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| Victim Adrianne Jones (photo source) |
"There are not any winners in this case."
Judge Joe Drago
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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."
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
