Chapter 1: What happened to Jean Zapata on the day she disappeared?
This is Gordon Harris, 81 degrees in Madison, partly sunny and warm this afternoon.
It's starting to sink in now, what I've missed. Did I even have a mom? Do you know that for the last 30 years, I've been waiting and watching every day, waiting for mom to come home? I know people always tell me she's strong and independent and a pioneer, but for me, she was just mom. I remember flying with her while she taught people how to fly. Her smile, I remember, a big, big, big smile.
I was a baby in the family, so I always got spoiled and just fun to be with. As I got older, I would go with her to the air races with my dad. The last time anyone had seen her, she was sitting there having coffee in the dining room, sending the kids off to school. And then, according to Eugene, half an hour later, he gets to the house and she's not there.
I remember that she wasn't home, but that was typical. I mean, she was off at work. And my next memory is The three of us kids together saying, you know, where's mom? It's getting late. The very fact that somebody called 28 years after she went missing, and her best friend still wanted answers and had the guts to call the police department, say, what are you doing here? Anything happening?
I had the feeling that nobody else had ever asked the police department to do it.
And I think the only reason it got reopened was because it landed on the desk of Detective Mary Ann.
I'm Detective Mary Ann Flynn-Stotts with the Madison Police Department. And I was the lead investigator on the Jeanette Zapata case.
I took the case and gave it a read. There were a number of red flags that were raised on the initial reading of the reports. I definitely suspected foul play. The receptionist came back and said, Linda, there's two police officers here to talk to you. And he said, we're here because we reopened the case on your mom. My gut dropped out.
Her immediate words were simply the fact of, is my mom alive or dead?
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Chapter 2: How did Eugene Zapata explain Jean's disappearance to their children?
Yeah. Well, let me ask you, I mean, were you in love with her?
Well, if you had asked me at that time, I would have said I was very fond of her. But I think I was.
I'm glad she met Paul. For those few months, she was happy again.
In a male-female sort of way. And I'm glad for that.
They talked every day, but it didn't last long. On Monday, October 11th, 1976, Linda remembers seeing her mother drinking her morning coffee. She was in the kitchen. And I was looking down the foyer hallway and I was leaving for school. And I just caught a glimpse of her in the kitchen as I was shutting the door and I took off for school.
And just like that, life would never be the same for Jean Zapata's family or her friends. They never saw her again.
They came to me and said, have you heard from Jean? And I said, no, why?
Ivan Norton worked with Jean at her flight school. He was surprised when she didn't show up to teach a student pilot that day.
And I said, well, that's strange because she never misses.
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Chapter 3: What new evidence prompted the reopening of Jean Zapata's case?
But police were learning some things about the Zapata's marriage, interesting things that added to their suspicions about Eugene.
Eugene had placed an ad for her in a swingers type magazine.
I didn't hear about the pictures until she called me to say, do you know what that son of a bitch did? Remember, this happened when Jean was still trying to save her marriage. At one point when Eugene said he just didn't seem to have any lead in his pencil, but it might help if he could take provocative pictures of her, she let him.
never realizing that years later, these pictures would come back to haunt her. One day, the post office called Jean to complain about X-rated material in a mailbox rented by Eugene. It was the first she'd heard about the mailbox, so she went to look and was horrified by what she found.
She picks it up and is rifling through it, and she sees her own
nude picture looking back at her where her husband is pimping her out to anyone who subscribes to that magazine.
Well he wanted her to go with other men and wear short skirts and go out without underwear and Jean's divorce attorney, Daphne Webb, learned that the Swingers magazine was only part of the story.
They would go to bars and he'd want her to stand off to one side so that he could pretend that she was a pickup and see if men would try to pick her up. I think most disturbing to her was that he would kind of reach up under her clothes and grope her when the children were present.
Jean not only wanted a divorce, she wanted a restraining order against Zapata. I think she'd had enough. Jean moved out, but he didn't move on. The divorce was bitter and he seemed obsessed with Jean.
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Chapter 4: What were the red flags in Eugene Zapata's behavior after Jean went missing?
Yeah. Years passed. Decades passed. These Zapata children grew up and moved out. Peggy Weakley moved away from Madison, but she never forgot about her best friend. I wish she was still here.
But she's not. Excuse me.
Take your time. In November 2004, more than 28 years after Jean disappeared, Peggy decided there was something she had to do for her friend. So she contacted the Madison Police. And I said, do you have a cold case department like they do on TV? And she said, no. The case landed on the desk of Detective Marianne Flynn-Statz. So you read it and what did you think?
I immediately was struck that more could probably be done with the case. She didn't believe that Jean had simply run away as her husband had claimed for all those years. Detective Stats contacted every agency she could think of inquiring about Jeanette Zapata. Had she used her social security number or tried to renew her pilot's license or get a passport? They even tried Interpol.
You did a fairly exhaustive search and concluded what? I concluded that she was most likely no longer alive. Detective Stats started talking with anyone involved with the case back in 1976. She found Linda, the only one of the Zapata children still living in Madison, working as a nurse at a local clinic. The receptionist came back and said, Linda, there's two police officers here to talk to you.
And I explained to her who I was and that the investigation into her mother's disappearance was reopened. And I just, my gut dropped out and I thought, oh my God, did you find her? I mean, is she downtown right now? Is she out in the car? You know, I thought they found her. They said, no, but we're just going to reopen the case. The next question was, did my dad have anything to do with it?
You asked them that? Yeah. It just came out. And I said, I don't know why I asked that.
What's worse, my father killed my mother or my mother abandoned me?
