh, me too. Wait, we really need to just get him out of the way so we can move on. He had already had his trial. He was not guilty. So we was trialing Gary Dunn. For this group of jurors, the evidence against Gary Dunn seemed underwhelming.

The DNA seemed to prove little to them, beyond the fact that Dunn may have been in Nona's apartment, some said. But just because this young man's DNA is on this condom wrapper does not, to me anyway, tell me that he killed Nona Dunn's wife. The testimony of Dunn's wife, Jennifer, about Gary choking her during rough sex, the story about seeing him coming out of Nona's apartment in the middle of the night,

Not credible, according to these jurors. There were lots of things about Jennifer Dunn that I really questioned. As for Dunn's previous attack on the female jogger, the violent crime that sent him to prison for a while, some saw that as not really relevant to the Dirksmeyer case. It's not that I didn't really believe her, except for that I do believe that if he wanted to kill her, he would have. To you, what was that attack all about?

They didn't give us enough information to know that, I don't think. And that, perhaps, was the common thread that bound these jurors with the others who had come before. They just didn't seem to think there was enough evidence. Other than the condom wrapper, there was no one piece of direct evidence that would probably convict him. Why do you think no other DNA turned up from the crime scene? Faulty DNA.

Faulty police work. So there may have been more there? There may have been. There may have been. After more than 12 hours of deliberation and multiple polls, the jury told the judge they were hopelessly deadlocked. Eight for not guilty, four for guilty. The same as the previous jury. The judge declared a mistrial.

I took him to trial twice. In both cases, the jury hung. That's special prosecutor Jack McQuarrie. I spoke with the jurors after both of those cases, and they literally told me, they said, Jack, we all feel that he had something to do with this. But because there were so many mistakes made by the police, you're going to have to prove this beyond, beyond a reasonable doubt.

For two months, Gary Dunn remained in jail, awaiting a third trial. And then something unexpected happened. Special Prosecutor McQuarrie asked the judge to drop the charges. We were ready to tee it up for a third time when Carol Dipert, Nona's mom, said, "Jack, you have proven well beyond a reasonable doubt to me that it was not Kevin, that it was Gary Dunn,

And I'm going to be honest with you, I'm about worn out. So without any new evidence to show the next jury, McQuarrie decided there would be no more trials. In April 2011, more than five years after Nona Dirksmeyer's murder, Gary Dunn walked out of jail, his red hair shining bright as a flame in the warm sunshine.

for his defense attorneys, Bill James and Jeff Rosenzweig. Two mistrials in nine months' time felt like a victory. But as they told me at the time, the public had nothing to fear from Gary Dunn being a free man.

Does it ever worry you that you may have somehow put a potentially dangerous man on the street? Not at all. You believe he's innocent? I believe he's innocent, and my feeling about Gary is that he'll never have any involvement with the criminal justice system again. Famous last words?

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As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket. A new era is here. It is go time. Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis. The race is going to be close. Everybody should prepare themselves for that. Plus reporting on the ground from the convention hall. Extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead. The Democratic National Convention. Special coverage this week on MSNBC.

There was a time in the spring and summer of 2006 when a lot of people in Russellville, Arkansas chose to wear their hearts on their bumper. "Justice for Nona," the signs said. And to many, that seemed to mean "convict Kevin Jones of murder." At a press conference this morning, local media reports had little doubt about that. But the question for many is why has it taken so long? Jones was always the primary suspect.

For years, belief in Kevin Jones' guilt was so commonly held that even after he was acquitted of murdering his girlfriend, Nona Dirksmeyer, and her neighbor, Gary Dunn, was tried twice for the same crime, suspicion lingered. There are people out there, I'm sure, that are willing to form an opinion without knowing anything about what really happened. That's Kevin Jones. It's tough to get those type of people to change their minds about anything once they've made their mind up.

