Slain Ark. dispatcher's friend describes odd text

A friend of a police dispatcher whose body was found in an Arkansas forest last weekend told The Associated Press Thursday that she believes someone else sent a text message from the slain woman's cellphone the morning after she was last seen.

Patty Hathaway said she texted her friend Dawna Natzke the morning after a Dec. 21 Christmas party that Natzke left abruptly. Hathaway said she told her friend that she wasn't pleased with how Natzke's boyfriend "pushed" her out the door.

Nearly two hours later, Hathaway received a text from Natzke's phone, saying: "He didn't push me i fell and he caught me. I had taken a pain pill and was tour up"

Hathaway, who described the text to the AP, said she doesn't believe that message came from Natzke.

"I know she knows how to spell," she said in a telephone interview.

Authorities have a person of interest in 46-year-old Natzke's death, but wouldn't say Thursday who it is. No one has been arrested.

Natzke was last seen leaving a holiday party in the gated community of Hot Springs Village with her 28-year-old boyfriend, Kevin Duck. Duck told detectives the couple returned to her home in Hot Springs Village that night and that she wasn't there when he awoke the next morning. Natzke wasn't reported missing until Dec. 23, when she failed to show up for work in the gated community.

Volunteer searchers found Natzke's body Dec. 31 in a remote part of the woods about five miles from where Natzke's burned-out station wagon turned up in Ouachita National Forest.

Duck didn't return a phone message left Thursday at his mother's home. His cellphone number, which went to a voicemail on Dec. 30, had been disconnected by New Year's Eve. It was still disconnected Thursday.

Natzke, 46, had recently separated from her husband.

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