The Murder of Mia Zapata

The Killing of the Lead Singer of the Punk Rock Band The Gits Goes Cold For a Decade Before Justice is Served

Mia performing (photo source)

"Mia Zapata was an extraordinary human being.  She was a beloved friend, a gifted songwriter, musician, visual artist and performer. . . .  We prefer to remember her friendship, talent, humor, and the incredible art and music she left to the world." - Andy Kessler, Matt Dresdner, and Steve Moriarty of The Gits 

In the 1990s, Seattle was Ground Zero for the grunge genre of rock.  Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, Mudhoney and Candlebox were all leading the music movement from underground to prominence, but none was as big or as influential as Nirvana, who (the band and lead singer, Kurt Cobain) perfectly captured the sound, essence and angst of a generation.  Diverse and trendy, Seattle was the perfect city to spawn these bands, as well as many others who were verging on mainstream success.

The Gits was one of those bands.  Formed in 1986 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, they took their name from a Monty Python skit and soon became known for the fiery performances of Andy Kessler on guitar, Matt Dresdner on bass, Steve Moriarty on drums and Mia Zapata singing. 

Brought up in Kentucky, Mia, the third child and second daughter in her family, was a born performer and from her youth, she seemed to know that she was destined for a musical future.  She began singing at an early age, often astounding listeners with her throaty voice, reminiscent of Janis Joplin, one of Mia's idols.  By the time she was nine, she had taught herself how to play the piano and the guitar.  As a teen, she kept a notebook into which she wrote poetry that eventually became song lyrics.    

Although her family was considered well off, Mia cared little for material things and focused instead on creative expression. Antioch, therefore, was a perfect college for her and one that not only enabled her to express herself but allowed her to find a musical community that she quickly affiliated herself with.  

Two years after the Gits formed, they recorded and self-released an unofficial debut album.  The following year, in 1989, they moved to Seattle to join the growing underground rock movement.  

The band moved into an abandoned house in the Capitol Hill district they dubbed "The Rathouse," where they would live and rehearse.  When she wasn't performing, Mia washed dishes at a local bar in order to make ends meet, until the Gits made it big.  The band played many venues in the Seattle area and quickly gained a devout fan following, particularly with the punk rock community.  Mia's magnetic personality and energy pushed her to the forefront of the Gits.    

The Gits embarked on a successful international tour in 1990, without support of a record label.  Two years later, in 1992, they released their first official album independently.  

It seemed that 1993 might finally bring the Gits the mainstream success they craved.  By that summer, they were recording their second album and were being seriously courted by various mainstream labels.  

The Gits (photo source)

July of 1993

On July 4, the band returned to Seattle from a successful tour of the West Coast.  Steve Moriarity would later recall that Mia had not wanted to go back to Seattle, that she feared something bad was going to happen there.  It seemed an innocuous comment at the time and one that Dresdner associated with Robert Jenkins, Mia's former boyfriend who had recently broken up with her.  Their stay wouldn't be long before they would again leave for another tour, this one scheduled to start in New York.  

On Tuesday, July 6, Mia rose around 11 a.m. and had lunch with her father, Richard, who drove in from Yakima, where he had relocated with his second wife.  Father and daughter routinely had these types of get-togethers once or twice a month when Mia was in Seattle.  Richard did not like or approve of Mia's career choice or her lifestyle.  He worried about her safety in a city like Seattle, where she lived and moved among a sometimes drug-riddled scene and was often out late at night.  These get-togethers allowed him to both keep his bond with Mia tight and to check up on her.   

Following lunch at a local Indian restaurant, Mia and Richard visited Tower Records and the Seattle Art Museum before Richard dropped Mia off back at her apartment around 3 p.m., promising to call her in a few days.  At that time, only one of her roommates was home.   Richard later remembered that Mia had looked satisfied, content and at ease with herself.  

Mia walked the dog and did some laundry after Richard departed before heading to Capitol Hill, for the Pancreas Production Studio, around 6:30, where she rehearsed with Hells Smells, the band that her ex, Robert Jenkins, was a member of and where she often sang back-up vocals.  She and Jenkins had, at one time, discussed marriage and while he had apparently moved on and had begun dating someone else, Mia was said to still be hurting over the break-up and was stung by the fact that he was dating.

(photo source)

She rehearsed for a good two hours before walking over to the Comet Tavern, a block away at E. Pike and 10th Avenue.  The Comet was a local watering hole and well known as a Gits hangout, so Mia was comfortable there and with the people who frequented it.  That evening, friends and fellow musicians from the band Seven Year Bitch were drinking and remembering their former guitarist, Stefanie Sargent, who had died 13 months earlier after a night of heavy drinking and shooting up heroin.  There was some dispute as to whether Mia had been drinking on and off all day or had begun drinking once she arrived at the Comet but by the time she left that night, she was extremely intoxicated.    

Mia was no stranger to drugs, having been known to smoke pot and even to have dabbled in the harder stuff but her vice of choice was alcohol.  Her drinking had gotten so bad at one point that the other members of the Gits had threatened to kick her out of the band unless she eased up.  She had complied during the tour, not just controlling her consumption but foregoing alcohol completely.   Whether it was returning to the familiar stomping grounds of Seattle and her interactions with Robert Jenkins or remembering Stefanie Sargent or the cusp that the Gits were on, headed for success, Mia fell off the wagon on July 6.   Her friends at the Comet later recalled that she seemed agitated after the rehearsal session with Jenkins and barely let her glass get empty before having another drink.  At one point she even left the Comet briefly to walk to a nearby pizza joint, where she purchased alcohol to drink before returning to the tavern.  

While at the Comet, Mia reportedly made a phone call from the bar's payphone but it's unknown who she called.  She did not mention it to her friends, and no one came forward to say that they had spoken to her or received a call from her.  In all likelihood, she was trying to track down Jenkins.  

Mia left the Comet around 1 a.m., reportedly saying that she was going to try and locate Jenkins.  She retraced her steps from earlier, walking east on Pike for about a block, back to the Pancreas Production Studios.  Finding the studio empty and no trace of Jenkins, she went to the third floor of the adjoining Winston Apartments, where a friend of hers, "T.V.," lived.  T.V. was also a member of Jenkins' band and remembered that Mia was not only very drunk but angry because she couldn't locate Jenkins and wanted to talk to him about their relationship.  

Mia spent about an hour at T.V.'s apartment before deciding to leave.  T.V. tried to convince Mia to stay and sleep it off but Mia rejected the offer and set out, once again on foot.  Depending on the source, Mia was either going in search of Jenkins, was going to walk to a nearby gas station where she could catch a cab home or walk to a cab company to get a cab there.  (She had no driver's license and would often take cabs around the city.)  When she left T.V.'s apartment, Mia was wearing a black Gits hooded sweatshirt, cut-off jeans, black boots and carried a Walkman.    

For nearly an hour and a half, Mia's whereabouts were unknown.

  

At 3:20 a.m., just over two miles southeast from the Winston Apartments, a prostitute made the terrible find of a body.  Located on 24th Avenue between South Yesler and South Washington, the body was discovered in the street, next to the curb and close to a nearby field.  The sex worker immediately notified authorities.  The Seattle Fire Department arrived on the scene at 3:30 a.m. and found a young female lying on the pavement, her ankles crossed, and her arms spread in a Christ-like pose.  The sweatshirt she wore was pulled up underneath her arms with the hood tied tightly around her face and knotted under her throat.  Her underwear and torn bra were found stuffed in the pocket of her jeans.  The paramedics noted abrasions on the exposed parts of her body, including alongside her nipples.   She had no pulse and did not appear to be breathing but the paramedics did not believe she had been lying there long and attempted resuscitation, which proved unsuccessful.  She was pronounced dead and sent to the morgue as a Jane Doe, to await the medical examiner, Seattle's 33rd murder victim of 1993.    

While the fire department and paramedics had no idea who the woman was, the medical examiner had no doubt.  A fan of the underground music scene, he had attended many of The Gits' concerts and immediately recognized the body of Mia Zapata on his table.  

He determined that Mia had been strangled with a ligature and believed it to be the drawstring of her sweatshirt.  Although the strangulation had been what had killed her, she had endured a horrific beating to her abdominal area which had not only lacerated her liver but, in the medical examiner's opinion, would have resulted in her death had she not been strangled.  

Mia also had injuries to her vaginal and anal area consistent with rape, although no semen was detected.  The M.E. thought the abrasions along her nipples were caused by teeth and had taken swabs from the area.  The swabs, once analyzed, detected the presence of saliva.   As DNA testing was still in its infancy, the M.E. had the foresight to preserve the swabs for future use.   

Investigators worked hard to withhold the fact that Mia had been raped - something that did not sit well with her friends, or women in the Seattle area.  The investigators also withheld the details of Mia's torn bra, which was missing a cup, in the event a suspect was ever identified.   They wanted details that only her killer could provide.  

They felt that Mia had been walking along with her headset on, listening to music, and was ambushed.