Few had done more to find justice for Nona Dirksmeyer than Kevin's parents, Hiram and Janice Jones. They'd not only spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend their son, but they'd also paid for the DNA testing of the other suspects that eventually led state investigators to Gary Dunn. - They sold their business and their home to finance a half a million dollar defense, and part of it was paying for DNA testing that the state should have done.

That's Charles Sidney Gibson, the senior half of the father and son legal team that Jones hired to sue the city of Russellville in hopes of recouping some of that money.

According to the Gibsons, the Russellville police knowingly withheld vital evidence that would have implicated Gary Dunn and held clear Kevin Jones. Have you ever seen a case like this before? Similar. We have had cases where police officers have hidden files and not given them to prosecutors. That's Chuck Gibson, the junior half of the Gibson father-son team. And you're pretty sure this is intentional?

- Oh, there's no doubt about it. - It appears to me to be intentional because there's just too many things that have gone wrong. - Evidence uncollected or mishandled was one thing, a sign of inexperience perhaps. But, said the Gibsons, this was something more than that. It was toward the end of the second Gary Dunn trial that Todd Steffi, the pastor and part-time cop, received a rather unexpected gift.

Someone handed me a file in the courtroom one day and said, "Hey, can you see that this gets back to Mark Frost?" And I said, "Sure." And I glanced at it. Among the documents inside that file were Detective Frost's field notes. And what was in those notes?

evidence that Frost had known all along that Gary Dunn did not have an alibi for the day Nona Dirksmeyer was killed. Looked like, to me, where he had tried to verify Gary Dunn's alibi in terms of the places that he said he had been that day, that the transactions didn't occur on the day of the murder.

And yet he told the prosecutor it was a good alibi. I believe that's what he had in the prosecution report. In that report, he put that there were persons of interest who were checked out. According to the lawyers handling the civil case on behalf of the Jones family, those notes were a smoking gun. Proof that Detective Mark Frost's written report to Polk County Prosecutor David Givens had misstated some key facts. For one,

The report said every potential suspect in the Dirksmeyer case had a solid alibi. Everyone, that is, except for Kevin Jones. And that's just wrong. Gary Dunn's alibi was false, and he knew it. He could not have thought he had a good alibi. These notes prove that. It doesn't hold up. Not at all. He knew. But why would he do it? They picked their man early on. They picked Kevin early.

He was an easy target. He was the boyfriend. And from that point afterwards, they ignored any kind of evidence that pointed towards someone else and buried it with Gary Dine. That's not all.

In his report recommending Kevin Jones be charged with capital murder, Frost claimed, falsely, that Kevin Jones' fingerprints had been found on the weighted base of the floor lamp that the medical examiner said was used to crush Nona's skull. And the fingerprint evidence says, no, they cannot be distinguished. But the point is, Mark Frost told David Gibbons that they were.

And remember the polygraphs? The ones investigators claimed Kevin Jones failed? I never have seen anybody fail a test. And Gary Dunn had passed? Yeah, I passed. Well, the state police's top polygraph expert reviewed those tests later and reported the truth was the exact opposite. Kevin, it turned out, passed his test.

And Gary Dunn failed. By the time Gary Dunn was polygraphed, everybody involved in the polygraph and Mark Frost had already picked Kevin. So they didn't want him. They didn't want him to pass. And they didn't want anybody else to fail. Not only that, the Gibsons learned that the state police investigators had recovered a full recording of that polygraph.

a recording of what happened after Gary Dunn left the interrogation room that day and Detective Frost showed him the door. - Gary, I appreciate it, man. - Yeah, no, sir. - In that recording, Detective Frost and the polygrapher can be heard discussing how Gary Dunn had performed on the test. - Boy, I went and put him on the upgrade system. I said, "Damn." I upgraded it and they gave me minus one.

What does that mean? Well, his breathing was f***ed up all the way through there. Dunn's breathing had been erratic, erratic enough to be concerning. But after being reminded by Frost of what Gary Dunn had said about his heart condition... It's writer's simplex. It's a heart and circulation problem. The polygrapher said this. See, it's got the sections in it indicated that's probably his breathing. Yeah, I passed him. All right. All right.

