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The fire in the cottage on Addison Avenue was hungry, devouring almost everything in the bedroom. Within minutes, firefighters knocked it down, the smoke clearing, the suity water running in the streets, and then, as the mop up began, the word flashed out by something electric. The house was occupied, someone didn't get out.
And up through the ashes, a mystery flared, like a stubborn ember, gloat and smoldered, and demanded an answer. The inhabitants of the rented cottage, as investigators soon learned, were too young, beautiful people, the sort of glossy and successful types you might expect to see on some reality show.
An answer Paul Zumot and Jennifer Skipsey. Jennifer an ambitious award-winning real estate agent who lived like a rock star, or so said everybody, Roy Enderman. You know, she'd be like, "I'm not going to melt like Dom, and it was baby. I just worked out, went to Starbucks, and I'm on my way to a meeting, and it's only 6th,
33." So, Paul seemed to be just the right kind of guy for Jennifer, said Roy. Because he was an entrepreneur, and he seemed like he was a very driven person, and not definitely a quality that Jennifer was looking for it. Jordanian American Paul Zumot, sleek, attractive, educated, engaging, followed a local hangout
at Cafe, where customers could smoke flavored tobacco through water pipes called "Hookas," the place, and Paul, were popular. Nikita got stop was a fan. He's a good-looking guy, you know, he looks good, he smells good, he presents well, he's witty, he's smart, and he's just, he's affectionate.
So, love it first sight? Well, maybe, said their friends.
From the minute that he told me about her, he always talked about how wonderful she is,
and how she's perfect. He definitely was very charismatic, and he liked to joke around. And, money? There was a lot of it around, apparently, too, and Jennifer and Paul have he worked hard to get it.
You don't need to happy to spend it. When Jennifer and Paul first got together, Paul took Jennifer to New York City. And I remember it was like a kid in a candy store, just planning all these elaborate, wonderful things that they were going to do together. They were passionate, these beautiful people.
They both had strong personalities, their love, burned hot. Jennifer was a very strong, independent woman, and she would not accept anyone disrespecting her, or even looking at her inappropriately. And she was very strong, well, than that.
“Me, like I always did, told him you need to be careful, you know, because girls can be evil.”
So, he said, "No, she's different, I love her, you know, I already love her, she's great." In so in September of 2009, Paul and Jennifer moved into that charming little car to John Addison Avenue here in Palo Alto, time to play house. Paul started to think about marriage. And for Paul's 36th birthday, Jennifer planned a party full of promise.
She invited most of his close friends to dish dash one of his favorite restaurants. And they, I think they had it over a dozen people, they're almost 20 people or something. Jennifer created a cute table setting, she created the perfect party for Paul, cake and everything.
In fact, people who were there, described the party is almost like a wedding ...
It lasted through the evening, into the wee hours of the morning.
“And now here it was just the very next evening.”
And it was gone in ashes, all of the excitement, the glamour, the promising future up and smoke along with the house on that as soon, and the person inside. The next day, Jim Skipsy was driving with his parents, to a dinner engagement, his phone right. It was an old friend, he picked it up.
I said, "Jick, you're going to tell me something bad, aren't you?" And he said, "Jim, let's give her a beating of her name." Yeah, he said like three times like a saw, I said, "Jick hold on man, I gotta pull over." And I didn't want to hear, I didn't want to hear what he had to tell me, so I gave
the phone to my dad, and he told my dad, "My dad don't have the phone."
He just held out his arms and me and my mom just like we were all bold and each other. And he told us, "Jim, he was gone."
“It was his Jennifer, his daughter, who died in that fire.”
And now, along with almost unbearable grief, something else started to burn inside Jim, something serious. It was suspicion. You know, accidents will happen, there's a lot of tragic things are happened to a lot of people in this world, but this was no accident, it didn't have to happen.
Well, the deadly fire was burning at his home on that as an accident. Paul's in luck was at his hook-alown, just minutes away, someone called, told him about the fire, he rushed over, but could only pace helplessly back and forth, as firefighters did their job. Soon after that, he sat down with Palo Alto police to try to help sort out what happened.
