Contents

Jim Dunaway

James Kenneth Dunaway (September 3, 1941 – May 12, 2018) was an American football player. A defensive tackle, he played college football at the University of Mississippi, and played professionally in the American Football League (AFL) for the Buffalo Bills, as part of a defensive line that held opposing runners without a rushing touchdown for a pro football record seventeen consecutive games in the 1964 and 1965 AFL seasons.^[1]

On July 27, 1998, Dunaway's ex-wife, Nonniel Dunaway, was found dead in a half-empty swimming pool.^[2] An autopsy revealed that she had a fractured skull and was unconscious when she was placed in the water by her assailant where she drowned. Prior to this event, she had won a divorce judgment which gave her more than 800 acres (3.2 km²) of property that the couple owned, $1,800 a month in alimony and half of Dunaway's NFL pension. They had been divorced since 1995 and Dunaway was planning to appeal.

Dunaway was charged with her murder but a grand jury chose not to indict Dunaway of the charges.^[3] In response, his children filed a wrongful death lawsuit, alleging that Dunaway was responsible for their mother's death.^[4] In 2002, Dunaway was found liable and ordered to pay $579,000 to his children.^[5]

Coincidentally, Dunaway had been a teammate for three seasons of star running back O. J. Simpson, who was similarly found responsible for his ex-wife's death after being acquitted of her murder in a controversial trial in 1995.

• Other American Football League players

This biographical article relating to an American football defensive lineman born in the 1940s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.