The Investigation

The area where Mia had been discovered was well known as an area used by sex workers to conduct their business and at first, it was considered that Mia might have been a victim of the-then still unidentified Green River Killer.  However, since Mia was not a sex worker nor someone who lived on the street, as many of the Green River Killer's victims were, that idea was discounted.  

The area was thoroughly searched by detectives and nothing was uncovered that was connected to Mia.  Everything appeared to indicate that she had been killed elsewhere and where she was found was a dump site.  

Robert Jenkins, as Mia's ex, was the logical prime suspect, a theory that was firmed up by some of her friends' beliefs that Jenkins had to have been involved.  The day after Mia was killed, one of her friends had stopped by the rehearsal studio Mia had visited in her unsuccessful quest to find Jenkins and discovered a Gits demo tape and Mia's personal microphone.  The friend claimed that Mia rarely left her microphone out of her sight.  

Jenkins, however, had a solid alibi and the police felt he had no real reason to harm Mia.  They found no evidence that a crime had taken place in the studio and assumed that Mia had left the tape and mic there after searching for Jenkins or had even returned after leaving T.V.'s apartment and had simply forgotten to take them with her. 

Police received a tip from a man who reported hearing a terrifying scream in the early morning hours of July 7.  It had bothered him so much that he had gone outside to see what was going on but had discovered nothing in the darkness.  He was three miles from where Mia's body was found.   

Another tip came in from a woman who stated that there had been a group of people outside the back of the Pancreas Production Studios on Pike Street doing cocaine.  Her statement could not be verified and the people she alleged to have seen were never located.  

As Mia did not have a driver's license and would make liberal use of the cabs around Seattle, police worked on a theory that had a cab driver as their perpetrator.  Her friends said that Mia would never have gotten into the vehicle of someone she didn't know, but she would have gotten into a cab.  She knew a great many of the cab drivers around the city and would have had no reason to fear getting into their vehicles. Police were aware that cabbies would not only be familiar with the less traveled, or even deserted, areas of town but their vehicles could be moving crime locations with which to assault and kill.    

Detectives checked with the local cabbies, as well as the cab companies, and none of them reported picking Mia up in the early morning of July 7 or even seeing her.  

The investigation turned to Mia's friends, bandmates and the Seattle music scene.  Detectives wondered if an obsessed fan or a jealous musician could have set out to harm her.  Although Mia had traveled in circles with some questionable people and was known to be extremely outspoken, no one had an unkind word to say about her, seeing her almost as the glue that held their community together.  

In August, the same month that she would have turned 28, a group of Mia's friends, frustrated that the police seemed to be making little headway, hired a private investigator.  The money to pay the P.I. came from a few concerts the surviving Gits put on, with Joan Jett stepping into Mia's shoes, as well as donations from Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, Hootie and the Blowfish and Jett and her band, the Blackhearts.  The funds would last more than two years after which Leigh Hearon, the P.I., would continue to work Mia's case on her own time and on her own dime.  

In 1994, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts released their album "Pure and Simple" with the moving track "Go Home," which was dedicated to Mia.  Jett joined The Gits in 1995 for live shows, using the moniker "Evil Stig," which was "Gits Live" spelled backwards.  

In 1996, the benefit album "Home Alive: The Art of Self-Defense" was released, featuring Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, among others, with the proceeds to benefit Home Alive, a self-defense program for women was that founded and funded, in part, by members of Seven Year Bitch, Joan Jett and singer Kathleen Hannah following Mia's murder.  

"I want more than anything for them to be able to find out what happened so there could be some resolution for everybody, because everyone's been working real hard trying to find the person who did this."  - Joan Jett

Time marched on.  Mia's death had affected the tightknit community she had been part of.  Some left Seattle, never to return.  Kurt Cobain's suicide nine months after Mia's murder only seemed to solidify the opinion that the grunge rock scene was an unhealthy, dangerous one.  

Fliers that Mia's friends had put up requesting information on her case remained at the Comet Tavern and were still up and about Seattle years after her murder.  Even in death, Mia Zapata remainder a powerful force in Seattle.  

Jesus Mezquia (photo source)

A Killer Is Identified

In 2001, Seattle police reopened Mia's case.  DNA evidence had come a long way since July of 1993 and the decision was made to pull the small saliva sample out of deep freeze and submit it for testing to try and obtain a DNA sample. 

The Washington State Crime Lab was able to pull two profiles, Mia's and an unknown male.  

That same year, although Washington State would have had no idea how it would impact them, Florida passed a new law that expanded their DNA database to include felons who had been convicted of burglary and robbery.  

In June of 2002, the DNA profile of the unknown male was entered into the FBI database.  No matches or hits were made at that time, but Detectives Richard Gagnon and Gregg Mixsell, the cold case detectives assigned to Mia's case, hoped that with the profile now in the system, they would eventually get a hit.  

They wouldn't have to wait long.  

In December, Gagnon and Mixsell were notified there had been a match.    The hit came not from the Seattle area but Miami, Florida and a 48-year-old fisherman by the name of Jesus Mezquia.  Mezquia was a Cuban native who had come to the United States in the Mariel boatlift of 1980 and his criminal record in the States had started almost as soon as he set foot in the country.  Over the years he had accumulated acts of kidnapping, false imprisonment, indecent exposure, aggravated battery (both of a spouse and of a pregnant woman), assault to commit rape, and robbery across multiple states.  His most recent conviction had been for possession of burglary tools, and he completed probation for that conviction in December.  As a condition of his probation, Mezquia provided two cheek swabs that would be entered into the DNA database, resulting in the match that lab techs said was one in 1.5 trillion.  

On January 10, 2003, Gagnon and Mixsell arrested Jesus Mezquia in Miami.  Mezquia denied knowing Mia or having any kind of sexual contact with her.  

Detectives found that since Mezquia had come to the United States, he had lived in Florida and California - and also Washington, where he had relocated in 1992 to be with a girlfriend who moved to the area.  The couple first lived in the Beacon Hill neighborhood with the girlfriend's mother before moving into an apartment in the Leschi area, not far from the Comet Tavern - and the area where Mia's body had been discarded.  Their relationship had been tempestuous and abusive, as had all of Mezquia's past and future relationships with women.  The girlfriend had told neighbors of Mezquia's abusive treatment of her and wanting to distance herself from him.  She and Mezquia had broken up in the summer of 1993 but continued to live together.  She had been out of town on the night of July 6-7, 1993, the night Mia was murdered.  Eventually, she got a car for Mezquia and he moved to southern California for a time before returning to Florida. 

Incredulously, five weeks after Mia was murdered, a young woman walking along 10th Avenue near Union Street, only a block from the Comet Tavern, noticed a car following her.  She assumed the driver wanted to offer her a ride - until she realized the driver was masturbating.  She wrote down the license plate number and quickly made her escape.  When Seattle police checked the license number, they found it was for Jesus Mezquia.  Law enforcement never made a connection between Mezquia's indecent exposure and Mia Zapata.  

(photo source)

"After 11 years of waiting for this moment, it is hard to believe some semblance of justice may be achieved."  - Steve Moriarty, former Gits drummer

Mezquia was extradited to Seattle three months after his arrest and arraigned.  Opening arguments in his trial began on Monday, March 15, 2004.  Following the month-long trial in which Mezquia did not testify in his own defense, the jury found him guilty of first-degree felony murder.  Based on the aggravating circumstances of deliberate cruelty and finding the injuries Mia suffered "extreme," Judge Sharon Armstrong sentenced Mezquia to 37 years. 

In 2005, Mezquia filed an appeal against his sentence, arguing in part that he should have been allowed to present other suspects, including Mia's former boyfriend, Robert Jenkins and a cab driver by the name of Scott MacFarlane, as part of his defense.  He also argued that DNA evidence obtained from Florida should not have been admitted in a Washington case.  

In Mezquia's brief, he sought to present evidence that Jenkins had actually committed the murder, citing that Mia had been searching for Jenkins the night of her death, Jenkins had called Mia's apartment the following morning and when told by one of her roommates that she was in the shower, responded that it probably wasn't Mia.  Mezquia also claimed that a friend of Mia's had said that Jenkins had sometimes gone "crazy" in the past and had attacked Mia.   

The appeals court denied his request on Jenkins, stating that there was no physical evidence connecting Jenkins to the scene (a DNA test had excluded him) and Mezquia had not offered evidence that clearly pointed to Jenkins. 

Mezquia additionally argued that Scott MacFarlane committed the murder.  A cab driver, MacFarlane claimed to have had a relationship with Mia and was driving a cab in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle on the night she was killed.  A year after her death, MacFarlane apparently made some odd and incriminating statements about her murder. 

The trial court had agreed that there had been sufficient evidence to introduce MacFarlane.  However, during the initial trial, after the prosecution had rested its case, a woman by the name of Valentina Dececco came foward to allege that Mezquia assaulted her six months after Mia's homicide.  She did not report the incident at the time it happened but when she saw Mezquia's photograph in the newspaper after he was charged, she called the police.  According to Dececco, in January of 1994 around 4:30 a.m., she was leaving her downtown Seattle apartment for a morning jog when Mezquia approached her.  He knocked her to her knees and Dececco felt "pain at her throat."  She managed to rise to her feet and ran away.  Just a short time later, upon returning to her apartment building, she saw Mezquia standing at one corner of her building, staring at her and masturbating.  

