K8 Unsolved: Case Closed edition: David “Stoney” Stone

SALEM, Ark. (KAIT) - The moon shone brightly that summer night.

It was August 25, 2004, in rural Fulton County, the perfect place for those looking to live a quiet life.

Leon King Jr., who goes by JR, spent the day with his good friend, David Stone, who he and others called “Stoney.”

They ended the night at King’s trailer home after a good day of hunting.

“Me and my friend, Stoney, went out and killed a turkey, cooking it, and killed a deer,” King recounted.

It was a peaceful, easy night, or so it seemed.

“I can still see it. I was sitting there in the living room, and he said, ” Man, I’ve been shot," and I said, “Do what?”

King first thought Stoney was simply “messing with” him, as Stone was known to do.

“Thought he was still joking until he raised his shirt up and I’d seen the bullet hole,” King said. “He was standing there, no blood or nothing.”

As reality started to set in, Stone collapsed to the floor.

Fueled by emotions, King ran out to find who pulled the trigger.

“You son of a bitch, you shot the wrong man,” King yelled.

King ran back inside to call for an ambulance, all while he sat by Stone.

“He said, ‘I’m not going to make it this time,‘” King said.

A helicopter flew Stone to Springfield, Missouri, where he died.

“We were buddies,” King said. “We were brothers more than anything.”

Almost immediately following the shooting, Arkansas State Police and the sheriff’s office began looking for the person who pulled the trigger.

“The sheriff’s office got a call, or the call came into the Sharp County Sheriff’s Office, and then they called over here and they dispatched deputies and found David Stone had been shot,” Fulton County Detective Dale Weaver said.

“That night, they found some evidence where a vehicle pulled into Mulberry Road that was just west of [King’s] residence as well as combat boot tracks leading down to the trailer,” Weaver added.

But one thing stunned everyone.

“They didn’t break the window. It didn’t even break the window,” King said of the fatal shot. “It didn’t even crack the window. Perfect round hole.”

As investigators continued to gather evidence, one thing was on everyone’s mind: Who shot Stoney?

“I knew who done it,” King exclaimed. “There was no doubt in my mind. I knew the bunch that done it.”

The prior December, King got into a fight with brothers Darrell and David Burch.

According to affidavits, officers knew the Burch brothers didn’t always get along with King.

This incident in particular ended with a trip to the hospital.

“JR King beat the tar out of David Burch and put him in the hospital,” Weaver explained.

David Burch’s daughter said he took a beer can and used it to try to hit King.

“I had enough room for it to not cut my nose and I whooped him. They hauled him to the hospital,” King recounted. “I snapped. I was mad. We went to court later on over me whooping him.”

Court documents show that David Burch filed assault and battery charges against King.

The judge deemed King not guilty and ordered him to pay David Burch’s medical bills.

“So many people, investigators and other folks who knew some of the people involved, even from the community, they thought Darrell Burch did it,” Weaver explained.

However, if the altercation was between King and the Burch brothers, how did Stone come into play?

Why was he the one shot? Was he even the target?

“I guess he didn’t realize David [Stone] was there,” Weaver stated. “If he did, he didn’t choose his target very well.”

Through interviews with several people, deputies learned that on the night of the shooting, two men approached a lake house across from King’s residence.

Investigators later learned that Darrell Burch and a friend of his, Dennis Kingston, were the ones who made the trip to the lake house.

Records said that Burch and Kingston went out to the pond to go fishing and zeroed in a rifle that belonged to the Burch brothers.

“Even his brother, David, whenever the officers interviewed him later, he told them then he told them that Darrell would take care of it, but he didn’t think about him shooting him, he just said he would take care of it,” Weaver explained.

When detectives eventually interviewed Darrel Burch, they say he denied the whole thing, right down to even having a rifle with them. According to the records, he told investigators that the rifle had been stolen.

With that, the trail went cold.

“Whoever shot Stoney is still out there,” King said.

Time moved forward.

Investigators continued to try and gather as much as they could. Unfortunately, leads could only go so far.

