sweethearts. >> expected to spend the rest of our lives together. >> when she was murdered sympathy turn to suspicion. >> no question it was his. >> the mystery was just beginning because >> dna was some other mail. >> as the town chooses sides, more startling developments in a horrific murder. >> you've got something this bad. somebody has to pay. kevin jones were a couple with a bright future. hello, and hello, and welcome to dateline.19-y nona dirksmeyer, kevin jones were a couple with a bright future. she was a self-confident 19- year-old known for her beautiful voice and he was her devoted boyfriend with big ambitions. than a brutal attack shattered their dreams. it was a crime that was shake a small southern town to its core and pit to family■ç against the community they called home. here is keith morrison with what happened to the beauty queen? >> look at her. look at the young woman at the heart of our story. your first impression was probably locked in and unlikely to change and that's how it was in russellville, arkansas. a town worth first impression like a patch of cement and for better or worse with the young man accused of killing her. the boyfriend who found the body? >> the boyfriend who found the body. >> first impressions diehard including first ■çimpressions o murder. years later in the small southern town we had to ask, can they ever change? that question is obvious not a kevin jones but years ago he didn't give a figure whom he impressed her didn't. all he knew was this. he was going places. he was from a good family. lived near a wonderful fat town called russellville and was well-liked. and was adored by one girl in particular, his high school sweetheart, nona dirksmeyer. she was kind of like a soulmate i suppose? >> i was closer to her than anybody else. >> he was going to marry her someday. she was about the prettiest girl in town. local beauty pageant judges were wowed ■çby her looks and poise. already, crowned her as such. here is another truth her boyfriend came to realize. beauty really isn't everything. nona was a sometimes troubled girl, emotional turmoil. her mother was grateful to kevin for making her daughter happy. >> kevin was really interested in helping nona get through the hard times she was having. he seemed to be a caring person. >> he even brought nona into his family. as mom janice and dad treated her as one of the run. >> she was not a girlfriend. she was our family. >> it was time for kevin to go to college and he and nona stayed in touch and in love through late-night cell chats and texan ■çemoticons. when he didn't respond promptly, she would wake her finger at him. >> she would say, are you still alive? sarcastically. trying to get my attention. >> which is why he was taken aback that they a little week before christmas 2005, it was december 15. nona uncharacteristically hadn't reached out to him or answered him since morning. at one point he turned her tolland back on her texting google lies, even then, she did not respond. this was not like nona. >> 4.5 years we had made a pattern. that's what we did every day. if that pattern is broken, it waves 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 night, kevin was supposed to drop his mom janice to a christmas party. she remembers being in the car with him. >> i said, you know, there's lots of reasons she may not be answering her phone. maybe her chance changed. >> he called his buddy who delivered pizza near nona's apartment and asked to check on her. her car was in the lot. house ln but she was not answering the door. >> i said i'm going to come over there. >> they pulled up to the front door. >> ryan and i knocked and rang the doorbell and nobody came. ca we started to get a little frantic. >> they ran around to the back door. kevin said he rushed up to the sliding glass door without taking a moment to look inside. >> when i was grabbing the handle, ryan touched me and said to you not see your? 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 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 was no breathing. her eyes usually so luminous, there was no light. there was nothing at all. >> i talked to her and prayed everything was going to be okay until ems got there. >> soon the apartment was overwhelmed by paramedics and police. p it wasn't long before an officer took kevin aside. janice listened as her son's voice rose above the chaos. >> then i heard him cried out. >> a how will? >> that's what it was. he asked them if she was dead and they affirmed yes, she was. >> nona was gone. nothing kevin could do about it. as he tried to absorbed the enormity, he heard the police, could he come downtown, please. they had a few questions about what happened to nona . did kevin know what happened? police seemed to think so. >> you been in a fight >> recently? >> watch what happened when police were not asking questions . >> oh, my god. please tell me, what am i gonnal do? gonna do? shingles doesn't care. but shingrix protects. only shingrix is proven over 90% effective. shingrix is a vaccine used to prevent shingles in adults 50 years and older. shingrix does not protect everyone and is not for those with severe allergic reactions to its ingredients or to a previous dose. an increased risk of guillain-barré syndrome was observed after getting shingrix. fainting can also happen. the most common side effects are pain, redness, and swelling at the injection site, muscle pain, tiredness, headache, shivering, fever, and upset stomach. ask your doctor or pharmacist about shingrix today. [♪♪] and upset stomach. there's a way to cut your dishwashing time by 50%. try dawn powerwash dish spray. it removes 99% of grease and grime in half the time. it cleans so well, you can replace multiple cleaning products. try dawn powerwash. (christine) my son really had to be head of the household because i became a dependent. my tip is every time i want to smoke a cigarette, i would think of my children. 