The prosecution had notified the trial court that it intended to introduce this evidence in rebuttal, but it would only come in if the defense raised the issue of identity.  If the defense chose to present its "other suspect" evidence related to MacFarlane, the prosecution would be able to call Dececco in rebuttal.  The defense chose not to introduce the MacFarlane evidence and Dececco never testified in court. 

Mezquia argued to the appeals court that the trial court erred in ruling that evidence of the prior assault on Dececco was admissible.  The appeals court disagreed, stating that there had been no offer of proof of what MacFarlane's testimony would have been nor was there any evidence that the state would have indeed chosen to present Dececco's testimony. 

With regard to Mezquia's argument of the Florida DNA sample, the appeals court denied the motion to suppress that evidence, citing that a cheek swab is a "minimally invasive search," the DNA was obtained lawfully and there was no inappropriate cooperation between Washington and Florida.

Mezquia's final appeals argument was that his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial was violated when the trial court imposed an "exceptional sentence" without submission to the jury.  On this point, the appeals court sided with Mezquia, finding that the jury did not determine whether the prosecution proved the factual basis for the exceptional sentence beyond a reasonable doubt. 

While Mezquia's conviction was affirmed, his sentence was reversed, and the case was remanded for sentencing. 

Jesus Mezquia convicted again, in front of Mia's portrait
(photo source)

 

On January 29, 2009, after inexplicably waiving his right to a jury trial, Judge Sharon Armstrong once against sentenced Jesus Mezquia for raping and murdering Mia Zapata, this time for 36 years.  

(photo source)

Mia's Legacy

Prosecutors believed that in the early morning hours of July 7, 1993, with his girlfriend out of town and the relationship on its last legs, the violent and simmering Mezquia went on the prowl for a victim.  With no evidence that he and Mia had ever met before, it is believed that Mezquia drove by the Winston Apartments/Pancreas Production Studios as Mia was leaving on foot around 2 a.m. and followed her until he could attack her, possibly very much like Valentina Dececco was attacked.  With her headphones on, she would not have heard him approaching and would not have been aware of his presence until it was too late.  In her intoxicated state, she had no real chance against the six-foot-four, 235-pound Mezquia.  Prosecutors theorized that Mezquia beat Mia and placed her in the back seat of his car or beat her after putting her in the car.  The sexual assault happened either in his car or his apartment.  He then strangled her with the cord of her hooded sweatshirt, dumped her body in an area well-known for its sex and drug trafficking, and went home. 

Jesus Mezquia maintained his innocence in the rape and murder of Mia from the time he was arrested until he died in a Washington prison on January 21, 2021.  He went to his grave having never spoken about the attack on Mia nor taking any responsibility for his actions, despite what the DNA evidence revealed.    

Home Again, the self-defense program started in Mia's memory, still runs today.  
 

"Her legacy should be beautiful, strong punk-rock music coming from a woman's perspective, because that's who she was."  - Joan Jett

(photo source)

Sources:

CNN (March 9, 2004)  Ten Years On, Trial Begins for Man Accused of Punk Icon's Murder.  

Front Page Detectives (August 13, 2021).  The Brutal Slaying of a Rock Star on the Rise.

Grunge (March 11, 2021).  The Tragic Murder of Punk Rock Singer Mia Zapata. 

Musicoholics (2021)  That One Fateful Night: What Happened to Mia Zapata? 

Rolling Stone (May 23, 2021).  Mia Zapata's Killer Has Died. 

The Seattle Times (August 23, 1998). Who Murdered Mia Zapata? 

The Seattle Times (January 30, 2009).  Singer's Killer Sentenced to 36 Years in Prison Again.     

State v. Mezquia, Court of Appeals, Washington Division 1, No. 54246-0-1. 

The Stranger (January 16, 2003).  Finally, DNA Evidence Leads to Arrest of Mia Zapata's Suspected Killer.

Unsolved Mysteries (2021).  Mia Zapata. 

  

The Texas Cadet Murder

Victim Adrianne Jones (photo source) 

"There are not any winners in this case."

Judge Joe Drago

The field (photo source) 

The Body in the Field

It was around 7 a.m. on the morning of Monday, December 4, 1995, just light outside, when Gary Foster left his home, headed to a row of mailboxes to deposit an envelope before starting his day.  Foster was a farmer and made daily checks on the southern edge of his property on Seeton Road, where dilapidated buildings were.  He stored tools there and made it a practice to watch for vandals.  

Foster's farm was located on the outskirts of Cedar Hills, a suburb of Dallas, 16 miles and seemingly a world away.  Often called the "hill country of Dallas," its nearly 36 square miles is dotted with native evergreen trees and antennas - its elevation makes it a prime location for the antennas of local television and radio stations.  Boasting a much slower pace of life than Dallas, Cedar Hills was known for a deadly 1856 tornado and a 1932 bank robbery committed by a sidekick of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde.  

December 4 was just another day for Foster as he drove by the outer edges of the Joe Pool Lake recreation area which was ringed by barbed wire in an effort to keep trespassers out.  His own property, which abutted Joe Pool Lake, had a barbed-wire gate which Foster was certain he had secured the night before.  This morning, however, it was askew.  Believing that his land was visited by late-night loiterers, he headed toward the gate to fix it before he lost some of his cattle.  He was nearly at the gate when he saw what he took at first to be a lump in the grass.  The more he focused, the clearer the image became and Foster realized he was looking at a human body.  

Only when he drove closer and pulled up even with the gate was he able to tell that it was a young woman.  She wore a white sweatshirt, blue and green plaid flannel shorts and white socks - no shoes.  Her arms were at her side and the toe of one of her socks was snagged on a single barb of wire, giving the appearance that it was holding her somehow.  She had blonde hair which was bloody from the horrific injuries she had sustained to her face and head.  A bullet wound was visible on her left cheek and another to her forehead, almost between the eyes.  As if that wasn't enough, she had been hit so hard on the left side of her head that her skull directly above her left ear was nearly caved in.  The combined damage of the gunshots and the bludgeoning made her nearly unrecognizable.  

Gary Foster raced back home to yell to his wife that someone had dumped a body on their property and then promptly called 911.

Adrianne in a glamour shot weeks before her murder (photo source)

Adrianne

Twelve miles from the Foster farm, in the suburb of Mansfield, Linda Jones awoke around 6 a.m. to the ringing sound of an alarm clock coming from her daughter Adrianne's bedroom.  

The Jones family -  Linda, husband Bill, Adrianne and her two younger brothers - had moved from Dallas to Mansfield in 1984 in search of a safer place for Linda and Bill to bring up their children.  Mansfield fit the bill.  A former farming community, in 1984 it was home to an indoor rodeo and antique stores that ran along Main Street.  The majority of the families who lived on the street the Joneses bought on also had children and they fit right in.  It was peaceful and livable with relatively low crime and close enough to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for work or other big city needs.   

With Adrianne as their oldest child and only daughter, they had been fortunate.  She was an honors student, popular and outgoing, and at sixteen years old, her teenaged rebellions had been mostly minor.  Like most kids her age, her desire to assert her growing independence countered Bill and Linda's parenting decisions.  Only a few months earlier, at the start of her sophomore year at Mansfield High, was Adrianne allowed to stay out past nine o'clock on the weekends.  The fact that Adrianne was very pretty and boys were quickly noticing her, attention that Adrianne enjoyed, did not alleviate Bill's watchful eye.   During that autumn of 1995, she had snuck out of the house at night a few times to visit friends, including her best friend, who lived next door, leading Bill - who had caught her -  to, at least temporarily, nail her window shut.  Bill was strict, oftentimes requesting that Adrianne produce the ticket stub for the movie she said she was going out to see, or the ticket from Six Flags Over Texas in nearby Arlington.  

Although rambunctious and spirited, Adrianne was a hard worker.  She studied two hours a night for her honors and advanced courses and already had her college of choice - Texas A&M, where she wanted to study to become a behavioral analyst. She also had an after-school job (around 20 hours a week) at the Golden Fried Chicken fast food restaurant, where her perky personality and sense of humor made her coworkers laugh and pegged her as the manager's favorite employee.  

She was also an athlete who would often get up in the morning to run or jog before school.  Adrianne had previously played for Mansfield High's soccer team but a knee injury benched her and so she moved over to the cross-country team where, in November, she helped them qualify for a regional meet in Lubbock.  By December, she was excitedly waiting for her letterman's jacket.  

When Linda went into Adrianne's room, with the alarm clock still insistently buzzing, she noted the usual jumble of activity in a teenage girl's room: soccer posters on the wall, a Mickey Mouse phone, a bookcase with a smattering of Stephen King novels, and a stereo that was almost always belting out Pearl Jam and Annie Lennox.  Linda noted that Adrianne's waterbed was made and her running shoes were there on the floor.  Still, she figured her daughter must have gotten up early to go jog or run and had forgotten to turn off the alarm.  

