Natzke murder trial begins
Attorneys for a man accused of killing a Hot
Springs Village police dispatcher more than five years ago pleaded with the judge during Monday’s pretrial hearing to exclude evidence or testimony of the man’s prior criminal history
or of a state child-services investigation concerning his son.
The first-degree murder trial for Kevin Duck, 33, will begin at 8 a.m. today at the Garland County Court House. Duck is accused of murdering his girlfriend, Dawna Natzke, whose body was found Dec. 31, 2011, submerged in a pond near Jessieville.
An autopsy determined Natzke, 46 at the time of her death, died by blunt force trauma and drowning.
Duck entered the courtroom Monday dressed in an orange Garland County Detention Center jumpsuit, with his hands shackled in front of him, sporting a full beard and with his hair pulled back in a rubber band. He sat on the left side of the jury box, secluded from other inmates awaiting their court appearances.
He did not speak as he stood before Garland County Circuit Court Judge John Homer Wright. His lawyers, T. Clay Janske and Brian Johnson, were barely audible to the courtroom gallery as they discussed Duck’s prior history as well as details of a state Division of Children and Family Services investigation concerning Duck and his son.
Garland County Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Joe Graham told Wright the state would not show a video at the trial that was part of the Children and Family Services investigation.
Wright had not ruled on the request as of late Monday.
Duck’s previous criminal record includes a 2009 aggravated assault conviction, for which he was on probation when Natzke disappeared.
Wright issued a gag order Wednesday prohibiting the attorneys and anyone connected to the case from making any comments to the media.
The case — which was first set for July 22 to July 25, 2014 — has been rescheduled seven times. The defense requested six of those delays.
Wright denied a defense request filed Wednesday to delay the trial again because of an order granted Tuesday to collect a DNA sample from former Hot Springs Police Chief David Flory. The motion from Duck’s attorneys requesting that Flory submit to testing claimed that Flory “had a relationship with the victim and was a person of interest in the murder of the victim.”
Flory was excluded as a contributor to the DNA found on Natzke, according to a report from the state Crime Lab that was attached to a motion requesting that Flory’s DNA sample be destroyed. Wright granted the motion on Monday.
At issue in nearly all of the previous requests to delay the trial were telephone triangulation records that detail the calls Duck made after Natzke vanished Dec. 22, 2011.
Cellphone records show Duck made a call at 7:46 a.m. on Dec. 22, 2011, from the Hot Springs Village gate and numerous calls from the junction area between Highway 7 and Highway 298 — the same area where Natzke’s body was later found.
Records show that Duck made a phone call at 8:34 a.m. that day six-tenths of a mile from where Natzke’s body was found and at 9:02 a.m. Duck made a call six-tenths of a mile from where Natzke’s burned out car was later discovered.
When Janske spoke to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in January, he said facts in the case were limited.
“They’re relying on the assumption that he was the last person to see her (Natzke) alive,” Janske said.
The cellphone timeline is consistent with what Duck has claimed all along, Janske added.
“He went looking for her. He drove down those same roads searching for her and he made a bunch of phone calls to friends and family,” he said. “I think it can be argued that the cellphone records will help the case.”
The prosecution turned over Verizon phone records to FBI Special Agent William Shute for analysis early in the investigation.
Janske and Johnson maintained the prosecution team was slow in turning over the records to them for analysis by their own expert. A motion to obtain the records and other discovery in the case was filed by the defense Dec. 4, 2013.
At a disposition hearing Feb.
10, 2014, the judge gave the prosecution three weeks to comply.
Nearly a year later, on Jan. 27,
2015, Janske asked that the cellphone report and Shute’s testimony be thrown out because the prosecution had not turned over the requested records.
The prosecution turned over the report Feb. 3, 2015. Former Garland County Prosecuting Attorney Terri Harris argued at the time that a “working copy” of the report had previously been turned over to the defense, but the delay came because of the report’s complexity.
Wright, the judge, sided with the prosecution and did not toss out the evidence.
A few of the delays were caused by the lengthy process it took to get the Arkansas Public Defenders Commission to pay for Duck’s own expert to analyze the phone records.
In early 2016, the newly hired defense expert, Ben Levitan, said the reports previously supplied by the prosecution were not sufficient and the original digital files were needed.
Wright agreed and ordered the prosecution to turn over the files.
On March 24, the defense again moved to have the evidence and the prosecution’s expert testimony tossed out because the needed records and report had not been released by the prosecution.
The defense had received a file dump of telephone records not previously disclosed on March 20, but their expert said the files were not in their original form.
Wright again refused to toss out the evidence, but gave the defense additional time to subpoena Verizon for the original phone records.
In October, Graham, the deputy prosecutor, filed a statement with the court saying that Verizon said Duck’s phone was supplied through a third-party company and wasn’t actually a Verizon phone.
The information was no longer available because that company’s policy was to keep the records for only one year.
The prosecution delivered more evidence related to the phone records Oct. 7, and Wright ruled on Oct. 12 that the discovery requests had been satisfied.
Duck, Natzke and Doris Smith, Natzke’s mother, attended a Christmas party Dec. 21, 2011, at the home of Sandra and Scott Randall in Hot Springs Village. Witnesses say that Duck and Natzke left the party at about 11 p.m., leaving Smith behind without a ride home.
Natzke’s friend, Patty Hathaway, said that Duck forcibly pushed Natzke out the door of the home.
Irene Orr, a neighbor of the Randall’s, told investigators that she heard screaming then a car leaving in a screech of tires at about the time Duck and Natzke are believed to have left the party.
Duck told authorities that he and Natzke went to her house where he went to bed and Natzke went back to the party. Duck said he woke up at about 7:30 a.m. Dec. 22, 2011, and neither Natzke nor her vehicle were at the house.
A neighbor, Cheryl Ansell, said she was outside between
5:30 a.m. and 5:40 a.m. Dec.
22 and noticed Natzke’s small pale-green station wagon was parked in Natzke’s carport with the dome light on. When Ansell left at 5:50 a.m. to take her husband to work, she noticed that Natzke’s car was gone.
Natzke’s son also told authorities that he woke up between
5:45 a.m. and 6 a.m. and saw the interior light on in his mother’s vehicle. When he woke up at 10 a.m., the car was gone.
A witness, Nicholas Sarver, said he saw Natzke’s car leaving through the Hot Springs Village gate between 7:45 a.m. and 8 a.m.
At about 11 a.m. on Dec. 22,
2011, Natzke’s burned out car was found in the Ouachita National Forest in an area outside Hot Springs Village in north Garland County.
On Dec. 31, 2011, more than
400 volunteers joined in a search for Natzke. Her body was found in a pond in north Garland County, about four miles from where her car was discovered.