Death and the Beauty Queen

Carol Dirksmeyer: I told them I wanted to see my baby. It was awful. Of course they said ‘you can’t.’ They had the crime scene tape up.

By the time Carol Dirksmeyer got to her daughter Nona’s apartment, the grim investigation had begun.

It was murder all right. Nona had been stripped naked, an empty condom wrapper was lying on a counter a few feet away. But there was no physical evidence she had been raped. Her head had been smashed, apparently with the heavy base of a lamp lying nearby. And whoever struck the fatal blow had first used his fist to hit her face so hard it left bruising on her brain, then, had stabbed her repeatedly, shallow cuts around her neck and shoulders. And then, before swinging the lamp base, had strangled her with such force he broke the hyoid bone in her neck.

But her mother Carol wasn’t allowed past police lines to see her, she didn’t know all that yet.

Kevin Jones: And I remember her saying that she wished she would have been the one to find her so she could hold her one last time.

But it is perhaps a cruel necessity that murder investigations take priority over family rituals. And in the hours after he found Nona, Kevin went downtown to answer a routine slate of police questions.

Well, not, perhaps, entirely routine; the session was videotaped.

The questions were: What happened? How is it he found her body they asked? Where had he been all day? He was not a suspect, they told him. Still, they had to ask. And ask. And ask.

Kevin Jones:  They’d leave me there in the room..  They would ask me questions.

They kept him here for 3 hours.

Then, that night he went to see Nona’s mother.

Kevin Jones: She wanted me to come and make funeral arrangements with them, which we did. And she wanted me to pick out the clothes that Nona would be wearing for the visitation.

It was six days after the murder when Kevin prepared himself to be with Nona’s family at the funeral home.

Kevin called police that morning to tell them about rumors that a man was seen leaving Nona’s place the day of the murder.

And, while he was on the line, the police asked if perhaps he could come downtown again. Some more questions, just a few, they told him. He’d be done before the visitation, they assured him of that…

Kevin Jones: And after about 20 minutes worth of questions, they asked me if I’d take a polygraph test to rule me out, ‘cause they wanted to start ruling people out.  And they wanted me to be the first one.

Keith Morrison, Dateline correspondent: What’d you say?

Kevin Jones: I said, “Sure.”

And so they strapped him up and ran through the innocuous questions..    And then...?

Police: Did you cause the death of Nona Dirksmeyer?

Morrison: And then they went out analyzed it, came back, and said what?

Examiner: I never have seen anybody fail a test as bad as you did.

Kevin Jones: The man who gave it to me told me that he has not seen anybody fail a test worse in his 28 years of giving lie detector tests.

Examiner: Kevin, there’s no doubt in my mind that you killed her.

Failed?  Shock would be too mild a word, said Kevin. They told him he had the right to a lawyer. He declined.

Morrison:  Why didn’t you ask for one?

Kevin Jones: At that time it seemed to me that if you asked for a lawyer, it looks like you have something to hide.

Kevin says that instead, he tried to convince them he was innocent, it was all a big mistake.  But..

Kevin Jones: At this point, it wasn’t really a questioning.  It was more of them yelling at me telling me they knew that I did it.

By that time both families had arrived here at the funeral home for a visitation service for Nona and an hour went by, and two hours, four hours.... six hours went by. Still no Kevin. Where was he? Why so long at the police station?  And at that  moment, said Nona’s stepfather Duane, for him at least,  the penny dropped.

Duane Dipert:  And all the sudden, it kinda—like a light bulb going off in my head. I said, “You know, wouldn’t it be funny if it’s the boyfriend?”

Kevin’s parents felt a change in the wind, too.

Morrison:  I gather this is the first time you’re thinking oh, my God… They think it’s him.

Janice Jones: Yeah.  This was another whole new reality. 

And Nona’s mother Carol received some surprise visitors.

Carol Dirksmeyer:  It was like 11:30.  Between 11:30 and 12:00 at night. I didn’t think Kevin had anything to do with it until the police actually told me. 

The boy she’d come to love as a future son-in-law, said the police, had brutally murdered her only daughter Nona.

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