One by one, other members of the Jones household woke and began their day.  Adrianne did not return or appear.  Linda got worried enough to call the police after 8 a.m. when Adrianne's ride to school showed up and left without her.  She knew Adrianne would never miss school.  

Linda also called Adrianne's cross-country coach, Lee Ann Burke, as the night before the teen had received a call past her normal telephone curfew time from a "David from cross-country."  Burke confirmed that there was indeed a David on the cross-country team but she was puzzled that he would even be friends with Adrianne, much less call her.  His name was David Graham and he was a senior,  a uniformed member of the honor guard, battalion commander of the Junior ROTC program and an honors student that was headed to the Air Force Academy following graduation.  

David was found in his second-period math class and asked if he had called Adrianne the previous night.  He said no and questioned as to why he would call her and that appeared to be that.  

The Mansfield police, as part of their investigation into the missing girl, had contacted the principal of Mansfield High, who recruited the two associate principals to begin making calls in an effort to locate Adrianne.  Kids being reported missing was not completely unusual and everyone thought that Adrianne would be safely back at home that day.

By 8:30 over by Joe Pool Lake, it was 63 degrees and the area was buzzing with police from the nearby Grand Prairie, detectives, patrol units and a crime scene unit.   The victim was still unidentified but they were fairly certain she was a teenager.  Detectives noted that a clump of blonde hair was on a rusty barb a few feet above the ground, likely from the victim.  Given that, and the fact that her foot was still dangling from a barb, they believed she had fallen over the barbed wire fence.  The absence of any shoes made them question if she had been killed elsewhere and dumped by Gary Foster's field but the bloody scratch marks to her legs, and a blood smear on her left thigh, almost certainly made by the barbed wire indicated that she was very much alive, with her heart pumping, when she made contact with the fence.  

They also noted that she had bruises around her neck, suggesting that someone had held her by the neck and the girl had struggled mightily for her life.  Additionally, the knuckles of her left hand were bruised and bloodied, as if she had deflected a blow or hit something.   Her right hand, resting on the ground at her side, was clenching the grass.  The back of it was smeared with blood, as if she had attempted to wipe it away as it was streaming from her head before collapsing.

The girl had not died an easy nor a painless death.  She was tagged Jane Doe and taken to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office to await an examination and, hopefully, a quick identification.

      

Dr. Marc Krouse began his preliminary examination around one o'clock that afternoon.  He noted that body was that of a well-nourished and normally developed Caucasian female who stood 5'3" and weighed 116 pounds.  He found no evidence of sexual assault or genital trauma but she had suffered extensive injuries elsewhere.  

She had bruises and scrapes around her neck and bruises around her jaw that were consistent with strangulation, although she had fought her way free of that.  Her left hand was bruised and the index finger was broken.  She suffered a series of abrasions and superficial puncture wounds to her legs.  Her left thigh had a long cut and her left knee had cuts and bruises.  Her right knee, shin, calf and foot also had multiple cuts.  Her face has been covered by the flowing blood and she had dried blood in her nose and mouth.  

She had suffered an inch-wide gash above her left ear, a "blunt traumatic head injury," that had shattered her skull, leaving bone fragments three-quarters of an inch deep embedded in her brain.  That blow, in Dr. Krouse's opinion, had been perimortem, occurring at or very close to her time of death.  

She had also suffered bullet wounds which in and of themselves were mortally devastating.  Faint powder stipling was found on her face by the wound to her left cheek, indicating that this shot had been delivered close-range.  It had done horrific damage to her nasal cavity, cranial cavity, and the front lobe of the brain.  This bullet had exited the back of her head, nearly two inches higher than where it had entered, and had left an inch-and-a-half hole in her skull, cracking it, and sending fracture lines in three different directions across the back of her head.  

Dr. Krouse could not say with certainty which bullet wound had been delivered first but the shot to her forehead was more vicious in its trajectory.  It too had light powder stipling but none of the soot within the wound nor the muzzle imprint that indicated the gun had been pressed to her head.  This bullet had torn through her head, destroying her brain mass and nerve tissues before exiting the back of her head explosively.       

In her hair, Dr. Krouse found a large caliber bullet.

Just before four o'clock that afternoon, the Grand Prairie forensic unit was alerted to the reports of the missing Adrianne Jones.  Using a photograph of Adrianne provided by her worried parents, Dr. Krouse compared it to the body lying on his table and gave only a grim nod as his answer.

As happens with many cases, the rumors began almost as soon as Adrianne was identified.  It was said that Adrianne was grabbed while jogging.  That she had gone to a rave in Denton and met up with the wrong person or people.  That she knew some secret that she was killed over.  That drugs were involved.  That Adrianne had ratted out a friend for getting drunk at a party and the friend had killed Adrianne in retaliation.  Even Gary Foster, who had the misfortune to discover her body, worried that Adrianne's killer or killers might assume that he and his family saw something and would return to their isolated property to tie up loose ends.  

The kids that went to school with Adrianne alternated between crying and raging.  They didn't understand why this had happened to the free-spirited Adrianne any more than the police did.

A Suspect

There was one story that continued to bubble up.  A year before Adrianne had been killed, a friend of hers by the name of Kristin Clark had been beaten with a baseball bat and nearly killed when a fourteen-year-old girl named "Tara" had suspected that Clark had slept with her boyfriend.  (The attack ended with "Tara" shooting and wounding her boyfriend.)  Adrianne had testified against "Tara" and the girl had been heard to threaten Adrianne over that testimony.  Did that girl somehow make good on her threat?  Or had Adrianne gotten herself into a similar triangle?

The police talked to "Tara" and discovered she had a solid alibi.  She also passed the polygraph test administered to her. 

Bill and Linda Jones suggested the police talk to a recent boyfriend of Adrianne's by the name of Tracy.  Bill and Linda thought it odd that Tracy had not reached out to the Jones family in any way since Adrianne's death.  Like "Tara," Tracy too passed a polygraph.

He did give police an interesting lead.  He said that he had been out of town with his folks on the weekend that Adrianne was killed.  He had been speaking to her on the night of December 3 when another call beeped in.  Adrianne clicked over to take it and when she returned, she told Tracy that it was a "Bryan" who was depressed and wanted to meet up with her that night to talk.  

The cops dug further and found a Bryan McMillen who worked at an Eckerd's drug store next to a Subway sandwich shop that Adrianne had once worked in.  According to Adrianne's friends and family, Bryan had become infatuated with Adrianne while she worked at the Subway, dropping in to see her so often that she would duck her head and hide behind the counter.  

Interest in Bryan heightened when it was discovered that the seventeen-year-old took four different kinds of medication to battle clinical depression.  When questioned, Bryan at first denied knowing anyone named Adrianne Jones.  After admitting that he had indeed known who Adrianne was, he was asked if he had spoken to her on the night she was murdered.  Bryan said it was possible but he really couldn't remember as he had been drinking that night.  Since it was the first night in six months he had drank, he had gotten intoxicated.  Asked why he had been drinking, Bryan said it was because all his friends had girlfriends, leaving him the odd man out.  The cops pushed further.  Could Bryan have gone to Adrianne's house that night?  He replied that he could have but he didn't remember.  He also volunteered that he could have taken her somewhere but he just didn't remember.

Before dawn on December 15, 1995, armed police officers arrived at the McMillen home with a search warrant.   His pickup truck was impounded and Bryan himself was arrested for murder.  

Bryan's father claimed that Bryan had been home with him all evening on December 3.  Bryan's friends were amazed that he could seriously be considered a murder suspect; he was, according to them, a gentle kid who would never resort to violence of any kind.  

Bryan McMillan spent Christmas and New Year's behind bars before anyone thought about giving him a polygraph examination, which he "passed with flying colors."  He was released and rumors about who killed Adrianne and why continued.

Life went on for Mansfield's residents.  The Jones family spent a painful Christmas, their first without Adrianne.  Not knowing how to deal with their pain, they chose different means.  Adrianne's bedroom light was often left on, as though she might return any moment.  Friends who drove by the Jones home were disconcerted seeing Adrianne's room from the street, lit up, her soccer posters clearly visible, as well as the vanity table where she would spend so much time doing her makeup.  Linda sought out psychics in an attempt to learn what had happened to Adrianne, and wore an article of her clothing or one of her belongings every day, trying to keep her daughter's memory close.  She also began driving to Joe Pool Lake, where Adrianne had taken her last breath, in hopes that the killer or killers would return.  Bill Jones refused to discuss his daughter or the murder.    

Months went by.  June 18 was Adrianne's seventeenth birthday, the same month that her classmates graduated from their sophomore year of high school.   By that summer of 1996, nearly 300 interviews had been conducted and the investigation slowed to a crawl.  It seemed that the murder of Adrianne Jones would never be solved.  

Confession

Fourteen hundred miles east of Mansfield, Texas, Annapolis, Maryland is steeped very deep in American history from being a temporary capitol of the country for a year in the late 1700s to being a port of entry and a major center of the Atlantic slave trade.  St. John's College is located in Annapolis, one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the country.  Annapolis is also home to the United States Naval Academy, established in 1845.  The Naval Academy is for the cream of the crop academically (in 2021, it was ranked the no. 1 public school by U.S. News & World Report) and its admission requirements are strict:  candidates must be between seventeen and twenty-three years of age, unmarried, with no children, and of good moral character.  

