Ex-police chief’s DNA ruled out in murder case

A DNA sample from former Hot Springs Police Chief David Flory submitted in connection with the 2011 death of a Hot Springs Village police dispatcher was excluded as a match to DNA found on the victim, Flory’s attorney said Friday.

The acquisition of the DNA sample from Flory was the result of a court order issued Tuesday by Garland County Circuit Court Judge John Homer Wright in response to a motion filed by the attorneys for Kevin Conway Duck, 33, who is set to stand trial next week on a charge of first-degree murder for the death of Dawna Natzke, 46, whose body was found Dec. 31, 2011.

John Wesley Hall, Flory’s attorney, told The Sentinel-Record he filed a motion to have the DNA purged Friday afternoon as soon as tests at the state crime lab confirmed Flory was excluded

as a possible contributor to the DNA sample found on Natzke.

Hall said Flory voluntarily went to the state crime lab in Little Rock to be tested Friday morning and “literally submitted his sample directly to the person who would be testing it.”

He said in his response to the order requesting Flory’s sample he had argued the request was “unconstitutional on its face” since it was essentially done without any probable cause being presented. He also noted the order violated the spirit of a gag order that had been issued in the case since it was not done under seal.

“The defense motion utterly fails to state any factual basis for alleged probable cause to take DNA from him,” he wrote, and instead relied “on rumor and utterly false speculation.”

He argued that the order should have never been issued “or it should have been issued after an adversarial proceeding to show that it is utterly without a factual foundation.” He noted “secrecy is hardly an issue since this got such prominent play in the press.”

The response states Flory should get to cross examine the witnesses about the rumor and speculation and where it came from. He told The Sentinel-Record the request was just “a red herring” by the defense and shouldn’t have been allowed.

The motion filed Monday by Duck’s attorneys, T. Clay Janske and Brian L. Johnson, had stated Flory “had a relationship with the victim and was a person of interest in the murder of the victim.”

In his response, Hall stated, “This is utterly false and a lie.”

The response states Flory had no “relationship with the victim” and “never saw her, crossed her path or even knew of her prior to hearing of her death.” It also denied Flory being a “person of interest,” noting, “If he was, one would think that the police would have talked to him. They didn’t. Why? Because he’s not a ‘person of interest’ and he never was.”

Hall wrote the delay was “just a fishing expedition” and an attempt to stall the trial, coming only a few days before the trial was set to begin. A defense motion to delay the trial was denied on Thursday.

The response states the order “needlessly and maliciously tarnishes (Flory’s) reputation by scurrilously stretching the use of a judicial filing to identify him as a potential alternative suspect without a scintilla, without even a whiff, of evidence to support it.”

Hall said Friday he sent the test results to Wright along with his motion to purge the DNA from the trial, but had not heard back from Wright as of late Friday. He said he anticipated it would be purged as he requested.

A gag order limiting pretrial publicity in the case was issued by Wright Wednesday so Garland County Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joe Graham said he couldn’t comment on the DNA issue, but he did confirm the trial is set to begin Tuesday.

Duck, who was arrested Nov. 25,

2013, nearly two years after Natzke’s body was found, was last set to stand trial Jan. 30, 2017. The trial was postponed after Janske filed a motion arguing DNA test results were not back from the crime lab and more time was needed to discuss additional evidence prosecutors delivered Jan.

25, 2017.

The trial has reportedly been rescheduled seven times since it was first set for July 22, 2014.