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. 

  

Bobby Kent: Murder Between Friends

Bobby Kent in 1992 

". . . They should be ashamed of what they did."

On July 13, 1993, a group of six teen girls and boys from the pleasant community of Hollywood, Florida, a middle class suburb of Fort Lauderdale, gathered at a local Pizza Hut, as many do during the carefree days of summer.  This congregation, however, wasn't meeting up to nosh and socialize but to discuss how they were going to commit murder.

Their chosen victim was twenty year old Bobby Kent, the only son of Fred and Farah Kent, who had immigrated to the States from Iran, changing their surname in the process.  Fred was a successful stockbroker, allowing his family a privileged lifestyle.  Bobby -- popular, gregarious and handsome -- had graduated from high school and attended community college.  He was serious about bodybuilding and had entrepreneurial dreams -- although those dreams were of a questionable nature.
Bobby's best friend was Marty Puccio.  He and Marty had met in the third grade and developed a friendship that was dysfunctional at best.  Marty's parents would recall the young boy coming home, after spending time with Bobby, covered in bruises and, at time, bleeding.  The Puccios believed this was some form of roughhousing and encouraged their son to cut off contact with Bobby or at least limit it but apparently did not take any other kind of action.  Sadly.

This love-hate relationship -- with Bobby both being playful and punishing toward Marty -- continued into adolescence.  The bullying became so bad at one point that Marty begged his parents to move away from Hollywood so that he might escape.  His parents refused, leading their son to live temporarily with relatives in New York.  Before long, though, Marty returned to Florida and back into his cruel relationship with Bobby.  He seemed unable to break away from the abusive connection.

It was during their adolescent years that both young men took up bodybuilding, spending a great deal of their time at the gym.  It was also said that they both began taking steroids, causing Bobby's already volatile and aggressive nature to worsen.

In the 11th grade, Marty dropped out of school.  This added to the list of grievances Fred and Farah Kent had against him as they ironically believed Marty was a bad influence on their son and wished to stifle the friendship.  

At some point after Bobby himself graduated from high school, he entered the business arena as a filmmaker.  As the gay subculture was at the height of its popularity in south Florida, he came up with the idea to film men masturbating and sell the tapes.  The pornographic venture did not go as planned, however, as the generally poor quality of the films made them difficult to sell.  It was also rumored, after the events of July 1993, that Bobby had pimped his taller, muscular friend out at gay clubs.

Marty had met Lisa Connelly, a shy, overweight 18 year old high school dropout and the two had fallen quickly in love, spending all their time together.  Lisa quickly noticed how Bobby treated his so-called friend and hoping to take his mind off abusing Marty, introduced him to her friend, Alice "Ali" Willis.  Ali, like Lisa, was also 18; she had already been married and given birth to a child that her parents cared for.

While friends dating friends would have made for a cozy quadrangle, Ali and Bobby only dated for a few weeks.  Bobby began abusing Ali, subjecting her to "bizarre" sexual behavior and, according to Marty later on, threatening both her and her child's lives.

Meanwhile, Lisa discovered she was pregnant with Marty's baby.  Feeling her boyfriend, and now the father of her child, would never escape Bobby Kent's torture, she began to plot how she could eradicate Bobby from both their lives.  Permanently.

She recruited her friend Ali -- Bobby's most recent girlfriend -- and Marty, of course.  She also added Ali's new boyfriend, Donnie Semenec, Lisa's cousins Heather Swallers and Derek Dzvirko and Derek Kaufman to their murderous band.   Kaufman was 22 years old and claimed to be a mafia hit man; Lisa felt his so-called contract killing knowledge would come in handy for their plans.

They chose July 14 as the day Bobby would meet his maker.  One day after their Pizza Hut meeting in which all the future killers had attended with the exception of Marty.

Ali, the former girlfriend who Bobby had allegedly raped, was used as the bait.  Marty called Bobby and invited him to a remote canal near Weston, stating they were going to race cars.  As an added incentive he assured Bobby that Ali would be there and was anxious to have sex with him.   Bobby agreed and was picked up from his home by the seven who would kill him around 11:30 p.m.

Upon arrival at the chosen site, Ali took Bobby off to a more secluded spot, on the pretext she wanted to talk with him.  Those remaining assembled their weapons -- a pipe, an aluminum baseball bat and two knives.    

While Ali, and Heather Swallers, who had caught up to them, distracted Bobby, the five co-conspirators snuck up on him.

The body of Bobby Kent

Donnie Semenec, Ali's boyfriend, plunged a knife into Bobby's neck.  Seeing Marty, Bobby pleaded with him for help, apologizing for anything and everything he had done and begging for mercy.  Marty responded by stabbing Bobby in the stomach.  Bobby attempted to run but was outnumbered.  Donnie, Marty and Derek Kaufman hit and stabbed his torso.  Marty slammed Bobby's head into the ground and cut his throat.  It was Derek, the self-professed hit man, who dealt the final blow - - beating Bobby's head in with the aluminum baseball bat and making sure Bobby Kent was removed from this earth.

