Cops sift dump for body in case from '76

Jeanettes picture http://www.madison.com/images/articles/tct...25368_thumb.jpg


By Bill Novak
March 7, 2006

Madison police invited the news media to a landfill in Juneau County today to watch a cadaver-sniffing dog help solve a 29-year-old mystery.

A police spokesman said the dog is "working tirelessly," sniffing through massive mounds of garbage in the landfill near Mauston, trying to find the remains of Jeanette L. Zapata, a Madison flight instructor and mother of three who disappeared on Oct. 11, 1976.

Up to two dozen law enforcement officers wearing protective suits also sifted through the garbage piles.

"We did 18 piles yesterday and will keep going today," said Madison police spokesman Mike Hanson. "We plan to be there until Friday."

Madison police have been investigating Jeanette Zapata's disappearance since December 2004, when they reinvestigated the cold case. New leads developed when cadaver dogs found human hair in December 2004 buried in the basement of the former Zapata home on Indian Trace in Madison and again in August of 2005 when the dogs reacted to possible human remains in a Sun Prairie storage locker rented by her estranged husband, Eugene Zapata.

The police are also using backhoes to dig into the Mauston landfill.

Hanson said the Zapata case could be one of the oldest unsolved cases in Madison to be so actively pursued years later.

"It's the oldest one that's received this amount of resources," he said.

Eugene Zapata was a suspect in Jeanette Zapata's disappearance almost immediately after she vanished in 1976, but there wasn't evidence to charge him with any crime.

He moved to Henderson, Nev., with his second wife in 2001, after selling the Madison home in 1997.

At the time of her disappearance, the Zapatas were in the midst of divorce proceedings.

According to information in a search warrant issued at the time, Eugene Zapata, a former state Department of Transportation employee, offered several conflicting accounts of his activities the day his wife disappeared.

He admitted to detectives that he had argued with his wife three days before the disappearance over visitation rights. A court ordered barred Eugene Zapata from the Indian Trace home except between 9 and 11 a.m. Saturdays.

But the couple's disputes went beyond visitation, the warrant states. About a month before Jeanette Zapata vanished, her husband hired a private detective to follow her for five days "because her husband thought she was screwing around," the detective, Joseph Cerniglia, told police.

A friend of Eugene Zapata, Robert Coleman, told police that he often saw him sitting in the parking lot of the Left Guard, a bar frequented by Jeanette Zapata. After her disappearance, a search of the Indian Trace home turned up a 20-gauge shotgun, but failed to locate a 30-06 rifle that was also supposed to be at the home, the warrant stated.

Jeanette Zapata was believed to have been the only practicing female flight instructor in the Madison area, according to news accounts published at the time, and had taught her husband to fly.

Police Search Landfill for Clues in Woman's Disappearance
Police Search Landfill for Clues
Updated: 6:42 PM Mar 7, 2006
Dana Brueck


Investigators will dig deep in a Juneau County landfill all week in search of new evidence in a 30-year-old missing person case. Police call Jean Zapata's ex-husband the prime suspect in her disappearance. He now lives in Nevada.

Detectives, retired police officers and a few state patrol troopers will spend this week at a rural landfill. Madison police refuse to say -- specifically -- what kind of evidence they hope to find there, or why it's a target of the investigation. But they say the Dane County District Attorney considers the excavation -- essential.
"It's not real pleasant, but it's something that needs to be done," Det. Clare McCoy says.
McCoy is one of two dozen investigators, sifting through what a backhoe digs up.
Behind the protective suits and masks of the volunteers, is a drive to find out what happened to Jean Zapata.
"It's a large-scale operation, not commonly done. It's unprecedented for the Madison Police Department," Capt. Tom Snyder says.
Zapata disappeared nearly 30 years ago. But police say what they're looking for was likely dumped here within the past year and possibly down ten feet. A K-9 trained for detecting human remains also will cover the 60-by-100 foot area.
"I know people are focusing on human remains. There are other items that we're looking for that, we believe, if found, legitimize our purpose for being here," Capt. Snyder says.
Police say, back in December, they interviewed their prime suspect -- Zapata's ex-husband -- Eugene Zapata. He now lives in Nevada.
"We executed three search warrants in Henderson, NV, one for DNA, one for home and computer and a third for a safety deposit box located at a bank," Capt. Snyder says.
Records from those searches remain sealed, but police say, last year, cadaver-sniffing dogs hit on a former home in Madison and a Sun Prairie storage locker, rented by Eugene Zapata.
"At this point, Eugene Zapata is the only suspect in this case," Capt. Snyder says.
Juneau County records show Eugene Zapata still owns about six acres of property west of this landfill in the Town of Fountain.
"We fully realize there's a possibility that nothing of evidentiary value will be recovered, but again, this is an investigative lead and the case will continue regardless of what happens here," Capt. Snyder says.
"Everybody's very invested and emotionally involved. We wouldn't be out here if we didn't think it was important," Det. McCoy says.
Police have found nothing yet. A local reporter says it's relatively easy to come and go from the landfill unnoticed. Police say Eugene Zapata is aware of this search.