Though, as you can see on the video recording of the meeting, sat is probably not the best description. Paul was full of nervous energy and frantic questions at this point, nobody had told him that Jennifer was in that fire. I'm worried about my house, maybe more than I'm worried about my girlfriend.
Why, who would cause the fire? Are you care about this? I want to talk about the kind of terrain. I'm not sure that I know any more than you do.
My job is just basically to talk to you and find out what exactly you know because you
probably know more than me at this point. No? No? So, together, police and Zuma talked about the hours before the fire. We're had she been, what did she and Paul been doing?
Well, this was my birthday, we went out, at least fine, you know, me and her and all the friends. Who's her? Jennifer. And that's her girlfriend.
Yeah. Paul explained to police that he's not the afternoon at an appointment in San Jose, got back to Palo Alto just in time for his cafe to open for the evening.
“And then I came here and it was traffic, I got to the cafe because that's what they”
opened and I got into the computers and as soon as I sat down on a smoke, I had the hook around you. So, smoking my landlord called me to the houses on fire, I flowing, I flowing through the red lights and came here. Now, I am really frustrated, I'm really confused, I'm really exhausted and I want to know
what happened. I can't whistle about the house because I'm like, Jennifer safety, I just cannot think anything going on guys, I'm really honest with you, I just cannot think anything. Then in the middle of his conversation with detectives, Paul's phone rang, it was Jennifer's mother who told him she hadn't seen or heard from her daughter.
You can see what happened, Paul fell to pieces, to this point, he told detectives he'd been clinging to the hope the Jennifer might be with her mother anywhere really, but at home. But she wasn't with her mother, wasn't anywhere. And that's when the officer broke this news. Okay, and I'm trying to be as sensitive as I possibly can be because I just don't
know what I'm talking about, I just don't know what I'm talking about, I just don't know what I'm talking about, I just don't know what I'm talking about, I just don't
Know what I'm talking about, I just don't know what I'm talking about, I just...
what I'm talking about, I just don't know what I'm talking about, I just don't know what
I'm talking about, I just don't know what I'm talking about, I just don't know what Okay, and I'm trying to be sensitive because I also can't be because I understand that this is your you know, I don't know that this is Jennifer
“Okay, but it's a really really odd sense of circumstances. Okay, we need to figure out is it some purposes and accident, okay?”
This is just unfortunate. This is just the beginning for all of us okay to try to answer some questions. Okay? But of course, it had to be Jennifer and it probably wasn't an accident Is that new sank in Paul began to think about who might have wanted the harm Jennifer and came up with some Potentially helpful information to brothers Hishim and Tony Gunma it already threatened her set Paul. There'd been a confrontation just weeks earlier
So what happened is he called me 20 years in a kill me. He spoke in Arabic, and I speak Arabic fluently and he spoke her so he called up please
Paul said that he and Jennifer had filed restraining orders against both brothers Now she was a skirt from him. She's literally skipping the arms cut from the guy So I don't know what's guys like this now. Yes, too. She worked home and She said hey somebody if I were stalking me
“At the brothers killed her to police listen, took some notes, and then just as a precaution of course”
Had Paul give them his clothes for forensic testing Questioned by police his home destroyed his girlfriend dead Paul Zumat was very nearly in shock set his friend Nikita. His mind was
That are they sure Jennifer's gone and oh my God. She's never coming back
And as the weeks went by said Nikita Paul was in a kind of days The gist of our conversations for the first few weeks were the fact that Jennifer's not coming back He was Completely distraught about the fact that Jennifer was in that fire Meanwhile as those same weeks went by investigators went quietly and steadily about their task
“Thinking through the cinders of the fire and coming to the conclusion that”
None of it smelled right Literally He was a young Marine She didn't care about convention. They made a life together Then one night the marine died and then the death investigation took a wild unexpected and utterly bizarre turn
I'm Josh Makewitz and this is trace of suspicion and all new podcasts from daylight Listen to all episodes of trace of suspicion now wherever you get your podcasts Hey guys, Willie guys tier reminding you to check out the Sunday sit-down podcast on this week's episode I get together with a Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey to talk about his career from Dazed and confused and his thoughts in a new book on a better direction for the country