“They did a lot of work, but they got to a point where things kind of dropped off,” Weaver explained.

Eventually, everyone involved in the case moved on, from changing careers to retiring.

For the time being, the mysterious case of who killed Stone was left a mystery.

Until 19 years later when a fresh set of eyes took a look at the case.

In 2023, Weaver took over the case.

“I was sheriff over in Sharp County whenever this happened back in 2004, and I heard about it,” Weaver recounted.

Since then, he has retired but still kept in touch with the sheriff’s office and helped with new investigators, eventually landing a part-time job working solely on cold cases.

“I was pretty well left alone to do my thing and investigate this case,” Weaver said. “I was given the freedom to do it, and I still have that.”

After decades of being left untouched, the case came to life once again.

“If you look at the case file and read through, one of the first things you do on a cold case as an investigator is get everything that’s out there that’s been done on it,” Weaver explained. “Somebody’s poured out the foundation. I’m just building on it.”

Weaver continued the investigation, poring through two decades’ worth of information, revisiting past clues that could hopefully lead them to Stone’s killer.

“Dale Weaver came here and talked to me and got my statement and see if I could give him any more,” King said.

With enough clues and leads, this cold case got a bit warmer.

“Dale let me know. He said, ‘I got him’ and I said ‘Who you got?‘” King said.

Dennis Kingston.

“That’s what opened my eyes. Knew he lived there; knew he was one of the boys but never dreamed him,” King exclaimed.

Poring through the foundation, Weaver looked for cracks in the case.

“When I first opened the investigation in January of 2023, along the way and reviewing the case file, I saw two things that really stood out to me,” Weaver said.

That fateful day in May when King beat David [Burch], they weren’t alone. Kingston stood behind them all during the entire incident -

“A lot of the people were thinking that Darrell Burch had done this, and so I think they’d focused on Darrell,” Weaver explained. “When I read the case and saw all the threats that Dennis had made, I thought, ‘That needs to be followed up.‘”

- all the way to the day of the verdict.

“One statement was taken from David [Burch’s] daughter, and it was stated that the night her father came back from the hospital, that Darrell and Dennis were sitting there and talking about what had happened, and Dennis was real angry and wanted to go kill JR that night,” Weaver said.

“That stunned me,” King said.

But the question remains: What would Kingston gain from shooting a man?

Everyone we spoke with described Kingston as a quiet guy, and that this was rather uncharacteristic of him.

“I’m not sure that he was quick to anger, generally speaking,” Weaver recounted. “I think that he thought so much of David Burch; I’d wondered if that had happened to him, what he would’ve done, but it happened to his friend, and that’s what made him so angry. Angry enough to kill somebody.”

Unfortunately for Kingston, the man he’d slain, dying in a pool of his own blood, was the wrong man caught in the crosshairs.

“David [Stone] had done nothing or wronged him in any way,” Weaver stated. “He was just a friend and happened to be there and shot as a result for just being there.”

A man, friend, husband, and father ripped away all from the pull of a trigger.

“I said, ‘Dennis, this family, they didn’t deserve this. They had no closure. They lived with this for almost 20 years. You’ve had 20 years of freedom,” Weaver recalled. “Don’t you think that it’s time to tell the truth and let them get a little closure out of this?”

Kingston pleaded guilty to murder in the first degree and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

“He was 65 years old at the time whenever he was arrested,” Weaver said. “With 30 years and as much time as you serve for a Class Y, it’s probably a life sentence for him.”

Kingston now sits behind bars.

The Burch brothers have both since died.

“I wish they could’ve done something sooner than 20 years ago where all three of them could’ve done something,” King said.

K8 News reached out to Stone’s family to see if they would be interested in sitting down for an interview. They said they’d like to put this part of their life behind them and not reopen any old wounds.

King moved back to Manila, where he and Stone grew up together.

Despite losing his life in Salem, King says Stone still lives on.

“I woke up on the couch, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about me no more. I’m in a good place.‘”

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