Madison, Wisconsin detective Marianne Flynn-Statz knew when she started investigating the disappearance of Jean Zapata that Linda Zapata might have to face a horrifying possibility. It's remarkable that one of the first things you said to Detective Statz was, did my dad have anything to do with it? You have no idea where that came from? No, it was like the exorcist. It just came out.
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Chapter 5: How did the investigation uncover disturbing details about Eugene and Jean's marriage?
Even though the search didn't turn up any useful evidence, Linda Zapata was pretty sure police were on the right track and looking at the right suspect, her own father. I was hoping, hoping dearly that my dad would turn out to be innocent. Her brother and sister believe he didn't do it.
But as painful as it might be, Linda was now determined to help the detectives find out whether that was true or not. I knew the deciding factor was could I sleep at night the rest of my life knowing I didn't somehow help my mom. But helping the police would put Linda in an almost impossible position. In April 2005, word got back to her father, Eugene, that the case had been reopened.
He was living with his second wife in Nevada, but he showed up suddenly and unexpectedly in Madison. And Linda immediately called Detective Statz. What do you think he was doing here? Why did he pop up here all of a sudden? I was concerned that he was somehow tampering with evidence. What kind of evidence?
Jeanette.
Her remains?
Yes.
Zapata managed to avoid her and flew back to Nevada. Two months later, she paid a surprise visit to his house. But it was clear that Eugene was not going to admit to anything. Detective Stats returned home without Eugene's confession, but not without hope. She had begun reconstructing his movements during that April visit to Wisconsin by pulling his cell phone and financial records.
And that's how she found out he had rented this storage locker just outside Madison. She also discovered he had visited a landfill about 80 miles from here, but not before he had gone on a shopping trip to Walmart. I call the Walmart and I get faxed the receipt. And at that point, it became so very clear to me what he was actually doing.
Here's what Zapata bought, two gallons of water, an odor-absorbing mask, a few large containers, a tarp, two cans of Lysol, some pledge wipes, scissors, recycling bags, and paper towels. What did you think he had bought all that for?
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Chapter 6: What role did Linda Zapata play in the investigation of her mother's disappearance?
I mean, what kind of daughter is going to betray their father? How could I do that? But then, a second later, it's like, how could I not do that for my mom?
Hello? Oh, Linda. Hi.
In August 2005, almost 30 years after her mother went missing, Linda Zapata agreed to make two calls to her father and let the police tape everything. Ever since that day in 1976, every single day I'm waiting to see if I recognize her or know her, and I just, I have to know. Did you think he'd confess to her after all these years? I thought if he was going to break, it may be.
Or he may leak something. It's just between you and me. Can you at least tell me if she's, do you think she's alive?
Well, first of all, I didn't have anything to do with the disappearance or anything. After all these years, you've got to think that, no, she's not.
It takes a while, but Linda works herself up to making an awkward and painful accusation. I don't know. I guess my gut is that you did it, which I know it is, but I still love you and nothing's changed between me and you. I said I love you and I forgive you, and I meant it. I realized I meant it. I just think a lot of people listening to you
will be amazed that you could still love the man who killed your mother. Yeah, it's not that I don't get angry at him. Believe me, I do. 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.
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Chapter 7: What shocking confession did Eugene Zapata make about Jean's death?
I said the only thing I want is for him to admit he did it, tell us what happened to her, how he did it. And above all, I needed to see it come out of his mouth. I needed to see him say I killed her. The deal was done. Eugene Zapata, who had lied to all his children, broke his silence and told his story to Detective Statz. He told me that he had gone over to the house.
And shortly upon entering the house, an argument broke out. It turned violent in the kitchen, he said, when he grabbed a paperweight and hit Gene in the back of the head. She fell to the ground. Was she still alive at that point? Yes, she was. So what did he do? He strangled her. How did he strangle her?
He told me that he didn't have an actual memory of his hands on her throat, but he had a memory of his hands and his forearms hurting a lot. He got a cord, a tent cord, and wrapped that around her neck to make sure that she was dead. So he basically strangled her twice, you believe, once with his hands and once with a cord? Once manually and once with a ligature.
According to Zapata, he cleaned up the kitchen and began a grisly 30-year odyssey with Jean's body, burying it, exhuming it, and reburying it. He claims his wife was never in the crawl space. He says for 25 years she was buried in a vacant lot he bought right after the murder.
Then he says he moved her to that storage locker where she stayed until April 2005 when Eugene heard the case had been reopened. Then he says he came back here, cut her body into pieces, and took her to the landfill. Linda asked that her father's entire confession be videotaped.
The defense agreed on the condition that she would be the only person to see it, and then it would be locked away forever. So when you did see it, what was that like? I felt sick to my stomach. I felt so sad. But it was also very therapeutic. I felt like I was there for my mom again. The truth is coming out. This is what happened. And it was a big, almost a relief.
Eugene Zapata returned to court once more, this time to face his sentence and to face his daughter. Dad, although I don't condone what you did to Mom, I do forgive you and I love you. Zapata said nothing. And then he was sentenced.
And so, Mr. Zapata, at long last, I'm going to adopt the recommendation and sentence you to the maximum period of time of five years in prison. Do you understand? Yes, I do.
Five years for reckless homicide. That's all the judge could give him. And under the sentencing laws of 1976, when the crime was committed, Eugene Zapata will have to be released after only three years in prison. Was justice done? Yes. Because? Because we know what happened.
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of Eugene Zapata's trial and what did it mean for the family?
You know, there's sadness, but I just had a smile on my face a lot of the time during the service because she deserved this. I think she's up there just saying, you know, what took you guys so long? Okay, finally we got this. And just knowing that she's at peace now.