Death and the Beauty Queen

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

RUSSELVILLE, Ark. - Once upon a time, in a small town in Arkansas, in the hills that roll down from the Ozark mountains, there was a small sweet girl. She was tiny, and lovely, with the gift of a great golden voice.

Margie Huckaby: Opens her mouth and this song comes out of her that—you just don’t think can come out of this small little vessel of a person.

Carol Dirksmeyer, Nona's mother: She was a soprano.  But, it was a voice that was very full.

Amazing, how that petite, innocent person produced such a sound. Her name was Nona Dirksmeyer. She was a beauty pageant queen and already bruised by the undertow of a difficult secret.

Kevin Jones, Nona's boyfriend: Real personal things.

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: What’d she tell you?

Kevin Jones: That her father had sexually molested her when she was young.

This is her boyfriend.  Kevin Jones.

By now her much older father was dead, and she was left to struggle.

Kevin Jones: It was so hard for her to be happy.

She told him she felt ugly. She didn’t see what her friends saw when they suggested she enter beauty pageants.

Kevin Jones: She didn’t really care about the prestige of being Miss Arkansas or Miss something.  She just wanted to find a way to enlighten other people about what happens to children who are sexually abused.

That’s what went into her speeches at the beauty pageants.

Kevin Jones: It was better than any feeling that I’ve ever had, you know just to make her happy.

A troubled Juliet, and her Romeo, riding the complications of teenage love.

They squabbled, broke up, dated others, kissed and made up... and now, though Kevin had gone away to college, they were talking marriage.

Kevin Jones: But we didn’t make it official because we were both poor. 

It was, actually, not quite like Romeo and Juliet. Not yet, anyway.

For one thing, they lived in different towns. They had met in kindergarten in Little Dover, grew up there... Then she moved with her mother 20  miles away to larger Russellville.

Besides, before all this, their families seemed to like each other. 

Carol Dirksmeyer: I liked him. He seemed to be a really caring person.

Nona’s mother, Carol. 

Carol Dirksmeyer:  Kevin was really interested in helping Nona get through some of these hard times she was having.

Janice Jones:  They just seemed very happy together.

Janice is Kevin’s mother, Hiram, his father.

Hiram Jones: Nona was part of the family. We had a Thanksgivin’ dinner, Nona was there.  You know, we had Sunday cookout, and Nona was there.  It was Kevin and Nona.

Nona and Kevin.

They hung around with Nona’s best friend Chelsea.

Margie Huckaby, Chelsea’s mother: I think Kevin was really there for her.

Margie was the first adult to hear about the abuse.

She’s the one who helped Nona tell her mother that poisonous secret—that Nona’s own biological father, now dead had sexually abused her and that Nona had taken to cutting herself.

Margie Huckaby:  I think that’s hard to do, to tell your parent that. You know it’s gonna devastate them.

Carol Dirksmeyer: It was horrible.  It’s such the end of my world.  I just couldn’t believe something like that would happen.  But I knew enough to know that she was telling the truth.

Carol, by the way, had also been trying to put life back together.  After Nona’s father died, Carol took up with Duane Dipert and married him.

Duane Dipert, Nona's stepfather: My relationship with Nona, I think, if I were to describe was distant, yet cordial.  It wasn’t my job to raise Nona.

Nona had been alone with Carol for years.  When Duane came along she moved out, got her own apartment.  Close by, but separate.

Duane admits his rules may have had something to do with that.

Duane Dipert: I’m a ‘90s type of guy.  But, unfortunately, for the kids, I’m an 1890s type of guy. You know?  And the doors are locked are 10 p.m..  So, they better be back at 9 p.m.

Morrison: That’s a strict rule?

Duane Dipert: Well,  yeah, nothing good happening after 10:00 at night as far as I’m concerned.

Yes, but as everybody knows, the day can be darkest in morning.

It was Christmas time, 2005.

Kevin, home from college, went directly to Nona’s apartment and spent an evening there.

He drove home, Russelville to Dover just after midnight.

Kevin Jones: I called her when I got home, because that was our routine.  I’d call her and tell her that I got home safe.

Next morning, a Thursday, he slept in, woke up, turned on his phone.

Kevin Jones: She had sent me a text message like we usually did in the morning—back and forth. 

The message was this: “good morning cuddle muffin. i love you and hope youhave a great day”

It wasn’t going to be, of course.  But neither she nor he knew that yet.

Her plan, in fact, was to spend the evening with a little girl; she was a member of the Big Sisters’ organization. His plan was to take his mother to a teachers’ Christmas party. She was the school librarian.

Janice Jones: He made a joke about, “Is there an open bar?  I’d like to see some of my former teachers a little tipsy.” 

And then, during the day, something strange: Kevin says he couldn’t reach Nona on the phone.

Kevin Jones: It struck me as very odd that she was not answering or returning the calls, because in four and a half years, we had made a pattern.

Morrison: Yeah.

Kevin Jones: And that’s what we did every day.

He sent her a text message. "You alive?" He asked...

Early evening, as Kevin and his mother set out for their Christmas party, he was increasingly troubled.

Where was she?  Why didn’t she answer?

From the car, Kevin called a friend, a pizza delivery man named Ryan. He asked Ryan to drive by Nona’s place and check on her.

Kevin Jones:  You know, “Her upstairs light is on, but she’s not answering her door.”  And I said, “Okay, well I’m gonna come over there.”

And now their fates whirled toward them, and they drove through their rising tide of panic to Nona’s apartment.

Kevin Jones: I realized I didn’t have my keys.  And Ryan and I knocked and knocked and rang the doorbell, and nobody came.  And we started to get a little frantic.

There was another door.  A sliding glass door at the back.  They ran for it.

Kevin Jones: But I didn’t think we’d be able to get in ‘cause she always kept a stick in it to hold it shut.

But the stick wasn’t there.

Kevin Jones: And so when I was grabbing the handle, Ryan touched me.  And he said, “Do you not see her?”

On the floor inside, was Nona.  Naked.  Still.

Kevin Jones:  I grabbed the door handle and I pulled it open.  I had a lot of adrenaline.

He ran in there, he says, turned her over and picked her up.

Janice Jones: She just had her socks on, little white socks.

Kevin Jones: All I could think about was, “I need to get her to a hospital.” And everything that happened was just kind of a blur.

He tried CPR, he says.

Kevin Jones: There was blood on her face.  And her eyes were closed.  And there was a puddle of blood underneath her head

Morrison: Did you think she was alive?

Kevin Jones: I wouldn’t let it enter my head that she wasn’t, that there wasn’t some way to save her. 

Janice was standing there beside them, in shock, calling 911.

Janice Jones: And he just lifted her in his arms and held her to him as if he were warming her.

And then the ambulance arrived.  And the police.

Janice Jones: Then I heard him cry out.  And he asked them if someone had done this to her.  And they told him yes.  And then he asked them if she was dead. And they affirmed that, yes, she was.

Before long, Nona’s mother Carol arrived.

Carol Dirksmeyer: It was just a big shock. Devestating. It was awful.

And then, the police drove Kevin down to the station.

“Just a few questions,” they said.

“Just a few questions,“ about Nona.

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