You can get our conversation for free wherever you get download your podcasts Whether you're into unsolved mysteries solved mysteries or creating your own mysteries Amazon music's got millions of podcast episodes waiting just download the Amazon music app and start Listening to your favorite podcasts ad-free included with prime The morning after the fire that is happening the ruins still warm a yellow lab named rosy sniffed around
What was by then the sealed crime scene rosy was trained to identify some of the tools of arson Carousine oil gasoline Rosy stopped in a tracks she'd apparently found something back then Chuck Gilliam was a deputy District Attorney in Palo Alto was gasoline there no question at all center hair you could you could smell it and you could smell it When you walked in just with your own nose and in fact the the remnants of the gas can was found next for a right hip
And so there were still enough remnants of the gas can't for us actually to identify the type and making model of the gas can Wow, that's like somebody leaving the gun beside the body with their fingerprint So if there's something in well no fingerprints obviously, but and and no physical evidence beyond that Because there but it was so clear that it was an arson correct in the arson was it was not an issue No, it was gold-blooded murder that was that issue
Because Jennifer Skipsy did not die in the fire according to forensic experts
She was dead before the fire started the method
Particularly intimate form of killing death by strangulation
“Strangely someone's a very personal killing that's a very angry killing it's not like”
Shooting someone from a long way away. I don't imagine. I mean, you're absolutely touching the person and feeling their life's their life's blood Deb from them Who could have been so angry with Jennifer? All the told detectives that he a Jennifer has taken out restraining orders against those two brothers He shouldn't have done it gunma both part of his social circle men whom he considered former friends
There's people after us I mean they try to get us they trying to almost hear harm harm harm me who's that? His name is he sham? That's the guy. Okay, they got it. You have the rest of the story. I said we were struggling against him. He hit me He has a restraining against me Just one night before after Paul's birthday party celebration Paul talked to least some guys on the truck
Try to follow Jennifer home You're walking around here this way somebody was just talking to her And it's fine, I joking with me, but we had we had people threaten us in the past
“Okay, I don't know what's going on. I think that's what caused us fire. I believe”
Could you? So somebody was a threaten us over okay? So it was Paul zoom out onto something Detectives went to talk to the brothers and of course checked to see where both men were the day of the fire And there was no doubt they were nowhere near the fire They had allies at the time of the fire. We know exactly where both of them were one of them gunned brothers was in their cafe and he's on video tape
And the other was at fries electronics and home depot about 20 miles away. We have those receipts and we have video tape from both of those locations
So what's the gun the brothers were in the clear the cops did but they always do in cases like this in fact
It's practically at least work 101 They took a closer look at the victims boy friend Paul And there was a curious moment in that police interview the day of the fire when Paul admitted he wasn't always the best sort of boy friend
“I mean we're going for him to blow up and thanks to the center is a something that tell all to PD”
They put an emergency restraining one for me August because she said Paul threatened me blah blah blah and I said no, she came to the cafe broke the door Okay, my cafe, but we know we had these problems me in here, but you know what and I have they must take balancing is again I never they're actually going to my life you could see the police reports Suspicious, sure, but as I asked around among the couple's friends
Police learned a few things that put Paul's behavior into context maybe he wasn't any more to blame What she was there relationship was chaotic. There's no disputing that Absolutely, but he was no more violent in the relationship than she was whether it be physically verbally emotionally As police gathered evidence bit by bit asking around about Paul one of the notice something a little odd
Paul told a friend also a policeman by the way two slightly different stories about his whereabouts the day of the fire
First conversation day of the fire reported the cop friend Paul said he wasn't home all day
Then second conversation next day Paul said he stopped briefly at home on route to his hookah cafe As we say odd, but people's memories can be tricky was that one little difference enough to add up to suspicion of murder Police apparently thought so Especially once they added that the rest of what they discovered Paul was arrested They charged paulzumots with arson and murder which struck some observers as strange