Cold case moves to Mauston
By Tim Damos Star-Times
Dane County investigators have turned to Juneau County in their search for a Madison woman reported missing thirty years ago. Law enforcement officers are searching the Juneau County landfill for evidence related to the 1976 disappearance of 36-year-old Jean Zapata.
Two months ago, authorities made details of the investigation - which was reopened in December 2004 - public during a Dec. 16 press conference.
Since then, they have allowed only certain aspects of the investigation to be made public, and have named Zapata's former husband, 67-year-old Eugene Zapata, as their one and only suspect.

Case history
On Oct. 13, 1976, Jean Zapata was reported missing by the manager of a flight school, where she was employed as a flight instructor, after she did not show up to work for several days.
Zapata was last seen by her children two days earlier as they were leaving for school in Madison. Authorities say Zapata was going through a divorce with her husband, Eugene Zapata, and had partial custody of their three children.
At the time, authorities questioned Eugene Zapata regarding the disappearance of his wife, but were unable to find any evidence linking him to any crime.
Eugene Zapata has since remarried and is currently living in Henderson, Nevada.

Case reopened
In December of 2004, after a phone call to the Madison Police Department by a childhood friend of Jean Zapata, investigators reopened the case.
Investigators later served a warrant on Zapata's former Madison residence. At that time, two cadaver sniffing dogs detected the scent of human remains below a crawl space in the basement of the home. A human hair was taken into evidence, but no results of a DNA sample have been made public.
Authorities also obtained a DNA sample of Eugene Zapata and served warrants for Zapata's home, computer and bank safety deposit box in Nevada. Those warrants are still sealed, according to Capt. Tom Snyder, of the Madison Police Department.
According to Juneau County land records, Zapata had a Certified Survey Map (CSM) done in May of 2005 on land he currently owns in Juneau County at the intersection of Highway H and Church Road north of Elroy.
In August of 2005, the Dane County Sheriff's Department served a warrant on that six-acre parcel of land. A search of the property for evidence was unsuccessful.
That warrant gives more details of the investigation.

What the warrant says
The warrant, which was made public in December of 2005, said Jean Zapata had a temporary restraining order barring her husband from their home on Indian Trace (Road) in the City of Madison.
Eugene Zapata told investigators he and his wife had a dispute three days before her disappearance. The warrant also said Zapata had hired a private investigator to "observe" his wife for five days approximately one month before her disappearance.
The investigator, Joseph Cerniglia, said he was hired, "because her husband thought she was screwing around."
Mike Hanson, of the Madison Police Department's Public Information Office, said Eugene Zapata gave conflicting accounts of what he was doing days after his wife went missing. "He said he took the day off to look after his children, but records show that the children were in school," Hanson said.
According to the warrant, a 30-6 rifle was missing from the residence after Zapata was reported missing.
Zapata sold his Madison home in 1997 and moved to another Dane County residence before moving to Nevada in 2001. Neither Hanson nor Capt. Snyder were certain if Zapata's 1997-2001 residence had been searched.

The locker
The warrant said Zapata rented a storage locker in Sun Prairie when he moved to Nevada in 2001.
On Apr. 13, police contacted Zapata's current wife asking to speak with Zapata about his former wife's disappearance.
The next day, the warrant said, Zapata turned in the key for his storage unit. A search of the locker showed that it had been cleared out, but two cadaver dogs both detected the scent of human remains in the locker, according to the warrant.
Capt. Snyder said he had information that Zapata flew back to Wisconsin to clear out the locker on Apr. 14.
Snyder would not say specifically what information lead him to Zapata's Juneau County land, or the Juneau County Landfill for that matter, but officials at the Juneau County Landfill said investigators were looking at an area of the landfill which was used for dumping in April of 2005.