For the fall 1996 semester, the Naval Academy received nearly 10,000 applications of which 1,212 were accepted.  Of those 1,212 acceptances, only 200 were women.  One of those women was Diane Zamora, who had been nominated by Representative Pete Geren.   

Diane Zamora (photo source) 

Eighteen-year-old Diane, from Crowley, Texas, was matched to room with fellow freshmen Mandy Gotch and Jennifer McKearney and it was to her two roommates that she unloaded an unbelievable tale on Saturday, August 24.  Gotch and McKearney were discussing how committed Diane and her boyfriend seemed and at point mentioned that the two would likely do anything for each other.  Diane agreed, saying that they had even killed for each other.  To her stunned roommates she said that her boyfriend had cheated on her and she had instructed him to kill that other girl, which he had.  Her boyfriend was David Graham.  

Gotch and McKearney didn't know that Diane had told the same tale multiple times to her squad leader, Jay Guild.  

The Naval Academy has a very strict honor code which requires midshipmen to immediately report another midshipman who lies, cheats, or breaks the law in any way.  Jay Guild liked Diane and didn't want to believe it and chose not to report her, an action that would eventually cause him to be forced to resign from the Academy over his silence.  McKearney and Gotch had no such qualms.  They went to a Navy chaplain the following day and the chaplain contacted a Navy attorney, who began contacting police agencies in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to see if they had an unsolved murder of a teenage girl.  On August 29, he called the Grand Prairie Police Department who confirmed they did indeed have the murder of a teenage girl on their books.  On August 30, detectives from Grand Prairie caught a flight to Annapolis.

Diane admitted nothing to the detectives, telling them she had been so insecure as a freshman over the summer that she thought her story of murder would make her look tougher.  The detectives didn't buy it but they had no evidence with which to hold her on.  The Navy suspended her, at least temporarily, until the matter could be straightened out and sent her home to Crowley.  

Detectives spoke to Jay Guild, who admitted that Diane had told him the story about killing the girl David had cheated with roughly ten different times.  According to Guild, Diane felt the girl deserved it and stated that if given the opportunity, she would do it again.   

Detectives decided to talk to David Graham.  Following his graduation from Mansfield High School, he had entered the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs after receiving a recommendation from Congressman Martin Frost.  He successfully completed his Basic Cadet Training over the summer and kept in touch with Diane via phone calls and emails.  Rather amazingly, David had been interviewed in the early days of the investigation into Adrianne's murder, given that he was on the cross-country team with her and his name was David.  At the time he had professed no knowledge of what had happened to Adrianne and even became teary when talking about her death.  He had been such an unlikely suspect and made such little impression on the cops that they didn't even give him a polygraph exam.   

Now, detectives began digging into the backgrounds of Diane and David.  

Born in Crowley, Texas, about 45 miles southwest of Dallas, Diane was the eldest of four children and like Adrianne Jones, had been incredibly disciplined, oftentimes waking before six a.m. each morning to study before school.  As her father had difficulty keeping regular employment as an electrician and her mother worked multiple jobs to support the family, much of the responsibilities of the three younger children fell on Diane's shoulders.  The Zamora family was also very religious, beliefs which they installed in their children, one of which was to refrain from sexual activity until marriage.  These religious beliefs warred with the reality of the Zamora home, where Diane's father had affairs outside of his marriage, issues of which she was aware as she grew up.    

When Diane was in the third grade, her interest in the military sparked.  By the next year, she announced to her family that she was going to be an astronaut and sent off for information from NASA.  By high school, she kept a spiral-bound notebook with a list of achievement she had to accomplish in order to get a scholarship.  She joined clubs that would help her military aspirations, like the National Honors Society, Key Club and student council, played flute in the marching band and ran track.  But Diane was not social like Adrianne Jones nor popular.  She was too focused on her goals to work at friends or boyfriends although her classmates described her as "not unfriendly."   She carried around a knapsack with schoolbooks in it at all times in the event she had time to kill with studying.  She got a job at a local clothing store that catered to teen girls, making use of the discount in order to dress trendy.  At some point in high school, the knowledge of her father's infidelity, which clashed with lectures to be a "good girl," and combined with her self-doubt and self-loathing led Diane to begin cutting herself, slashing at her arms and repeating how much she hated her life. 

Diane had initially met David at a Civil Air Patrol Meeting when they were both around fourteen.  The Civil Air Patrol is an Air Force auxiliary organization that teaches the basics of military life, in addition to running search and rescue missions for downed aircraft.  Both teens regularly attended the weekly meetings at an airfield south of Fort Worth.  

David and Diane in June of 1996 (photo source)

Unlike Diane and Adrianne, David was the baby of his family with three older siblings.  He saw his first air show in Brownsville when he was six and it sealed his interest in the military; he was determined to become a pilot.  He wanted to join the Air Patrol immediately but had to wait until he was 12, joining immediately following his birthday.  As the child of two parents, he excelled academically.  Reportedly, he could sleep through a class and awaken to answer a teacher's question correctly.  He was perhaps best known around his school though for his unfailingly polite and courteous behavior (always addressing people as "sir" and "ma'am"), his erect stance and military haircut.  He was, fittingly, the battalion commander in his school's Junior ROTC program and joined Mansfield High's track team after a failed attempt on the football team (he reportedly didn't have the necessary "ferocity" to make it in Texas football).  He also worked on weekends at the local Winn Dixie grocery store.   Many of his female classmates thought of David as a catch but he appeared to be focused on his future - at least until he and Diane began dating.

His parents separated and divorced.  His mother reportedly moved out of the family home and to Houston because she feared David's volatile temper.  

A friend of David's revealed that David had lost his virginity to another ROTC cadet, one that was from outside of the Dallas area.  David had been determined to see the girl again and make a relationship out of what had been a fling and his friend suggested that he find someone closer to home.  Then he reconnected with Diane.  

Although Diane and David initially met in 1991, they didn't begin to date until August 1995, right before the start of their senior years.  Diane had had a boyfriend her sophomore year of high school but had dumped him when he became hell-bent on having sex with her.  Other than him, she had little experience dating, oftentimes asking to be home by 8:30 so that she could study.  With David, almost from the start their relationship was an obsessive, passionate one.   Although Diane attended Crowley High School and David, Manfield High School, he would often drive to Crowley to sit with Diane after school while she did her homework.  Many times, the Zamora household would receive a phone call from the Graham household, looking for David and requesting that he return home.  The Zamoras attended church every Sunday and when David would accompany them, he would dress in t-shirt, combat pants and boots and keep his arms firmly around Diane throughout the service.  Diane and David spoke on the phone multiple times each day, signing off with the same "Greenish-brown female sheep," which translated to Olive Ewe, or I love you.  If Diane were attending an event at school, David would call every hour until she returned.  If David were late calling her, Diane would tearfully call his house, fearful that something had happened to him.  When they were apart, Diane spoke endlessly of David.         

In September, the two announced to their families that they were engaged and planned to marry on August 13, 2000, following their college graduations.  David sold several of his hunting rifles to purchase an engagement ring for Diane.  Up until that point, the relationship had not been consummated as Diane had been firm about waiting until marriage.  Once engaged, however, she changed her mind and lost her virginity to David.  If anything, becoming sexually intimate created feelings of guilt in Diane and made both of them more possessive and jealous.  

When detectives arrived in Colorado Springs on September 4, David said he couldn't believe why Diane would tell such a story and denied having anything to do with Adrianne's murder.  He agreed to take a polygraph test, which he failed.  The detectives had spoken to a mutual friend of Diane's and David's who told them of the couple coming to his house very early on the morning of December 4, 1995.  Both appeared to be upset, with blood on their clothing.  They changed clothing and held each other, praying for forgiveness, and swore the friend to secrecy, which he kept until detectives questioned him.  When confronted with this, along with an admonition from Air Force officers that told David he had a duty to reveal the truth, he broke.  He sat at a word processor and produced a four-and-a-half-page confession that was both shocking and filled with prose more fitting to a romance novel.

In it, David alleged that in November of 1995, following a track meet in Lubbock, he had given Adrianne a ride home - only they hadn't gone straight to her house.  She had directed him to a nearby school parking lot, where he said they had sex.  Following that brief and alleged encounter, David said he was tormented with "guilt and shame."  His "perfect" and "pure" relationship with Diane was tainted and defiled by "the one girl who had stolen away from us our purity."  He confessed to Diane on December 1 (a date Diane noted her in her date book, along with November 4 for "Lubbock," and 1:38 a.m. on December 4 for "Adrianne"), who had "screamed sobs I wouldn't have thought possible" for an hour.  According to David, it wasn't just jealousy.  Diane had been "betrayed, deceived, and forgotten."  Diane had rammed her head repeatedly into the wall and floor, her violent explosion turning on herself rather than David.  She then gave him an ultimatum:  Kill Adrianne to atone for his sins.  If he did not, he would never see Diane again and she might even kill herself.  While David said he could not believe she was asking that of him, he also said that "her beautiful eyes have always played the strings of my heart effortlessly.  I couldn't imagine life without her.  Not for a second did I want to lose her."  And so he agreed, adding "I didn't have any harsh feelings for Adrianne.  But no one could stand between me and Diane."   He had, he said, "thought long and hard about how to carry out the crime.  I was stupid but I was in love."  