After all there had been just that one little inconsistency and they'll Paul and Jennifer did fight sometimes They seemed crazy in love too Paul had been shopping for a diamond ring for heaven's aid There was a part of Paul that was a morning scroll for him And then there was a part of him that was he he didn't understand why he was in custody
And he didn't understand why he couldn't just cry for his girlfriend and for his life that had just changed 100 percent It certainly did
Paul's Umad was taken to jail to a weight trial on a charge of murder in the first degree
Big mistake that Paul didn't mind when I first saw him He's all he was really still telling me is you know me being in custody all of this is going to pull glow Blow over with you know they're going to realize I'm not the person who did this In the days after the fire on that is an avenue after paulzumot was charged with murder and
Hold off to jail events and paulalto seem to freeze somehow
In confusion and denial from paulz point of view and
“Unrequited grief among the people who loved Jennifer”
It hurt that hurt a lot Unrequited partly because for some reason though he'd been arrested Paul wasn't entering a plea Which is what this was all about candlelight vigils outside paulz who collounds by Jennifer's friends and family We decided to stand in front of his establishment every night until He made his plea
Eventually no surprise Paul did plea Not guilty and press a heater chuck killing him found himself Sifting through the records of a two-year romance Studded with restraining orders bitter quarrels scratches bruises nine one-one calls I mean these were two people that were make-ups and breakups and she gave
verbally as good as she got After one of their flare-ups paul was ordered to attend anger management classes went to one the day of the fire in fact
“So why did two people who fought so much stay together for so long?”
There was it turned out an audio recording of Jennifer herself Killing him got hold of it. Listen to her explanation
He wins her heart so the first couple months is amazing
Sweeps you offer fake candles everywhere flowers not money items, but just romance against sweet talking and Parading you around and wanting to introduce you to everybody it gets me Loving him and admiring him that he admires me and then it makes me trust his opinion and What he says about me and thinks about me so then as soon as he gets to that point He flips it
and calls me fat a gold taker By the way the person she's talking to He shum ghanma remember
He's one of the brothers Paul told police he and Jennifer were afraid of but here she was
confiding in him Mind you it's a phone conversation that was recorded a few months before the fire But then she was not happy about Paul not at that point anyway I have pictures of the damage that he did all of my furniture and he kicked in my car Somebody saw him at Starbucks spit in my face on my way to work but things clearly changed after that
“Remember they were all lovey-dubby Paul was even talking marriage the night before the fire”
And now here he was not much more than a year later on trial for her murder Listening to prosecutor Chuck Gillingham take the jury inside the last days of Paul's relationship with Jennifer How did Gillingham do that? Jennifer cell phone Detective discovered and this was rather curious the most of her text message history had been
Deleted Well the messages had not disappeared The Palo Alto cops managed to find a phone expert all the way across the country in New Hampshire who had a very deep look into that cell phone And was able to pull up thousands literally thousands of deleted text messages between Jennifer and Paul in the last few months of her life and Oh boy
From Jennifer you're nothing but a selfish cold hearted ungrateful human being scam artist liar Furious that when didn't read like just any old coral and the timing Jennifer said that text to Paul right at the end of the elaborate birthday party she threw for him When she had perhaps 12 hours left to live In fact, she was so upset about something that she refused to go to the hookah lounge after the party walked all the way home on a broken heel
Texting all the way Jennifer Good stay away from me. I just got home Paul. I'm staying away this time for good What a way to end my birthday
for Jennifer to walk home alone at night with a broken heel and upset She had to have been I don't I don't even know if I've ever even seen her that mad But that was the night before angry messages buzzing back and forth Then as the cell phone revealed the pair made love during the night before Jennifer's morning text messages
Again turned red hot angry this subject seemed to be a debt she claimed he owed her right around 1030 1045 into 11 roughly 16 in the morning. She is now referring back to those text messages and telling him he'd better bring a check And don't come back where she's going to the sanity police department file charges by three o'clock that day And that's the last text messages that anyone gets from her that's the last contact she has Ever with anyone
That said yelling him just before noon is when Paul lost his temper and choked Jennifer to death
Then drove to a gas station bought a can of gasoline later returned home towa...