In December 2011, nine months after the second Dunn trial, the Gibsons filed their civil suit on behalf of the Jones family. The suit alleged that Russellville Police Detective Mark Frost, former police chief James Bacon, and Gary Dunn conspired to withhold some evidence and misstate other evidence in order to build a case against Kevin Jones.

You know, I understand you're bringing a case against Mark Frost and James Bacon, his boss. But why bring Gary Dunn in? He didn't tell them to withhold evidence, did he? He assisted the conspiracy by denying that he killed Donna, of course. That's where it starts. Gary Dunn probably will never darken the courtroom. But we're going after him, and we're going to prove that he killed this woman. And that's what we're going to do. In the civil court, of course. In the civil court.

Those were days of hope and promise for the Jones family. Janice and Hiram, who had been forced to move in with his mother after selling their home, had started to rebuild their lives. And Kevin? Well, somehow amid all the trials, he'd finished his undergrad degree and got married. When I met with him in March of 2012, he was going to law school, inspired, he told me, by the lawyers who'd worked so hard to keep him out of prison.

I guess I understand the duty that attorneys have to their clients a little better. That's what you want to be? Yeah, that's what I'd like to be. Right. Where do you want to practice law? I'd like to practice in my, close to my hometown. Of Russellville? Yeah. Right back in the place where you were almost convicted of murder. Well, but it's also the place that I grew up and the place where my family's from. And it's close to where my wife's family's from. As for his family's civil suit against the city of Russellville police...

Kevin told me he hoped the courts would help make his family whole. The money isn't, I mean, don't get me wrong. I would like my parent, my dad to not have to work 16 hours a day or my mom have to worry all the time about, you know, finances. That would be really nice. But it's just as important to me to make sure that Mark Frost and James Bacon can't do what they did to me to someone else. For a while, it looked as though that might happen.

The Gibsons deposed Mark Frost, forced him to answer some rather pointed questions about his investigation regarding Gary Dunn. He had a profile as a woman assaulter, didn't he? Probably so. Well, it's not probably. He did, didn't he? He's assaulted women before, yes. Yes, okay. And he lived close by, didn't he? He did.

In that deposition, Frost admitted that he did not give the prosecutor his field notes or any written account of the problems he'd found with Gary Dunn's alibi before the decision was made to charge Kevin Jones. You never gave that to the prosecutor, did you? This piece of paper? Yes, sir. No, sir, I did not. And Frost acknowledged that in his probable cause affidavit to the prosecutor, he had misstated the strength of fingerprint evidence against Kevin Jones.

Read that last sentence on the next page. Okay. The affiant was told by the M.E. What's the M.E.? A medical examiner. Okay. Sorry. That this injury was the lethal event, that it was caused by an object similar to and consistent with the base of the lamp, which had Jones' fingerprint on it. What's wrong with that sentence? A fingerprint should be palm print. There was no fingerprints of Jones on the base of the lamp. On the lamp base. Was not, was it?

I don't believe there was any prints on the LAMP base, correct? Well, the LAMP base is what killed Nona Dirksmeyer, isn't it? That's correct. And you're telling this prosecutor something that's not true, that's very crucial information, isn't it? That his prints were not on the LAMP base? Well, just read the sentence, Officer Frost. You're telling this prosecutor to charge this man with first degree murder because one of the reasons is that the...

The instrument, the lamp base that killed Mona Dirksmeyer, that she was slammed in her head, had Kevin Jones' fingerprints on it, didn't you? That's what was written. That's not true, is it? On the lamp base, no, sir. In the end, however, that deposition was about as far as the Jones civil suit would go. The suit was dismissed when the courts determined that the statute of limitations had expired before the suit was filed. They'd missed the filing deadline by three months.