A Plan for Murder

The plan had been to convince Adrianne to come out to David's car and drive her out to Joe Pool Lake.  Once there, they would break Adrianne's neck and sink her body in the lake with weights.  David had called her on the night of December 3, 1995, saying he wanted to see her.   (According to Diane's confession, he suggested another hook up).  He was in a green Mazda Protege, the Zamoras' car, and Diane had hidden in the hatchback, unseen by Adrianne.  Despite her father having nailed her window shut, Adrianne had managed to sneak out of the house, dressed in a sweatshirt and flannel sleep shorts, socks and no shoes.  David drove the car out to Joe Pool Lake and at some point, Adrianne reclined the front passenger seat.  After stopping at the pre-chosen spot, David was holding Adrianne as if he was going to kiss her when Diane rose up from the back of the car.  According to Diane's confession, Adrianne "kind of freaked out" when she saw Diane and David held her down, stating that the two of them just wanted to talk to her.  Both David and Diane struggled to get ahold of the neck of the wriggling and fighting Adrianne, who proved more difficult than either had thought.  Diane claimed she asked Adrianne point blank if she had had sex with David and Adrianne admitted she had but said that she had not gotten any pleasure from it as she felt guilty, which Diane claimed led her to scream at David all over again.  After a brief struggle between David and Adrianne, in which he unsuccessfully attempted to break her neck, Diane picked up one of the two 25-pound weights they had brought along to sink the body and tried to strike Adrianne with it.  Diane missed twice before making contact and hitting Adrianne in the head.  Having seen his fair share of murders on television or on film where the victim was dealt one quick blow to the head and died, David found the reality of bludgeoning someone to be far different.  Adrianne did not die immediately, nor did she lose consciousness.  Bleeding heavily from her horrific wound, Adrianne had managed to slide herself out the open car window and in a state of shock, stumbled away from the car.  David had grabbed a Marakov 9 mm handgun he had brought along for the task and "to our relief," discovered that Adrianne was too injured from her wound to go far.  She had managed to make it into Gary Foster's field, falling over the barbed wire fence and collapsing, but still alive.  According to Diane's later statement, David had returned to the car and informed his girlfriend that Adrianne was dead.  Diane doubted it and instructed David to shoot her.  David, according to Diane was "panicky," but he hunted down Adrianne as if she were prey, and pointed the gun at her face, firing twice.   Returning to the car, he and Diane exchanged "I love yous" and drove off.  It was then that Diane said, "We shouldn't have done that, David."  

         

David under arrest, September 6, 1996 (photo source)

On September 6, 1996, David Graham, in Colorado, and Diane Zamora, in Texas, were arrested for capital murder and both were taken to the Tarrant County (Texas) jail to await their trials.   During the months they were held there, they wrote thousands of letters back and forth to each other and David began correspondent college courses.   Both seemed to believe that their trials were an inconvenience and that they would eventually be free and would marry.  

The gun used to shoot Adrianne, along with the two dumbbells, was recovered from the Grahams' attic.  It was when the police confronted Diane with this evidence, that she eventually confessed to the police, her story lining up with David's.   

Diane on the witness stand with the gun used to shoot Adrianne (photo source)

On Trial

Diane was tried first in February of 1998 in a Fort Worth courtroom before Judge Joe Drago III.  Before the proceedings started, Adrianne's mother Linda asked that the death penalty not be sought against Diane or David.  

In a trial that lasted two weeks, Court TV and other national media outlets showed up to broadcast the trial gavel to gavel, that included a psychiatrist who testified that Diane was "psychopathically deviant and paranoid," angry, resentful and argumentative and who had different societal views than the average person.  The prosecutors introduced David's statement from September of 1996, the one he provided after 30 hours of interrogation, as proof that Diane had some sort of control over him and was able to convince him to murder Adrianne in order not to lose her.  One of Diane's friends from high school, Kristina Mason, was called by the prosecution to testify that a week or so after Adrianne's murder Diane had told her that she had ordered David to kill Adrianne in order to prove his love for her.  Mason had neglected to contact authorities and lied in depositions in fear of what might happen to her.  Diane's former Naval Academy roommates also testified, stating that Diane had been not one bit remorseful when talking of Adrianne's death and that the teenager had deserved to die for what she had done, i.e, taking something that had belonged to someone else.   Jennifer McKearney added that Diane had told her that "anyone who got between her and David would have to die."  

The defense put on a case in which they presented Diane as a victim of the controlling and violent David, who had used his indiscretion with Adrianne as a means of manipulating Diane further.  They cast doubt on David's alleged tryst with Adrianne, suggesting instead that David had fabricated the entire event.  The defense's psychiatrist believed that Diane was a troubled young woman dominated by the authoritative David.  When cross-examining the prosecution's witness, Kristina Mason, they were able to elicit testimony from her that Diane had admitted that Adrianne's murder should not have happened.  Unsurprisingly, the defense placed the blame squarely on David and David alone for the murder, claiming that he had not only planned it but executed it with Diane as a frightened witness.   

A teary Diane took the stand, recanting her confession and claiming that David had manipulated her not only throughout their relationship but in masterminding the execution of Adrianne and solicited Diane to help him cover it up.  

The case then went to the jury, who had the choice to find Diane guilty of capital murder or on the lesser charges of kidnap, assault, and false imprisonment.  The jury deliberated for six hours over the course of two days and on February 17, 1998 returned with a verdict of guilty.  Diane was sentenced to life in prison, a mandatory sentence, eligible for parole after 40 years.  To most onlookers, Diane received her guilty verdict and sentence stoically.

David on trial (photo source) 

On Tuesday, July 14, 1998, David's trial began.  Due to the publicity from Diane's trial, his was moved to the very conservative New Braunfels with Judge Don Leonard of Fort Worth presiding.  Amazingly, both the prosecution and defense agreed there had been no sexual tryst between David and Adrianne in November of 1995 following the meet in Lubbock.  Wendy Bartlett, who had been on the track team with both Adrianne and David, testified that she had driven Adrianne home after the meet and David had left earlier, leaving Bartlett and Adrianne to put away equipment.  Coach Lee Ann Burke testified the same, that David had left the meet alone and before Bartlett and Adrianne.  The message was clear:  Adrianne and David did not hook up that night.  

The defense argued that David's confession had been coerced and should therefore be thrown out.  

The prosecution, naturally, pegged David as the triggerman while the defense sought to show Diane as the mastermind.  For her part, Diane followed David's trial by radio, newspapers and magazines from her prison cell.  When she took the stand, everyone, including the media, held their collective breaths for what she might say against her former fiancé but she disappointed them by exercising her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. 

David's mother attended each day of the trial, holding her son's hand and sharing an embrace with him at the end of each day.  

On July 24, after more than eight hours of deliberation over two days and considering the same charges the jury for Diane had been given, the jury found David guilty of capital murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment.   Like Diane, he would be eligible for parole after 40 years.

The jury foreman later stated that David's confession was "a key piece of evidence" which led to the guilty verdict.  

Afterwards

Both Diane and David were given the option by the Naval Academy and Air Force, respectively, to resign before being forcibly removed; they reportedly did.  

Diane's former Academy squad leader, Jay Guild, whom she had not only confessed murder to but also confided that she wanted to break off her engagement to David and had asked to be her boyfriend,  suffered over his association with Diane.  Guild, an Honors student like Diane, David, and Adrianne and who had hoped to make the military his career, resigned his Academy appointment on September 8, 1996, two days after Diane was jailed, for violating the Naval Academy's honor code.   

After Diane and David were charged with Adrianne's murder, Bryan McMillen's parents sued Grand Prairie and the police department for $13 million, saying Bryan's civil rights had been violated.  In the suit, the McMillens claimed that Bryan, who had been suffering from bronchitis and the flu in December of 1995 when he was arrested and taken to jail, was put in a cell with a hole in the floor for a toilet and provided no blankets, bedding or food, was forced to look at graphic autopsy photos and promised hamburgers and fries if he would only confess.  He was also allegedly repeatedly denied an attorney, being told that if he were innocent, he didn't need one.  The suit was eventually settled for an undisclosed sum, ironically, during the first week of Diane's trial.     

Diane's attorney, following the testimony from Wendy Bartlett and Lee Ann Burke, filed an appeal on  her behalf stating the prosecution withheld this information during her trial.  In his petition, he stated that the state "knew and should have known that the testimony it [that of Bartlett and Burke] sponsored in support of a sexual encounter between Jones and Graham was probably false."    The appeal would be denied fourteen months after filing. 