And somewhere along the way said the prosecutor he erased all those angry text messages she said it
“Every single one between the defendant and her”
Every single one is gone months worth That said yelling him Paul used Jennifer's cell phone to send fake texts to her friends So they believe she was still alive To support that claim gilling him introduced an expert witness To testify that texts from Paul's phone and texts from Jennifer's phone were hitting some of the same
Cell towers all afternoon
So her phone must have been right there with him in his car
Which is why when she missed a meeting with her friend Roy Enderman the texts he got from her didn't make sense They weren't a sensible response to the message each center in fact he got the same text twice She didn't show up and her phone was off and so as soon as I got that repeat text message I was kind of Worried because she wasn't responding to what I was saying Jennifer was nowhere to be found Jennifer was dead
Now what prosecutor gilling him wanted the jury to think about was what happened or didn't happen much later after the fire Here was the scene house burning Paul standing on the street outside watching the fire
At this point he supposedly didn't know if Jennifer was inside her outside whether she was alive or dead
But and at the time that he was there he made 38 calls and text messages
“Two of which went to Jennifer and in neither occasion do you need Jennifer a message?”
He left messages for others. He spoke with others. He text messages for instance the same friend Multiple times but in that two hour period at no time does he leave that location to look for Jennifer perhaps To go to the other side of the the blocked off street you know if he called her and text to there once Certainly that's enough. I mean you'll call him back cell phone records actually bear out
That he's a person that would call her text or two to 300 times a day when he wasn't around her if he wasn't able to get a hold of her his silence Especially at the crime scene was deafening because there's no text message I would submit and I did to the jury that he stood at that location Because he wanted people to see him there But how could the jury be sure Paul was guilty? Prosecutor getting him offered her
“Remember Rosie the skillful police dog trained to alert to the faintest wifth of accelerant of the sort used in arson fire”
She alerted when she smelled some of Paul zoom out closed suspicious yes, though not exactly iron-clad evidence as you'll see courtesy of Paul's high profile defense attorney Demand famous for defending Scott Peterson his name Margara goes I've had many a client who I have no doubt
Was capable of the accident they were accused of this is just not one of them Hey guys Willie guys tier we're celebrating 10 years of sunday today by hosting a very special sunday sit-down live event in Our guest is one of the biggest stars on the planet Ryan Reynolds were taken our conversation to the stage in front of an audience of you for one night only at city winery in New York on April 7th an intimate in-person evening I promise he won't want to miss tickets are limited so grab yours now at today.com
Defense attorney Mark Garagos has made a name for himself defending clients in difficult and highly celebrated cases not the least the Scott Peterson trial but defending Paul zoom-boss would present its own set of challenges zoom out was accused of killing his girlfriend Jennifer Skipsy and then trying to hide that fact by burning the house down But as the trial began he'd also been paid by the prosecution as an abuser of violent man an image Garagos set off to change they both were passionate romantic at times hot at times as you would characterize it
I don't think it was a one-way street by any means Restart Garagos tried best he could do weed out possible jury members who might have been unduly swayed by Angry text messages or stories about zoom out's temper what jurors do or what you want to get a jury to do is to want to help your client and to kind of walk on the shoes your client and then when he presented his case Garagos said out to reframe the events after that infamous party the night before the fire party was at a
place and it was for Paul's birthday and it was planned by Jennifer and the
Had maybe 14 to 18 of their close friends that were there and by all accounts...