But that's not the end of the story. No, far from it. Because four years later, on a December night in 2018, nearly 13 years to the day after the murder of Nona Dirksmeyer, this story got a new and chilling update. He seen me walk outside by myself, and then he drove up by me. It was like he was just waiting for somebody. ♪♪

There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM Rewards benefits or earning bonus bets. So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team. Yeah!

The BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM. The sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket. A new era is here. It is go time. Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis. The race is going to be close. Everybody should prepare themselves for that. Plus reporting on the ground from the convention hall. Extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead. The Democratic National Convention. Special coverage this week on MSNBC.

It was 9:30 on a Tuesday night in 2018 when then 24-year-old Amber Douthit stopped folding clothes in the apparel department of the Walmart in Dardanelle, Arkansas and made for the exit. Amber moved quickly down the big box store's broad aisles, weaving through Christmas shoppers like a salmon swimming upstream. She couldn't wait to be outside in the cool night air where she could enjoy a cigarette and a few minutes of peace and quiet.

Amber cupped her hand over the cigarette, lit it up, and took a seat on the curb. But what happened next was far from relaxing. It was in December, so it was very dark outside. I noticed a car pull up to me. I was kind of in like the brake area, so it's uncommon for cars to pull up there. That's Amber Douthit. But I didn't think anything of it because I was at work. I thought I was safe.

So the car just sat there for about five minutes. They had their bright lights on, so I couldn't see anything that was going on inside the car. How far away from you? About 10 feet away. Pretty close. Amber took another drag of her cigarette but wondered what was up with the knucklehead who had his brights pointed at her. Then the driver's side door swung open and a man got out. I noticed that he was really tall and he had really red hair.

And that kind of threw a red flag at me, but I didn't think anything of it. No, there was no time to think. But something about the man's hair and the sharp shape of his nose looked familiar. And so this guy just slowly walks up to me and I could tell that he was holding something big.

in his waist area. And when I first seen it, I was really scared. You know, I thought I was either about to get kidnapped or shot or no telling. Clearly walking right at you. Right at me. Yeah, I was the only person out there. And so he had to be coming towards me. And he walked to me. I was sitting on the curb and he walked to me until his waist was just right in my face.

And then I realized that he was holding his erect penis and he was asking me if I was ready for this, if I was ready to go hook up with him, that type of thing.

In that instant of fear and panic, said Amber, she had a flash of recognition. She had seen the man's face before, years before, in the newspaper and on the internet. My mind was just all over the place. Like when I seen that red hair, I genuinely believed that was Gary Dunn. Gary Dunn. Yes, that guy. The guy who'd been tried twice for the killing of Nona Dirksmeyer.

Amber had been in the fifth grade when Nona was murdered. She didn't remember all the details, but she did remember her mom telling her about Gary Dunn. Her mom knew Todd Steffi, the pastor policeman who had been so deeply involved in the Dirksmeyer case. My mom goes to Todd Steffi's church, and at the time he was a deputy marshal, and he knew...

that Gary was gonna be getting on that hung jury. I just knew what the Gary guy looked like. - It was one of those crystallized moments of fight or flight.

Amber wasn't sure what she would do, but she knew her first step was to get to her feet. And at that point, I was so scared, I just stood up. And he'd seen the expression on my face, and he was, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I swear to God, we just spoke the other day about hooking up. We were talking all day long. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

And I said, I was just so flabbergasted, I guess. I just said, you know, it's okay. It's okay. You just need to go. It's all right. Just go. For a second or two, time stopped. There was Reed Thin Amber Douthat standing face to face with big and bulky Gary Dunn. And then he turned around. So he gets in his car after everything happened.

And he rolled down his passenger side window and he was still just apologizing profusely through that passenger side window. Gary Dunn drove away, leaving Amber shaken and wondering what to do next. I called my mom and I told her, I said, Mom, I think I just dealt with Gary Dunn. And she said, No, I don't think so. I think he's still in prison.