The body was then rolled to the edge of the marsh.  They had chosen the location specifically on the belief that alligators would find the corpse and consume it, effectively destroying all evidence.  They tossed the baseball bat and knives into the ocean and decided they would all agree they had been together, hanging out, on the night of the murder while Bobby had been out on a date with an unidentified woman.

Bobby's family reported him missing when he didn't return home that evening.  Marty Puccio, as Bobby's best friend, was contacted by the police about Bobby's possible whereabouts.  Marty feigned ignorance about where Bobby might be and professed to be worried about his friend.  The cops may have had a gut feeling that something wasn't right but had nothing to go on.

However, like most teens, the seven killers could not stay quiet.

Lisa Connelly, who claimed that Bobby had raped her, confessed to her mother about the murder.  Her mother, in turn, contacted her own sister, who was Derek Dzvirko's mother.   The two sisters took their children to see their brother, who had friends in the police department.  They were then directed to Detective Frank Illaraza of the Broward County Sheriff's Office.  Dzvirko not only confessed everything to Illaraza, he led the detective to Bobby Kent's remains, still where his killers had left him.  The wallet in the pocket of the pants confirmed that it was indeed Bobby Kent.

Once Bobby had been found, the conspirators quickly cracked and began giving excuses as to why he had to die.  They claimed they were merely bystanders to what they had thought was going to be a simple beating.  Nope, they knew nothing about any murder.  The prosecutors dealt with it by trying each of the seven defendants separately.

Perhaps frighteningly, not one of the alleged killers displayed any remorse at trial.  Three of the defendants had not known or even met Bobby Kent prior to the evening of July 14, 1993, making their lack of remorse difficult to grasp.

The killers under arrest.  Top from left:  Puccio, Willis, Semenec, Swallers

Bottom from left:  Dzvirko, Kaufman, Connelly

Marty Puccio, the so-called best friend of the victim and who himself had been victimized by Bobby Kent for years, received the harshest sentence.  Charged with first degree murder, he was sentenced to death in the electric chair on August 3, 1995.  Bobby's mother, Farah Kent, believed justice had been served.  "Now he will fear for his life, as my son did for his," she remarked after sentencing.  In 1997, the Florida Supreme Court overturned his death sentence and commuted it to life with parole eligibility in 25 years.  He is serving his time at the Desoto Annex in Arcadia, where he has reportedly gone into the prison ministry.

Derek Kaufman, the 22 year old who had told the younger crowd he was in the Mafia in order to impress them, and who showed up for the murder party with a bat instead of the promised gun, was sentenced to life plus thirty years.  He is serving his time at the Gulf Correctional Institute in Wewahitchka, where he has incurred nearly twenty infractions, including drug use and disobeying orders.

As Donald Semenec's eighteenth birthday was on the day he helped to kill Bobby Kent, and having delivered the blow that started the frenzy, he was sentenced to life plus fifteen years.  He is serving his sentence, like Derek Kaufman, at the Gulf Correctional Institute in Wewahitchka.  Also like Kaufman, he has racked up an impressive count of infractions -- some twenty -- ranging from weapon possession to drug and alcohol use.

Derek Dzvirko was charged with second-degree murder and originally sentenced to seven years on May 12, 1995 but received an additional four years on his sentence for his attempt to lie on the witness stand after his initial sentencing, while testifying against the others.  He was paroled on October 1, 1999, after serving four years, and left Florida for Missouri, where he worked as a truck driver.

Lisa Connelly was sentenced to life plus five years.  Her sentence was reduced on appeal to nine years.  The alleged mastermind of the murder, she was paroled on February 3, 2004, after serving a total of nine years.  She gave birth to a daughter while incarcerated and is reported to live in Pennsylvania with her daughter and a younger son.  She has kept a low profile since her release, running a cleaning business and becoming a certified optician.

Alice "Ali" Willis was charged with second-degree murder and sentenced to forty years on May 31, 1995.  That sentence was reduced on appeal to seventeen years for the murder charge and fifteen years for the conspiracy charge.  She was paroled on September 16, 2001, after serving just over six years.  Despite being picked up in 2013 for retail theft, a parole violation, she did not end up back in prison.  She is said to live in Melbourne, Florida with her husband and children.  She will remain under community supervision until September 15, 2041.

Heather Swallers was charged with second-degree murder and sentenced to seven years.  When she took the stand on May 17, 1995, she did not follow Dzvirko's lead and lie and, in fact, turned in evidence.  She was paroled on February 14, 1998, after serving almost three years -- the first to be released from custody.  She reportedly resides in Georgia with her children.

