A Garland County jury today found Kevin Duck, 33, guilty in the murder of his girlfriend, Dawna Natzke, a Hot Springs Village Police Department dispatcher whose body was found floating a remote pond near Hot Springs Village in December 2011.
Arkansas Times published a cover story on the case in 2013.
Duck was reportedly the last person to see Natzke alive, with witnesses saying the couple argued at a Christmas party the evening of December 23, 2011. The next day, her car was found burned in the Ouachita National Forest. Duck later told Natzke’s mother that Natzke had left the house she and Duck shared early on the morning following the party and never came back. Her body was located by a search party on Dec. 31, 2011. An autopsy found she’d died of blunt-force trauma and drowning.
Duck was sentenced to life without parole. As seen in a video from KARK, as Duck was being led from the courtroom to a patrol car, he told a reporter “I think y’all made a mistake.”