That was a reasonable thing for Amber's mom to think. After all, Gary Dunn had recently been in the news. Just a year earlier, he'd been arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison on a firearms charge. So that gave me kind of a relief thinking, well, maybe it wasn't him. But what Amber's mom did not know is that Gary Dunn had been paroled. He was back on the streets.

It just so happened that Amber's dad was on Facebook, where he'd seen a post about something similar happening earlier that very evening. The Facebook post said a young woman had been followed home by a man in a silver Kia with temporary tags.

When she pulled into her drive, the poster said the man tried to force his way into her car. And he asked me if it was a silver Kia with temporary tags on it. I said, are you here? Do you know? Did you see it happen?

And then he sends me a screenshot of a post on Facebook. And it was the mother of a girl that he had recently gotten at earlier in that night. Amber's next call was to 911. Within minutes, the Dardanelle police arrived at the Walmart. They found that silver Kia with temporary tags parked in a different section of the Walmart parking lot. And behind the wheel of that car?

But wouldn't you know, it was Gary Dunn. And so he was still there. He was still there. He was still hanging around the parking lot. Did you see the arrest go down? Yeah. Yeah, I watched it all happen. What was that like? What was that like? It was, it felt good. It felt good. It was like, wow, I did that. If I would have just ignored that, what would have happened? So it was a great feeling knowing that the call that I had just made, it was crazy.

In 2019, Gary Dunn agreed to plead guilty to attempted kidnapping and indecent exposure charges. In return, he got a five-year prison sentence. It was his third incarceration since 2002. But in 2023, Gary Dunn was once again eligible for release. I don't like that feeling.

I don't think he needs to get out. Will you go talk to the parole board? Will you do anything like that? Absolutely. Absolutely. To keep him in bars. Yeah, absolutely. Amber is not alone. Everyone we spoke with for this story seemed to think Gary Dunn belongs behind bars, including a cop who's known him for more than 20 years. I think his criminal record proves that he does not need to be released.

That's the voice of Mark Frost, the lead detective in the Dirksmeyer case. Though he did not talk publicly about the case at the time of the investigations or trials, we wanted to include him in this podcast, and he agreed. And if they call me to go testify at his parole hearing, I will go testify at the parole hearing. Are women around town safe if he's paroled? I don't think anybody's safe around town if he's on parole.

As it turned out, neither Mark Frost nor Amber Douthat had to testify at Gary Dunn's parole hearing because the Arkansas State Parole Board turned him down. His next opportunity for release comes up in 2025. Gary Dunn is not a good person. I've said this multiple times. He's not a good person.

Of course, Detective Frost knew that. Back in 2005, when he brought Dunn in for a polygraph in the Dirksmeyer case, he had already arrested Dunn once for assaulting a female jogger. State Police Special Agent Bill Glover did that polygraph. He was very adamant that Gary Dunn did pass the polygraph. Adamant? Very much so. I have to tell you, we heard the tape. And we heard the tape of...

You in the room with the man who gave the test after the test was over. After the test was over. Yeah. And he said, well, he showed signs of deception. His breathing was off. I am. I graded it and it gave him minus one. What does that mean? Well, his breathing was up all the way through there. I don't know what part of that you heard, but I can tell you when I asked him if he passed that polygraph, he said yes.

And he even did a report saying he passed the polygraph. So... I'm aware of that. But does this sound like a man adamant that Gary Dunn passed his polygraph? It's got the sections indicated. That's probably his breathing. Yeah, I passed it.

Time, however, has only solidified Detective Frost's certainty, as certain today as he was back in 2005, that it was not Gary Dunn who killed Nona Dirksmeyer. It was Kevin Jones. I've had other investigators with a lot more experience than me look at this case, and they agree that Kevin should have been charged. Oh, okay. And as a matter of fact, I have one that doesn't know why he wasn't convicted. The reason for Frost's certainty?

