Suspect pleads innocent in slaying
Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2008
A neighbor accused of killing Arkansas Tech University student Nona Dirksmeyer in 2005 pleaded innocent to a capital-murder charge Monday, less than a week after a judge issued a gag order in the case.
Gary Dunn, 29, entered the plea before Pope County Circuit Judge James Kennedy in Russellville. Dunn was living in the same Russellville apartment complex as Dirksmeyer, 19, when she was slain Dec. 15, 2005.
Dunn, who later moved to Dover, remains jailed in lieu of a $ 1 million cash bond.
Kennedy set a tentative trial date of April 13-24. He also advised potential witnesses in the courtroom and officers of the court of the gag order.
The order, signed Wednesday, says the parties have agreed that “continued media coverage may impair the ability to seat a fair and impartial jury.”
Special prosecutor Jack McQuary and defense attorney Jeff Rosenzweig declined to discuss the case on Monday because of the gag order.
Neither his defense attorney, appointed by the state Public Defender Commission, nor the prosecutor has filed lists of potential witnesses with the Pope County circuit clerk’s office.
Dunn is the second person to be charged in the Dirksmeyer killing.
The first man charged in the case was Dirksmeyer’s boyfriend, Kevin Jones, now 22, of Dover. A circuit jury acquitted Jones of first-degree murder in July 2007 after his trial was moved from Russellville in Pope County to Ozark in Franklin County because of pretrial publicity.
On Aug. 25, days after charging Dunn, McQuary said he believes Jones was indeed innocent.
After Jones’ trial, his attorneys kept working to prove his innocence and later came up with new DNA evidence on a condom wrapper found in Dirksmeyer’s apartment after the killing. The attorneys turned the information over to authorities, and a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate.
According to a court document in Jones’ case, authorities now believe Dirksmeyer may have been sexually assaulted. Dunn has denied ever being inside her apartment, the document says.
Dirksmeyer, an avid beautypageant contestant, was choked, beaten, and stabbed and slashed with a knife on her face, shoulders and throat, authorities have said. Her nude body was found in a pool of blood on her livingroom floor.
The gag order applies to the “parties, their attorneys, the attorneys’ employees, agents and consultants, witnesses named in discovery, and officers of the Court to include law enforcement agencies.” The order prohibits them “from making public comment,” including Internet postings.
During the case against Jones, postings on a Court TV message board were a sore point with both the prosecution and the defense.
Kennedy leaves the judicial bench at the end of December. Bill Pearson will succeed him.
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