In 2003, through prison mail, Diane began a relationship with Steven Mora, a fellow inmate.  Mora was incarcerated in Texas for auto theft, burglary, and threatening someone related to the cases.  Although they had never met in person, they decided to marry and petitioned Bexar County for a marriage license.  On June 17, 2003, Diane's mother and a male friend stood in for Diane and Mora, becoming the county's first proxy marriage, performed by a judge in San Antonio.  Diane and Mora divorced in 2008.

In April of 2007, Diane appeared on Dateline, where she was interviewed by Stone Phillips.  As her appeals were exhausted, her attorney allowed her to sit for polygraph examination that was administered by the television show.  She now claimed that she and David had been breaking up and David used the murder to "tie" her to him.  She admitted that she obstructed justice by cleaning the car after the murder and was an accessory after the fact but denied intending to kill Adrianne, which is what the jury convicted her for.  She displayed exaggerated breathing during the polygraph examination, a counter-measure for the test, but the administrator believed she failed the crucial question on whether she intended to kill Adrianne.  Two other independent administrators were unable to offer an opinion due to the counter-measure.  Diane claimed she was hyperventilating due to nerves, although she had been provided the questions beforehand and had reviewed them with the administrator prior to the test.     

Following her conviction, Diane had first been sent to a state prison diagnostic unit in Gatesville then moved to the Dr. Lane Murray Unit, also in Gatesville.  She then went to the Mountain View Unit, also in Gatesville before being moved to the general prison population in the William P. Hobby Unit in Marlin.  In 2018, she was sent back to the Mountain View Unit in protective custody, leading to her filing a civil rights complaint with the Court of Appeals, which was dismissed.    She is currently serving her sentence at the Dr. Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, where she is a maintenance clerk in the unit's warehouse.  She is described as an average, quiet inmate who stays out of trouble and follows directions.    

She is eligible for parole on September 5, 2036.   

David later recanted his confession, as well as recanting his recantation.  He disputed the statement that came out during his trial that there had been no sexual encounter between him and Adrianne on November 4, 1995.  He claimed that his attorney had convinced him to lie about it and stressed that he and Adrianne did have sex.  

In 2008, he claimed that his confession the police was correct and expressed remorse over killing Adrianne.  He added that if he had to do it over again, he would have plead guilty to the crime.  He said that Diane had been the motivator behind the killing but "I went through with it and that's all that matters."  

In 2010, he started a blog to debate prison issues with another "lifer."  That same year, he announced he had gotten married.  

After earning a bachelor's degree in criminology, David began working with the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary's inmate program to become a pastor and start his own ministry behind bars.  

Like Diane, and perhaps thanks to his military background, he adapted well to the structure of life behind bars, with no disciplinary infractions or troubles.  

Following his conviction, he was sent to the O.B. Ellis Unit in Huntsville before being transferred to the-then Darrington Unit in Rosharon.  A few years later, he was moved to the Allred Unit in Wichita Falls where he remains today.  

He is eligible for parole on September 5, 2036.

Since David's trial in July of 1998, when Diane took the stand, the former lovers have not seen each other, nor had any contact.  Reportedly, David sent her a Christmas card in 2001 and received no response.

Questions still remain.  Wendy Bartlett and Lee Ann Burke testified that David did not drive Adrianne home on the night of November 4, 1995.  Was he mistaken?  Was there ever an encounter between him and Adrianne or did he make the entire thing up?  And if he did, why?  To make Diane jealous or to push her to call off the engagement?   When Diane confessed her terrible crime to her Academy roommates, they claimed that Diane said she had been driving the car with David in the passenger seat and "the girl" crying in the back.  Their account of Diane's recounting was that she and David had told "the girl" that they were going to kill her and Diane had so much hate for the girl that it didn't bother her.  They also said that Diane admitted she had confessed the crime not only to her best friend but also to her parents, who had told her to pray and she would be forgiven, something that was confirmed by Jay Guild, who said that Diane had told him the same thing.  Adrianne's former manager at the Golden Fried Chicken claimed that not long before her death, Adrianne had taken a small black and white photo of a boy from her wallet and claimed his name was David.  The manager didn't recall this until months after Adrianne's death and when David and Diane had been arrested.  She could not say with certainty that it was David Graham's picture she saw.  None of Adrianne's friends recalled her ever speaking of David Graham and she apparently did not confide to any of them if she did have any sort of relationship with him.  All of them claimed that she was not the type of girl who would go after another girl's boyfriend and they all knew that David Graham had a girlfriend.  Adrianne's little telephone book, chock full of names of every friend and acquaintance she had - even including that of Bryan McMillen - did not have an entry for David Graham. 

What is certain is that Adrianne Jones died because of Diane Zamora and David Graham, who destroyed their own lives in the process. 

Adrianne (photo source) 

Sources:

CNN (July 24, 1998).  Former Air Force Cadet Gets Life in Texas Teen's Slaying.

Court TV Online, 1999.  Texas v. Zamora. 

Crime Library (2015).  The Texas Cadet Murder Case.

Investigation Discovery Crime Feed (December 13, 2016).  The Texas Cadet Killers:  Revisiting the Adrianne Jones Murder. 

Meyer, Peter.  Blind Love: The True Story of the Texas Cadet Murder.  St. Martin's True Crime, 1998.

NBC News (April 6, 2007).  Diane Zamora: 'I'm Not a Killer.'

People (December 12, 2016).  The Teenage Love Triangle Killers: Inside Their Lives Now. 

Texas Department of Criminal Justice Inmate Search

Texas Monthly (December 1996).  The Killer Cadets. 

Gay Gibson: Murder on the High Seas

The Disappearance of a Young Actress Aboard an Ocean Liner Leads to One of Britain's Most Sensational Trials

Actress Gay Gibson (photo source) 

It was around 2:58 a.m. on Saturday, October 18, 1947 when Frederick Steer, a duty watchman for Union-Castle Line ship Durban Castle, was awakened by a summons from cabin 126, a first-class cabin on the B deck.  Upon arriving at the cabin, Steer noted that the lights for both the steward and stewardess had been rung by the cabin's occupant, something he found strange as normally a passenger would ring for one or the other but not both.  

He knocked on the cabin door and as he started to open it, it was slammed shut but not before Steer recognized the man who closed it.  He was James Camb, a thirty-year-old steward working on the liner.  Steer wondered if, since Camb was a steward, he had arrived for the summons before Steer himself had - but his uneasy feelings about the situation led him to report the incident to the night watchman, James Murray.  Steer and Murray returned to cabin 126, where all was quiet.  Murray relayed the events to the officer of the watch but without mentioning James Camb's name.  The officer on duty believed it to be a private matter and not of any concern to the ship's officers and that appeared to be the end of it.    

At 7:30 that morning, Eileen Field, the stewardess for B deck, arrived at cabin 126, prepared to begin cleaning.  She carried a glass of orange juice for the young lady occupying the cabin, an actress by the name of Gay Gibson.  

A promotional photo of Gay from 1945 (photo source) 

Gay

Born Eileen Isabella Ronnie Gibson in India, she had been educated in England, before joining the women's army corps during World War II.  She became interested in acting and acquired the stage name of Gay Gibson when she began touring with a theatrical company.   By the time she traveled to South Africa to appear as the female lead in the Clifford Odets play Golden Boy, the redheaded Gay was reportedly attracting men "like bees to a honeycomb." At a time when sexually active single women were considered scandalous, she reportedly flouted convention, carrying on affairs with two married men.  Following the run of the play The Man With a Load of Mischief, it was said to be one of these men who purchased her first class ticket aboard the Durban Castle, which departed Cape Town on Friday, October 10, 1947.   Gay was headed for London and a play in the West End.

As the only young woman among the ship's sixty first-class passengers, most of whom were quite a bit older than she was, the twenty-one-year-old Gay quickly caught the attention of not only the ship's male passengers but also the male employees, especially James Camb, who gossiped about her to other members of the crew and was said to be friendly with her on deck.  Other than a supposedly intimate friendship with Camb, Gay's activities appeared to have been fairly sedate, confined to dining with her assigned dinner companions (a Mr. Hopwood, who worked for the ship's line, and a Wing Commander Bray) and dancing with them.  

The Durban Castle (photo source)

On the evening of Friday, October 17, 1947, Gay dined with Hopwood and Bray, shared dances with both and then retired to her cabin to change into a swimsuit.  As it was a hot evening, she planned to take a dip in the swimming pool and either one or both of the gentlemen were going to swim with her.  However, she returned from her cabin still in her evening dress and saying that she could not locate her swimsuit.  With the swim party cancelled, Hopwood escorted her back to her cabin around 12:40 a.m., under the impression that she was retiring for the evening.  Twenty minutes later, around 1 a.m., Gay, still attired in her evening gown, was seen on the afterdeck, smoking a cigarette and telling the boatswain's mate that she found it too hot to sleep.  It was the last time Gay Gibson was seen by anyone other than James Camb.

A Mystery

When stewardess Eileen Field arrived at cabin 126 on Saturday morning, October 18, 1947, she found the door unlocked, which was very unusual as Gay had been in the habit of locking it each night.  Finding the cabin empty, she at first believed that Gay was in the lavatory and left the glass of juice in the cabin to go about other duties.  Returning two hours later, there was still no appearance from Gay.  The juice was still on a bureau untouched and Gay's bedroom slippers, which she would have worn had she left the cabin, were in their usual spot by the bed.  Field noted that the bed was a little more disheveled than usual and the porthole was open.  Panicked, she went to Captain Patey.