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>> about 1:00 last night. i called her from my house phone. >> questioning the ■çman who ma have known her best. >> i've never been in a fight. >> kevin jones seemed eager to help police figure out who killed his girlfriend. he agreed to go to the station that night to answer a few routine questions. >> what happened? >> i called her all day. i thought maybe her phone was dead. >> he careen from what looked like disbelief to grief. anger. back again. >> couple of questions. >> a few questions turned to many and were pointed. >> i would never. i would i would kill myself before i heard her. >> ■çthey would leave me alone the room. they would ask me questions. >> oh, my god. >> after a while, the police told kevin he could go home. they had other people to talk to. young men nona have been seeing while kevin was at college. it was not long before detectives determine the alibis for those other men checked out. 60s later as he prepared to say good-bye to known at the funeral home, police asked him to come back to the police station. >> after 20 minutes they asked if i would take a polygraph test. >> what did you say? >> i said sure. >> they stripped him up and ranç through the innocuous questions and then -- >> did you cause the death of nona dirksmeyer? >> and they analyzed it and came back and said what? >> the man told me he had not seen anybody fail a test worse than is 28 some odd years of giving lie detector test. >> kevin, there's no doubt that you killed her. >> the murder of the beauty queen was big news in russellville. given the nature of the crime and the victim so young and pretty and vulnerable, the pressure to solve it from the public and press was quite intense. imagine how it was for the lead detective marc frost given that this was his very first homicide case. as he talked to kevin, he sounded like a veteran who had seen it ?@&l and was disgusted. >> you did this. you did it. >> you are dead wrong. >> point-blank. >> wasn't really a questioning. it was more of them yelling at me and telling me they knew i did it. >> the police didn't arrest kevin that night. this is what they did instead. they told nona's mother that the young man she thought would be her son-in-law was in fact her daughter's killer. >> first thing i was told was he was a social path with a narcissistic personality. >> nona had been stabbed repeatedly and bashed on the head. the medical examiner said that's what killed nona. the police told carol this had to have been a personal attack on something debt but kevin■ç, no carol had two shocks to absorb. >> i knew in my heart it was someone she knew. she would never let anyone in she did not know. >> now, kevin's horrifying's discovery was a dark and troubling spin. the detective said to him, the crime scene out there looked staged. a week later, there was a press conference at which the police told the public don't worry we know who committed this crime. >> police didn't mention the suspect's name then but it was not long before everybody in russellville knew it was kevin jones. this is what appeared in the courier three months after known as murder. known as killer remains free and russellville police department has reqtqáuq" formal charges against one suspect. jones was kevin's father. >> they tried, convicted and sentenced him and 90 days. if he was a stranger walking in a coffee shop visiting russellville and you read that, what would you think? >> it bothered kevin's mother went bumper stickers, justice for nona started cropping up. after all, she loved nona too. >> the assumption i formed and i think many people formed was that justice for nona meant convict kevin. >> topping the news. police make an arrest in the 19- year-old beauty queen. >>■ç not long after the courier article, police did announce the arrest of kevin jones for the murder of tran -- nona dirksmeyer. whether he was convicted in the court of public opinion was now apparently irrelevant. he was about to stand trial . white possibly be convicted where it really mattered, a court of law. >> coming up. a print in blood on the lamp used to kill nona. guess who? >> no question it was his. >> on another key piece of evidence? >> the tna was some other mail. new mr. clean ultra foamy magic eraser? with the scrubbing power of magic eraser and the cleaning power of dawn. watch it make soap scum here... disappear... and sprays can leave grime like that ultra foamy melts it on contact. magic. new ultra foamy magic eraser. 