and the argument later the angry text that was just a way Paul and Jennifer always were said Garagos
is proof after those angry text message exchanges here's what happened as zoom out described in just police interview we talked we smoke you to bring this fine we did you know
“accepted the that's all give me two zanxes show I think if I show it took one or two before but she took a few more”
front of me and we just went to bed and I got up and let's get something to send out yes yeah yeah because she doesn't made up I mean up yeah yeah I mean up and then I have a video I mean we beat ourselves yeah sure enough when police looked at Jennifer's cell phone there was a video she and Paul having sex after their fight hours before she was murdered so enthusiastically that
anybody who watches this is never gonna have the impression or take away from that that this was
somebody who was ready to kill her and as for that cell tower evidence that prosecutors are getting represented which seemed to show Paul had Jennifer's phone with him and presenting out fake messages in her name that was nonsense said Garagos that was one of the pieces of information that was absolutely imploded we went and got the engineer the actual engineer from the carrier to come in and say he looked at the evidence and what this guy said was the phone pinging off the
“same towers was not it was just merged data from the cell phone why is that important because”
says Garagos the prosecution's own timeline should have cleared Paul's new spot it is investigators said Jennifer was strangled several hours before the fire started and it was lit no earlier than about 630 p.m. but early in the afternoon after Paul had left the area Garagos says Jennifer was still alive sending real not fake text messages herself from her phone by all the codes she was alive at 117 okay okay and at 117 Paul was not at the house
so where was Paul trying to pick up paperwork at the Palo Alto police station and then at the hook a lounge where he appears on security cam footage around 137 p.m. and from there says that a fence attorney he headed to his anger management class about 18 miles away on the way he stopped at the restaurant depose in here on camera around 330 so there simply wasn't time in between said Garagos for Paul to go to the cottage
strangled his girlfriend and douser body with gasoline the solid alibi said Garagos his client simply couldn't have killed Jennifer and he couldn't have started the fire how could he have been in two places it once and as for rosy the yellow lab who alerted to a gasoline spell on zoomauts close Garagos simply pointed out that those very close were submitted to a test on state of the art equipment of the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms and they showed no evidence of
gasoline at all the ATF chemists has a protocol and specifically one of the things the prosecution also didn't tell the story which we brought out was that the ATF also put out a
protocol that said you never take a dog alert to single dog alert and draw a conclusion and in fact
“if the ATF says negative then you should not allow in the dog alert so why would people believe”
the dog over the ATF? Well I think once again you get into this idea of people have dogs they kind of ascribe supernatural powers to dogs I mean you know that's so I've got two two large dogs one and having been through a couple of cases with dog evidence as much as I love my dogs I'm certainly not going to want to convict somebody and put their liberty at stake based on dog evidence still as he presented his case Garagos had a problem
and he knew it what it came down to was the character assassination block of the case I mean the first two blocks of this case revolved around the what's so called scientific evidence and that was absolutely destroyed and then you ended up with the character assassination block. The solution Paul Zuma himself appears to have demanded it the chance to defend himself to the jury by testifying some courtroom observers believed that offense had already created a reasonable doubt that testifying
was in fact risky especially for Paul said his friend Nikisa. Knowing Paul the way I know Paul
The way that he could be interpreted incorrectly I was very nervous about Pau...
Risky or not Paul was determined to tell the jury his side of the story.
The fans attorney Mar Garagos had done what he could to poke holes in the prosecution's murder case against Paul Zuma arguing that the prosecution had no solid scientific proof or clear evidence Zuma was anywhere near Jennifer when she was strangled and the house was set on fire.
“In any way he asked if Paul attacked Jennifer wouldn't she have put up some kind of fight?”