At 10 a.m., Captain Patey broadcast an appeal for Gay over the ship's PA system.  With no response, at 10:30, he turned the ship about and began a thorough search.  At the time, the Durban Castle was 60 miles off the coast of Equatorial Guinea in western Africa.  Word spread quickly amongst the passengers and the crew, all of whom searched for Gay to no avail.  By noon, Captain Patey concluded that Gay Gibson was no longer aboard the ship and must have tragically gone overboard into the shark-infested waters.  Feeling there was nothing else he could do, Captain Patey once again set sail for England.

James Camb's shipmates, however, reported his interest in Gay to Captain Patey as well as his odd behavior over the previous 24 hours.  Despite the heat, and the fact that the rest of the crew were wearing their short-sleeved uniforms, Camb remained in his jacket.  His cabinmate told Captain Patey that not only had Camb turned in in the very early hours of the morning but had retired in his jacket.  Captain Patey locked Gay's cabin and ordered Camb to submit to a medical examination.  

Scratch marks were discovered on Camb's arms and nec, by the ship's surgeon.  Camb claimed they were result of scratching himself due to the heat and were exacerbated by the ship's rough bath towels.  He denied any involvement with Gay Gibson at all, much less that he was the man in her cabin when Frederick Steer had responded to the summons early Saturday morning.  

On Friday, October 24, the Durban Castle anchored off the Isle of Wight in southern England.  Two police detectives boarded the ship to conduct an investigation.  When they left the ship, they had James Camb with them, taking him to Southhampton police headquarters for further questioning.  Two days later, he was formally arrested and charged with the murder of Gay Gibson.

James Camb (photo source) 

Camb

James Camb came from a small mill town in southeast Lancashire, England called Waterfoot.  Unwilling to fall into what he considered the tedium of factory life, he aimed for adventure and excitement.  Blessed with a highly confident nature, an ability to smooth talk anyone and movie star good looks, he began working on ships at the age of 17, with a brief hiatus during the war when he was in the Merchant Navy Reserve.  While serving in the Navy, he married and fathered a child but did not allow having a family hamper his extracurricular activities.  

Originally hired as an assistant cook aboard the Durban Castle, Camb soon worked his way up to being the first-class deck steward, a plum position aboard a ship and a plum position for him to pocket generous tips and woo female passengers.  In a nod to Don Juan, he was soon dubbed "Don James" and "Don Jimmy" by the crew, who heartily disliked him.  He reportedly based the success of a voyage by the number of female passengers he bedded and was more or less reliably said to have slept with at least one woman on every cruise on which he worked.  

Arrest and Trial

Camb reportedly changed his story several times before giving what would ultimately be his final version of events, after telling the police that "my wife can know nothing of this."  Although he had at first denied being the man in Gay's cabin, under police interrogation he admitted that Steer was correct and he had been in the cabin.  He confessed to having gone to her cabin with a drink and having sex with Gay but insisted that it had been consensual.  According to him, while in the throes of passion, Gay's eyes had rolled back in her head, she had began foaming at the mouth, clutched at him and then died.  He said he had attempted resuscitation but had not pressed any alarms for help.  Fearing that Gay being discovered dead in her bed would expose Camb's unprofessional relationship, leading to him being fired, he decided the best way to handle the situation was to get rid of the evidence - the evidence being Gay herself.  Feeling positive she was dead, he picked up her body and forced it through the cabin porthole and into the ocean, saying "She did make one hell of a splash."    

James Camb's mug shot (photo source) 

As Captain Patey had had Gay's cabin secured, upon examination it told its own tale.  Traces of blood were found on the pillow and there was a urine stain on the bottom sheet.  Both could indicate that Camb, after trying to force himself on Gay, had strangled her.  

Inspection of Gay's suitcase failed to turn up the black silk pajamas she had worn during the first week of the cruise, which stewardess Eileen Field confirmed.  According to Camb, Gay had greeted him at her cabin door in nothing but a sheer dressing gown in which she had nothing on underneath and that dressing gown had been on her body when he had pushed it out the porthole.  He had no explanation for where her usual black pajamas were.    

The porthole from the Durban Castle is carried into trial (photo source)

Camb's trial opened at the Great Hall of Winchester Castle on Thursday, March 18, 1948.  In presenting their case, the prosecution did not have a body and so they hired the best medical experts and constructed a replica of Gay's cabin to use in the trial, as well as bringing in the bed and door from her cabin and the actual porthole that Gay had been pushed out of.  They stressed it was not a case of sexual misadventure but a murder of cruelty and callousness.  The prosecution believed that Camb had coaxed his way into Gay's cabin and then had strangled her either when she resisted him or as a means to avoid being charged with rape or attempted rape.  Before she had been strangled to death, Gay managed to scratch him (photographs taken of the scratches at the Southhampton police station were shown to the jury) and pulled both the steward and stewardess bells.  

During the investigation, affidavits were collected from three young women, all travelers aboard the Durban Castle before Gay Gibson's fatal voyage, who claimed that Camb had made unwanted and insistent advances toward them, all separate events that took place between September 18 and October 7, 1947.  One woman claimed she had been taking an afternoon nap in her cabin when she awoke to find Camb by her bed.  Before she could rise, he was on top of her, holding her down.  According to the woman, only mentioning that her aunt was in the cabin next door dampened Camb's ardor and he left the cabin. Another woman claimed that Camb had strangled her when she refused his advances and when she regained consciousness, he was standing over her and laughing.  

Unfortunately for the prosecution, they were barred from using these affidavits and bringing up Camb's predatory behavior.  

They did admit that a contraceptive device was found in Gay's suitcase and suggested that if the young woman had been planning a sexual encounter with Camb (or anyone), it would not have been in her suitcase.  They also believed that had Gay been expecting Camb, she would not have been wearing her black pajamas, which they believe she had on when she died and accounted for the fact they had not been located.  

The prosecution also introduced a statement the police claimed he had made to them that "She struggled.  I had my hands around her neck . . . I threw her out of the porthole." 

The defense denied that Camb had made such a statement and insinuated that Gay was a young woman with loose morals, as evidenced by her contraceptive device.  They suggested that she had been pregnant at the time of her death as a result of one of her affairs and it was that condition that necessitated her journey to London.  A pregnancy, they said, would make the contraceptive device unnecessary and explained why she would not have taken it from her suitcase.  

The defense had witnesses who testified that Gay had been "hysterical" and "neurotic" and that she was subject to fainting fits in which her mouth, hands, and fingernails turned blue.  They also said that she had "a weak chest,"  perhaps congenital heart disease.  

In opposition, Gay's mother testified that her daughter was none of the things the defense claimed and instead was "one of the finest types of English womanhood physically, mentally, and morally."  

Camb himself took the stand and while he admitted that pushing Gay out of the porthole was "beastly conduct," he denied any other wrongdoing.  When confronted with his story changing multiple times, he claimed it was for "self-preservation" and said he believed he was an honest man.

Following the four-day trial, the jury deliberated only 45 minutes before finding James Camb guilty of the murder of Gay Gibson, making him the first defendant in Britain to be convicted of murder without a body.   As the abolition of the death penalty was being deliberated in Parliament at the time, his death sentence was overturned.  Escaping the hangman's noose, he was instead sentenced to life in prison.  Winston Churchill was enraged by this, stating that "The House of Commons has, by its vote, saved the life of the brutal lascivious murderer who thrust the poor girl he had raped and assaulted through a porthole of the ship to the sharks."  

Convictions

Camb had served less than nine months of his sentence when, in December, his wife divorced him on grounds of adultery.  

In September of 1959, after serving eleven and a half years of his sentence, Camb, then 41 years old and considered a "star prisoner" by authorities, was released.  Still denying his guilt, he sold his story to the press and remarried to a woman with a child that he adopted.  In 1967 he was jailed again after he attacked a 13-year-old girl and served two years.  Following his release in 1969, he obtained work in Scotland as a head waiter for a hotel.  Only months later, he was charged with the sexual misconduct of three 11-year-old schoolgirls when he broke into the room they were staying in.  He was imprisoned once again, where he remained until 1978.

In July 1979, he died of heart failure at the age of 62, no longer the dashing Tyrone Power lookalike but a disheveled shell of his former self but still denying the murder of Gay Gibson.

Gay's body was never recovered.  

The bed and door from Gay's cabin (photo source) 

Sources:

Crime Reads (March 25, 2021), The Actress, The Steward and the Ocean Liner.

Criminal Encyclopedia (November 12, 2016), James Camb - 1947.

Fido, Martin, The Chronicle of Crime.  Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993.

Keith, W. Barrington, The World's Greatest Crimes.  Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1990.

The Mirror (March 25, 2018), Gorgeous Gay Gibson Was Thrown Out of  a Cruise Ship Porthole.

 Murderpedia (2021).  James Camb. 

Soapboxie (October 8, 2020).  The Porthole Murder.