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's lawyers argued that would be impossible in a place like russellville. so the venue was changed to the nearby city of ozark. >> the spotlight is on a small town as jury selection begins. >> to the prosecutor the ■ç location mattered little but what mattered was the evidence. he believed there was enough to put kevin jones away for years. jeff phillips was a deputy prosecutor. >> we believed and i believed that the morning of her death, kevin jones came in unexpectedly. >> when the trial open, the prosecutor told the jury the reason for the crime was as old as the bible itself. jealous rage. kevin jones had walked into his liver's apartment that day 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. things escalated from there. escalated out of control. >>■ç and that the prosecutor sa jones repeatedly stabbing nona then crushing her skull with a lamp base. left his palm print on the bulb. >> no question it was is? >> no question it was is. the defense didn't even make an issue. >> it's what kevin did next that shows how calculating he could be. he left the apartment 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, intentional attempt to have someone else find her but him. >> trying to make himself look innocent. if that wasn't telling enough the prosecutor said, surely this was. kevin jones police interview right$çthere, 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 would be for jurors to convict his son. >> it was a nightmare. >> his parents never wavered in their belief that his son was as innocent as he told police he was. they even bet the family farm. >> we put it up as collateral. >> and use the money to buy their son the best defense they could. and he needed it. kevin's lawyers new their client had become the local poster boy for evil. >> when you've got something this serious, that is this bad, this girl was brutally murdered. >>■ç somebody has got to pay. >> somebody has got to pay. >> somebody but not kevin said the attorney. this of the readout of the polygraph to a independent reader said it was designed to make kevin fail. the rest of the evidence didn't wash either. the palm print, the murder weapon, the attorney agreed it was kevin's print and no wonder it was. kevin was frantically trying to save his girlfriend's life. he could've touched the light bulb. >> it's a totally innocent situation. the blood got on the light bulb at the time the body was discovered. >> when he is trying to revive her? >> yes. the emt said the lamp was a foot of the body. >>■ç more disturbing? the evidence collected by police. said the defense, first time homicide detective mark frost and the other officers 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. a condom wrapper a short distance from the body. the police didn't go upstairs to see if it was flushed. did not fingerprint the commode. don't dna that. don't dna anything up there. >> the defense did its own dna testing on the condom wrapper. by the prosecution's account, it was a key piece of evidence. the thing ■çthat set kevin ofte has murderous rage. but think about it said johnson, if kevin actually saw the condom wrapper, he would've picked it up. left his own dna on it. but -- >> we sent the wrapper off to a lab and they found the dna. the dna was some other male. >> someone else's dna and not kevin. probably, said the defense, the condom was used by the killer. but who? neither defense nor prosecution had an answer. the dna didn't match anybody in the database. kevin's lawyers did have this. an alibi for their client. kevin's grandmother told the court he could not have killed nona because he was with her miles away in the town of dover around the time the state said nona ■çdied. >> she is a down to earth, very levelheaded person. she was an incredible witness on the stand. >> there was one compelling piece of evidence in the case of the defense, and they wanted jurors to see more of it. that police video of kevin. >> she didn't deserve this. she deserved a life. >> the defense watched all of it. it was betting this image would convince jurors they should change what may have been the first impression and decide kevin was not the killer the prosecutors painted but a grief stricken young man who was innocent. what to believe? in the courthouse, the jury wrestled with the verdict.■ç 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 the key piece of evidence? coming up. >> is that it matches. he said, well, it matches gary dunn. >> who is gary dunn and what, if anything, did he have to do with known as murder? i was sad. colton: i was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma. brett: once we got the first initial hit, it was just straight tears, sickness in your stomach, just don't want to get up out of bed. joe: there's always that saying, well, you've got to look on the bright side of things. tell me what the bright side of childhood cancer is. lakesha: it's a long road. it's hard. but saint jude has gotten us through it. narrator: saint jude children's research hospital works day after day to find cures and save the lives of children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. thanks to generous donors like you, families never receive a bill from saint jude for treatment, travel, housing, or food, so they can focus on helping their child live. ashley: without all of those donations, saint jude would not be able to do all of the exceptional work that they do. narrator: for just $19 a month, you'll help us continue the life-saving research and treatment these kids need. tiffany: no matter if it's a big business or just the grandmother that donates once a month, they are changing people's lives. and that's a big deal. narrator: join with your debit or credit card right now, and we'll send you this saint jude t-shirt that you can proudly wear to show your support. nicole: our family is forever grateful for donations big and small because it's completely changed our lives and it's given us a second chance. elizabeth stewart: saint jude's not going to stop until every single kid gets that chance to walk out of t