Well, that boils down to three factors. Kevin's bloody palm print, Kevin's alibi for the hour he believes Nona was killed, and gut instinct. She went down because she's seen other guys. Remember that long police interrogation of Kevin Jones a week after Nona Dirksmeyer was killed? The one that got heated when the police accused Kevin of murdering Nona after, they said, he must have discovered she was cheating on him.

And I had no idea. I had no idea. I told those cops what it looked like. I said, no, we're 100% exclusive. Explain to me the fingerprint on the vault. The only way that print could have got there was in the process of the crime. For Frost, Kevin's demeanor during that interrogation seemed like a tell. His demeanor was very rollercoaster-like.

It would have peaks and valleys. So roller coaster would not be appropriate? That kind of behavior up and down and back and forth? No, no. It's been my experience. If you have a guilty person or an innocent person, they don't go up and down like that. You mean sometimes he seemed more scared and other times more flat or something? I don't quite follow you. I don't know that he ever was scared. Most of it was flat.

And then other times he would explode and then be right back down. You know, it's just not along the lines of some of the interviews that I've done in the past. Well, I did hear also you saying, you did this, you're guilty. I know what happened. You did this. You killed her. The guy's father's banging on the wall saying, let him out. You haven't arrested him. You've got to let him out. And you're going after him like crazy. I'm telling you what I see. I'm telling you what I know. And I'm telling you right now.

You did this. This is a guy you decided right away was the guy who was guilty. At least that's what you're saying on tape. Listen to this exchange from Frost's interrogation of Kevin Jones back in 2005.

At this point on the video, Kevin stands to leave.

But Detective Frost rises to stand between Kevin and the door. Sit down! Sit down! 18 years later, Mark Frost seems to remember that moment differently. Kevin Jones could have walked out of that room any time. He chose to stay in there. And he asked several times, what do you have on me?

multiple times trying to find out what we had on him. I'm not going to keep doing this if you're trying to push this in a certain direction. I'm not going to do that. I'm just wondering why you didn't go after Gary Dunn more than you did. After that case, Gary Dunn goes to prison very briefly. He was for illegal possession of a firearm. He's paroled.

And, you know, very shortly thereafter, he's arrested for attempted kidnapping and indecent exposure involving two women on the same night. Well, let me ask you this. Did you have the information that Kevin Jones is dealing marijuana out of Fayetteville? That came up. Yeah, sure it did. Well, you get the drift. By the way, we couldn't find any evidence at all that Kevin was dealing pot. Detective Frost is Captain Frost now, by the way.

Assistant Chief of Police in Dardanelle, a small town near Russellville. He heads the department's Criminal Investigations Unit. As you might be able to tell from our interview with Captain Frost, he gets a little touchy when challenged on his handling of the Dirksmire investigation. But he said he has ample reason to feel a little defensive.

I was challenged hard on the stand for three times during the trials. I was gag ordered. I've been sued. So I think I've been challenged enough. I did everything I could possibly do. I poured my heart and soul into this case, and I did everything I thought I could possibly do. True? Perhaps.

And yet, after nearly 18 years, there has still been no closure for the two families that were decimated by Nona's death and the investigations that followed. After years of investigations and three trials, the parents of Nona Dirksmeyer and Kevin Jones are done talking. There's nothing more to be said. And Kevin Jones himself? The young man who might well be in prison today if Captain Frost had had his way.

He is now an attorney, a husband and a father. He's done talking too. But when I last spoke to him 10 years ago, he seemed to understand that the taint of having been accused of murder might never be washed away entirely. At some point, I realized that if I was going to get on, I had to move on. You know, it took several years of my life for me that I'll never get back. And I don't want it to take any more.

So I've made peace with it. It is what it is. As for Nona, the beautiful young woman who overcame so much and charmed so many in her short life, justice is still waiting to be done. Murder in Apartment 12 has been a production of Dateline and 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. ♪♪