Linda Zapata

You can't help it.

You know, he's my dad.

He raised me afterwards, and I think he tried his best.

The phone calls helped, but Detective Statz needed more.

So she went back to Nevada, where Eugene Zapata was living, this time armed with a search warrant, which led to a safety deposit box and a discovery that would change everything.

We found three envelopes marked, destroy, do not read.

Is it safe to assume, Detective, that you did not honor

Eugene Zapata's wishes and not reading what was in his safety deposit box?

We couldn't read them quickly enough.

What they included was details of Eugene following, and in my opinion, the word stalking could be used, Jeanette from the time that she filed for divorce, May 12th, 1976, up until about the beginning of September of 76.

I held them in my hand and I said, this is the case.

This is the case.

Eugene's detailed notes were the evidence prosecutor Bob Kaiser had been hoping for.

In a written statement sent to 48 Hours, Zapata says he was just building a case to help him win custody of his children.

Kaiser believes the notes show Eugene's obsessive state of mind when his wife filed for divorce.

Was he going into her pants and sniffing the crotch of her pants to see if it smelled like spermicidal jelly?

but it's hard to prove a murder case in front of a jury without a body.

So police were hoping their cadaver dogs would find Gene's remains in this huge landfill Zapata visited on his last trip to Wisconsin.

They looked for five days and turned up nothing.

So Kaiser went with what he did have, circumstantial evidence that Jean was murdered.