Working on the landfill
Snyder said the area being worked on at the landfill was approximately 60 by 100 feet. "We believe items were put here in the last year," he said.
He said workers are using machinery to dig up a large portion of waste. Then, about two dozen volunteers dressed in protective suits use rakes to place the waste in a line so that cadaver dogs detect the possible scent of remains. Then, he said, that waste is set aside and the process is repeated.
Snyder said the dogs have made several hits since they started digging on Monday morning, but wouldn't say what evidence had been collected.
According to Snyder, the Madison Police Department will be paying for the restoration of the landfill.

Eugene Zapata
Snyder said Zapata is not currently under any type of surveillance. However, he said, "Eugene Zapata is aware of this investigation."
Zapata has reportedly denied any involvement in his wife's disappearance.
According to Snyder, investigators will be working at the landfill until the end of this week. "The case is certainly not over by any means and the investigation will continue even if nothing is found here," he said.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/z/zapata_jeanette.html

Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: October 11, 1976 from Madison, Wisconsin
Classification: Endangered Missing
Age: 36 years old
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Jeanette's nickname is Jean.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A striped top and blue corduroy pants.


Details of Disappearance

Jeanette was last seen at her home in the 5700 block of Indian Trace in east Madison, Wisconsin on October 11, 1976. She saw her three children off to school that day and vanished sometime afterwards. A coworker reported her missing two days later. She left behind her purse, money, new car, coat and other clothing; only a .30-06 rifle was missing from the home. Her employer reported her missing. Jeanette's loved ones stated it is uncharacteristic of her to leave without warning or to abandon her children.
Jeanette was in the process of a divorce from her husband, Eugene "Gene" Zapata, at the time of her disappearance, and she was seeing another man. A photograph of Eugene is posted below this case summary. He had hired a private detective to follow her a month before she disappeared. She had a restraining order against him; he was only allowed in her house for two hours every Saturday. Eugene admitted to arguing with Jeanette about visitations with the children, he did not work for two days after Jeanette vanished and he gave conflicting statements as to where he was during that time. In 2004, police searched the home the couple had shared, and cadaver dogs detected the scent of human remains in the crawl space, and found some human hair, but no other evidence.

In 2005, investigators called Eugene, who had remarried and moved to Nevada in 1997, and questioned him. The following day, Eugene cleared out a storage locker which he had rented in 2001. Police searched the locker with cadaver dogs a short time later. The dogs again detected the scent of human remains, and they also indicated the presence of human remains in the attic and crawl space of the Zapata residence, and in a vehicle Eugene rented during a visit to Wisconsin in 2004. During his trip to Wisconsin, he purchased trash bags and cleaning supplies and visited the Juneau County Solid Waste Landfill; records indicate he dropped off items weighing 60 pounds. A search of the landfill turned up no clues, but the cadaver dogs again indicated the odor of human decomposition.

In August 2006, Eugene was charged with first-degree murder in connection with Jeanette's presumed death. Authorities stated most of their evidence was circumstantial and they have not recovered Jeanette's body, but they believe they can prove her husband stalked and murdered her. Eugene maintains his innocence in Jeanette's case and his lawyers stated the evidence against him is weak. He is awaiting trial.

Jeanette was employed as a flight instructor at the Frickelton School of Aeronautics in Truax Field, Wisconsin in 1976. She got her pilot's license in 1954 at age sixteen; she was the youngest person in the state to get a pilot's license and was possibly the only female flight instructor in the area in 1976. Foul play is suspected in her case due to the circumstances involved.



Above: Eugene Zapata in 1975


Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Madison Area Crimestoppers
608-266-6014

Cold case arrest is a sign of hope
A Wisconsin State Journal editorial
Eugene Zapata's arrest 30 years after his first wife's mysterious disappearance from Madison is remarkable.
It shows that law enforcement never quits probing hard-to-solve cases. It also shows why the charge of murder has no statue of limitations.

It took three decades for a break and arrest in the disappearance of Jeanette Zapata. And the dramatic event could move the victim and her loved ones closer to justice.

