It was Kevin Jones who first discovered Nona Dirksmeyer’s lifeless body in her Russellville apartment. Though they lived apart and studied at different institutions, Jones and Dirksmeyer were a couple that remained in close contact with one another, with Jones usually receiving responses from Dirksmeyer soon after sending her a text message. After Dirksmeyer became uncontactable, Jones reportedly got in touch with a friend who lived near his girlfriend to check in on her, but she didn’t answer the door. Jones then traveled with his mother to Dirksmeyer’s house, where he found her semi-naked and blood-soaked body.
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Investigators immediately turned their attention to Jones, who was interviewed repeatedly, and whose alibi on the day of the murder came under scrutiny (via NBC News). Jones was later charged as Dirksmeyer’s murderer, with prosecutors pointing to Jones’ bloody fingerprints at the crime scene as evidence that he had killed his girlfriend, with whom they said Jones had become enraged after coming to believe she had been seeing other men. However, his defense team argued that the prints were left during the horrifying discovery of Dirksmeyer’s body and that there were other prints on the lamp from an unidentified person who they said was the real killer. In a turn of events that surprised many of Dirksmeyer’s family who had turned against Jones, he was acquitted at the end of his trial.
