“She was truly one of their own. Which makes it all the more puzzling why the search seems to be slow in developing and why more wasn’t done. ... why a better job didn’t get done.”
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18
JUNE 13, 2013
ARKANSAS TIMES
Meek told Arkansas Times he later learned that the pond where Natzke’s body was found was, in fact, given at least a cursory search once and possibly twice by the Hot Springs Village Police. Still, he calls the question of why it took a week and a half and a volunteer search to find the body “unexplainable.” He said he also doesn’t understand why the car was brought back to the Village for processing. “Maybe there was nothing there anyway because of the heat of the fire,” Meek said, “but to put it on a flatbed and drive it 50 miles an hour for 10 miles down the road? If there was anything on there, it’s going to blow away.” Even with those seemingly unexplainable lapses, Meek said he doesn’t believe there was any kind of cover-up by Hot Springs Village or the HSVPD. “I’m convinced that the people who work in the Hot Springs Village Police Department loved Dawna Natzke,” Meek said. “She was truly one of their own. Which makes it all the more puzzling why the search seems to be slow in developing and why more wasn’t done. ... why a better job didn’t get done.” Hot Springs Village Interim Chief Ricky Middleton refused to comment on the search for Natzke, and referred all questions about the investigation to the Garland County Sheriff’s Office.
I
nvestigator Mike Wright with the Garland County Sheriff Office has been the lead detective on the case since Natzke’s body was found. When we spoke in early June, he said the investigation was drawing to a close. Just before press time, a spokesman for the Garland County Sherrif ’s Office said the investigative file had been forwarded to the Garland County prosecutor’s office. “We feel like we’ve investigated everything there is to investigate, and we’ve been in contact throughout the ordeal with the prosecutor’s office,” Wright said. “That’s what I’m working on as we speak. We’re getting the final, formal file ready to send over.” Asked whether Kevin Duck is considered a suspect in the case,
Wright said: “I can tell you that our investigation has led us to no other persons of interest.” Of his interviews with Duck, Wright said Duck was “cooperative,” but refused to say more. Wright said he couldn’t disclose how Natzke died, whether she was killed where she was found, or whether the evidence in the case leads investigators to believe that the killer had an accomplice. He said that the area where the car was burned was searched more than once, but nothing of evidentiary value was located there. At the pond, however, Wright said that investigators did locate “items of evidence,” but he couldn’t get into specifics. As for how long the investigation phase has taken, Wright said they have taken their time because they didn’t want to “jump the gun.” “We didn’t want to go off halfcocked and rush out and do something that later on would come back to bite us,” he said. “We wanted to make sure we did a thorough investigation and exhausted all the leads possible. Unfortunately, that takes a little time. You have witnesses who were once here who are not here, you try to track them down to do your interviews, and so forth.” Wright said he feels confident that the sheriff’s office has done the best investigation it can do in the case, and has done a thorough job. Asked what have been the biggest difficulties in solving the murder, Wright said: “The lack of actual witnesses and the lack of physical evidence.” Still, Wright is optimistic. “From my personal standpoint, I think there is enough there to move forward with a charge,” he said. “But then again, I look at it from the investigative side. I’m not in the position to have to actually prosecute it. In my years of doing this, I’ve walked over there with a case that I thought was a slam dunk, and it just fell to pieces. Conversely, I’ve walked over there with a case I didn’t feel very comfortable with at all and ended up getting a conviction on it. It’s hard to say, especially with a jury trial. You never know what 12 men and women are going to think.”