Jeanette Zapata's late mother Ruth Kuehn will never get to know what really happened. But other family members may finally find out why the 36-year- old mother of three vanished.





Eugene Zapata was charged with first-degree murder in Dane County on Monday. The couple was in the midst of a divorce when Jeanette Zapata disappeared in 1976, and he gave conflicting accounts of his activities that day, according to a criminal complaint.

Authorities still must prove their case. But this first break in decades carries hope for the families of other cold-cases victims who wait for answers

Cold Case Leads to Western Wisconsin


Through police dogs and phone records, a murder case from 1976 that started in Madison has stretched to Western Wisconsin. The case centers on what happened to Jeanette Zapata, who disappeared in October of 1976. Her husband, Eugene Zapata, was charged Monday with first degree murder in Jean's presumed death. In 2004, the investigation rekindled.

"At the time she was going through a divorce proceeding, she was going through child custody issues with her estranged husband Gene Zapata and she indicated she was frightened of him," says Madison Police Department Captain Tom Snyder.

After cooking breakfast for her three children and sending them to school that October morning, Jean disappeared. No body was found and Eugene began a new life out west.

By January 2005, Eugene Zapata, now living outside Las Vegas, caught wind that the case was re-opened and police were looking for him. A cadaver dog named Cleo went through homes the Zapatas used to own in Madison. Cleo detected the odor of human decomposition in the basements of two homes. A third Madison home was also examined. Cleo detected more odor, but, again, no remains.

In April of last year, Zapata returned to Wisconsin. Police discovered he rented a Toyota Corolla in Minneapolis and drove to Onalaska to stay with friends. Days later, records say he headed to Madison and purchased cleaning supplies, a drop cloth, trash bags and an odor respirator at a Wal-mart. A storage locker that Zapata rented in Sun Prairie, just northeast of Madison, soon revealed more clues.

Captain Snyder says," We knew that his storage locker in Sun Prairie had been cleaned out, dumped out the contents and we knew that canines indicated the presence of decomposing or decomposed human flesh at that storage locker."

On April 13, Zapata called the Juneau County solid waste landfill, near Mauston, close to where he also owned land. The next day, Zapata called Madison police, from Onalaska, and told police he had a family emergency requiring him to go home immediately. Police learned in September that Zapata visited the Juneau County landfill, where records state he dropped off items weighing about 60 pounds. The same dog, Cleo, found the odor of human remains in the trunk of the rented Toyota.

Madison police say while there's no "smoking gun" in the case, all of the pieces are adding up to probable cause. Zapata is awaiting extradition to Wisconsin.


http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/3767577.html

POSTED: 11:23 pm CST February 27, 2006
UPDATED: 11:41 pm CST February 27, 2006

MADISON, Wis. -- A 30-year-old disappearance case has now turned into
a homicide investigation.

Authorities call it the ultimate cold case.

Jean Zapata, 36, disappeared without a trace in 1976.

She sent her three young children off to school and was never seen or
heard from again.

"She would not abandon those children and go wandering off," said
Zapata's friend Peg Weekley.

Weekley, a longtime friend of Zapata's, who now lives in Oklahoma,
recently convinced some new detectives to take a second look at the
case.

"I thought the children deserved to know the truth of what happened
to her if at all possible," said Weekley.

Now Zapata's children may finally get some closure, though not the
kind anyone had hoped for.

"I believe she was murdered," said Capt. Tom Snyder.

The case was once labeled a disappearance, but is now a homicide
investigation and Zapata's former husband, Eugene, is the one and
only suspect.

"She was in the midst of a messy divorce with her husband Eugene
Zapata at the time," said Snyder. "There was a restraining order
against him. They were going through a custody battle regarding their
children."

It was Jean's boss who first reported her missing, two days after she
failed to report to work as Madison's only female flight instructor.

Eugene was then caring for the children.

At the time, police searched the home and found Jean's purse, coat,
clothes and new car as well as other red flags.

Eugene became a suspect back then, too after giving police
conflicting alibis about the day she disappeared.

Investigators learned the former state transportation worker also
argued with his wife about visitation rights a few days before she
disappeared and had hired a private detective to follow her a month
before that.