In 1998, Jim Schutze wrote a book on the case called Bully:  A True Story of High School Revenge.  Three years later, the book was adapted into a film by Larry Clark, also called Bully, which starred Brad Renfro and Nick Stahl.  .

In 2013, Bobby Kent's sister Laila spoke publicly on the decision to allow all three female defendants and one male defendant to be released from prison.  According to the Sun Sentinel she was quoted as saying, "It disgusts me that they have freedom after killing someone.  They're horrible people and they should be ashamed of what they did.  They don't even deserve to be alive."

Bobby Kent's family had his body cremated and his ashes were scattered.


Somewhat similar to the Kirsten Costas case I wrote about yesterday, the Bobby Kent case is about bullying, although the Kent case much more directly so.  Bobby Kent was and remains a much less sympathetic victim than Kirsten Costas as he not only verbally abused others (even those he claimed were his friends) but physically tormented them as well.  If two of the women who participated in his murder are to be believed, Kent sexually assaulted and raped them -- one of them being the girlfriend of his own friend, Marty Puccio.

Also in possible opposition to the Costas case, there was a clear conspiracy and plan to obliterate Bobby Kent.  His murder didn't happen during an episode of assault or immediately following but was a clear, thought out design.

While there is never any excuse for murder, in this case there does appear to be extenuating circumstances.  The abuse dealt to Marty Puccio is not under dispute.  It seems clear that he had a victim mentality and reacted much the way abused persons do.  That gives me a small amount of sympathy for him.

What I don't understand though is why no one thought to take Bobby Kent's abuse to the authorities before deciding to mete out their own version of justice.  Maybe Marty Puccio had been beaten down -- physically, emotionally and mentally -- over the years by his so-called friend but the others cannot attempt to utilize that excuse.  Of course I am seeing this from the viewpoint of a fully formed adult.  The girls in the case were eighteen; is it feasible that while they may not have wanted their friends and family to know that Bobby Kent raped them, they were okay with being part of his murder?  And Marty Puccio was twenty years old but do we know how old he was emotionally in 1993?  He had been abused by Bobby for more than half his life by that point.  Would he have had the wherewithal to approach authority figures, even his parents?

And what of everyone involved in this sordid mess but Marty Puccio, Lisa Connelly and Alice Willis?  They had no real connection or interaction with Kent and yet they decided to join in and participate, even tangentially, in the cold and brutal murder of another human being.

I find the sentencing and time served troubling as well.  Read anything about this case and you will see many accusations of the female defendants in this case getting much better treatment.  I believe they caught a break due to their gender.  One of them hatched the idea and put it in motion, recruiting everyone else.  The other used herself in order to lure the victim and kept him occupied so that her fellow conspirators could get into place, readying themselves to murder.  While none of the girls may have wielded a weapon, under the law they are just as guilty as if they did.  Heather Swallers' participation in the murder seems much less involved and given that she gave evidence truthfully, I don't have a real issue with her brief sentence.  Connelly and Willis may be a different story; although I would certainly have sympathy if they were indeed victims of Bobby Kent's abuse.

I am not pointing fingers at anyone because the parents of all these young people involved suffered but . . . it seems their attitudes towards their children's behavior were excessively and exceedingly casual.  Roughhousing during play, for boys, is one thing.  But bruising of the body and bleeding is quite another.  I can't help but wonder what might have happened if Marty Puccio's parents had taken this matter to Bobby Kent's parents when they were still young children.  Or, if necessary, to the authorities.  Would it have saved Bobby Kent's life and spared Marty Puccio from a life incarcerated?  And what of Bobby Kent's parents?  Did they know their son was exhibiting such violent behavior?  And while Bobby allegedly wanted to enter the business scene, he looked to be trying to do so in a scuzzy way.  Did his parents have any idea of his involvement with the pornographic movies?

This case is troubling for many reasons.  The fact that a cruel and sadistic predator was allowed to roam freely for so long is infuriating.  The extreme violence dealt to him, while partly understandable in the eyes of his victims, is horrifying.  As is the killers' utter lack of remorse.  Was it from a form of PTSD?  Or worse, was it because these privileged and indulged teens simply had no conscience?

Perhaps the biggest mystery of all to me is why Marty Puccio's defense team never claimed any type of mental defect as a result of years of abuse.  How he got sentenced to death while the other defendants avoided that punishment entirely.  Was Marty judged more culpable because he made the phone call?  Or because he was supposedly Bobby's best friend?  is Marty really that much different than a battered wife who, after years of abuse and threats, kills her spouse?  Or do we put a different light on things because Marty is a man?

Does the Bobby Kent case trouble you as much as it does me?  Please let me know what you think in the comments.