Why were there no defensive marks or scratches on Paul Zuma's body? Did the prosecution even have a case? Paul Zuma wasn't going to take any chances. In fact he was determined to tell the jury his
side of the story. So Garagos assigned a female colleague to question Paul. Must have been a strategy
whispered courtroom observers. A way to show the jury that Paul could in fact interact well with a woman. But those observers were mistaken. Said Garagos. Well I generally I don't think direct examination is my strong suit and I was concentrating on cross-examination of the witnesses. So Paul Zuma looked at jurors in the eye and told them "I did not kill Jennifer Skipsy. Did not burn the house." And then he told them emotions
building to a fever pitch how despite their roller coaster relationship he truly loved Jennifer. His lawyer presented a love letter in fact that she'd written to him and he broke down then flooded tears. I was so relieved and I thought you know if there was any way this jury thought this man was responsible for this. Now they know for sure that he's not because it's so obvious to me that he's telling the truth. What? Listening to all of this with his experienced
“year was prosecutor Gilliam. You must have been rather pleased when you're ready. It was”
going to testify. I think that's an understatement. I was very, very pleased. More than that. It was a gift said Gilliam and unexpected opportunity. Why? Well the prosecutor had Paul right where he wanted him for as long as he wanted him. There were hours of questions, tough questions, baiting questions, questions designed to make Paul crack and reveal what Gilliam believed to be a controlling personality at a red-hot temper. My plan was to go through
how he acted when he was angry and then asked him questions that he couldn't have no good answers for. For instance, why all those text messages are deleted and those were questions he could not answer because he had not considered those questions. After three long days in the hot seat, Paul zoom out to testimony was finally over. Had he persuaded the jurors that he was innocent? Do you feel like got a little bit chippy or arrogant on the stand? I don't think that he got
arrogant, but I think clearly he was tired and he was exasperated. He'd put it to tell his story. He was being cut off. But the jurors, once they got the case, said they were determined to look at the evidence, not just courtroom theater. Everyone was very committed to going over the evidence
and discussing each of the witnesses and each of the crucial pieces of evidence. It was really
encouraging. And it was crucial they decided to compare very carefully the different timelines claimed by the prosecution and the defense. So we analyzed the timeline for the entire day from his testimony where he said he was and then other pieces of testimony and evidence to either validate or contradict. The jury took less than 14 hours and came back with a verdict guilty. All I remember was I heard that word guilty man is just like this just this belief, this release of
tension. I was very shocked by the verdict. I think a lot of people were shocked by the verdict because I mean if you sat through the weeks and weeks of trial, it just it's inconceivable how they could get to the result that they got to. But to the jurors, the issue is about text messages and whether Paul had Jennifer's phone all afternoon. Wasn't as important as zoom on on the stand.
“That's what made the difference. Is tears for example? Sometimes I feel like I'm too cynical,”
but it was universally held opinion. I think the entire jury believed that it was a manufactured moment. What was the problem with his testimony? There were two things that struck me. One was when he broke down on a stand and to me it didn't seem genuine and the other portion of his testimony
Was when he had the opportunity to tell us where he was and what he was doing.
basically lie to us three times and we were able to prove that he lied to us by the heart evidence
“that we had with the phone records and with the video surveillance and those items and I just”
to me that hurt him very badly. If he hadn't testified, I can't say for sure but I don't
think I could have convicted him. At his sentencing an angry Paul zoom out again protested his
innocence, but he was not away for 25 to life for murder plus eight years for arson.
“Case closed? Not exactly. In 2020 a federal judge granted zoom out a new trial”
ruling that prosecutors have presented false evidence to the jury. Well zoom out's defense team provided ineffective counsel. At his retrial in 2025 Paul zoom out had a new defense team and different strategy. This time around he did not take the witness down. But the jury came to the
“same conclusion as the first one did he was found guilty again and sentenced to 30 years to life.”
After the fire that set this mystery emotion the Palo Alto cottage was repaired new love perhaps growing in there. Young people were still coming to the cafe to socialize in smoke who go and Paul gone like the romance that burned two bright before it vanished with its victim in a cloud of smoke. And I can still hear a voice and see a smile. I know she's here.
I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy and now
I'm talking to some people who look at the world that we too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges, their stories, their funny and my candy. So I hope you'll join me each week and who knows you might just come away with your own glass half full. Search glass half full with Craig Melvin from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