"Until she told me why she was divorcing him, I didn't realize that
he wasn't the man I thought he was," said Weekley."

Weekley told News 3 that Jean had confided in her that Eugene had
secretly put semi-nude pictures of her in swinger magazines.

Zapata accidentally found out when a call from the postmaster led her
to a secret post office box and ultimately her own face.

"And there were these swinger magazines and she opened one up and
there was a picture of her scantily clad that he had taken," said
Weekley."

Eugene Zapata, 68, now lives with his second wife in Henderson, Nev.

News 3 found that is where Madison detectives executed search
warrants in December.

The search warrants covered Eugene's house, computer, a bank safe
deposit box and a sample of his DNA.

"We are very hopeful that there will be a prosecution in this case,
hopefully in the near future," said Snyder.

Snyder said he believes it will happen despite the lack of a body.

Officers used two trained cadaver dogs to sniff out some new evidence
in the case.

Inside the former Zapata home, police say the dogs were able to
detect human remains.

"In a crawl space in the basement two independent searches by cadaver
dogs found or indicated the presence of decomposing or decomposed
human remains," said Snyder.

Authorities also say cadaver dogs also detected human remains inside
and outside a Sun Prairie storage locker rented by Eugene Zapata from
2001 until last April.

He cleaned it out one day after police contacted him asking about
Zapata's disappearance.

So far, the new police investigation has yet to produce charges or
even prove Zapata is dead.

News 3 spoke with two of Zapata's children who say they have now
accepted that.

Zapata's youngest daughter told News 3, "Although it is a gift to
know my mother didn't abandon my brother, sister and me, it is
devastating to now know that she has been dead all these years. My
greatest hope is to recover her remains for a long-overdue memorial
service. I need to honor her memory and grieve her loss, again."

News 3 talked to Eugene Zapata who denied all allegations that he was
ever involved in Jean's disappearance. He said he is not at liberty
to discuss the case on the advice of his Madison attorney, Stephen
Hurely.

Hurely did not return calls or e-mails from WISC-TV.

Copyright 2006 by Channel 3000. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.channel3000.com/news/7525919/detail.html

http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/...opic=2302&st=0&

Jean Zapatas slide show
http://www.channel3000.com/slideshow/news/...261/detail.html

Body not needed for conviction
By ED TRELEVEN
608-252-6134
etreleven@madison.com
To convict a person of murder, conventional wisdom says, you first have to have a body.

That 's one way to read a jury last week that was unable to reach a unanimous verdict, resulting in a mistrial for Eugene Zapata, who was accused of killing his wife, Jeanette, 30 years ago and disposing of her body without a trace. Prosecutors are still deciding whether to retry Zapata.

But as decades of such "bodyless " murder trials have shown -- including two previous cases in Dane County -- that conventional wisdom doesn 't always hold up.


• Zapata's son believes father is innocent
• Zapata's 'stalking diary'
• Mistrial declared
• Zapata had sexual fantasies
• Jury won't hear about cadaver dogs


In 1989, Dane County prosecutors attempting the first bodyless murder trial in Wisconsin charged Stoughton businessman Gary Homberg with killing his wife, Ruth, in 1983. No trace of her was ever found, but a jury found Homberg guilty after just five hours of deliberation.

"It was uncharted land, and when you do something like that it 's always a little scary, " said retired Assistant District Attorney John Burr, who prosecuted the Homberg case with colleague Judy Schwaemle.

About 12 years later, prosecutors convinced a jury that Daniel Kutz, of rural Poynette, killed his wife, Beth, and hid or disposed of her body. She disappeared in July 2000 after leaving work in DeForest and was never seen again.

"In Kutz, you had a bunch of very small children and the notion that she would up and leave those kids was insane, " recalled assistant state public defender Dennis Burke, one of Kutz 's attorneys during his three-week trial. "Nobody would believe that. The jury obviously didn 't believe that. "

Missing wives

In each of these three cases, the women who vanished have been wives whose marriages were on the rocks.

But elsewhere, cases have involved a wider variety of circumstances, from mob hits to a Manson Family acquaintance who apparently knew too much.

Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University in New York City, compiled a list of such cases dating to 1895 while working as a law clerk for a federal appeals court judge in 1990.

"I found that it 's a really crazy subject to research, " Denno said. "The cases do vary. In the cases I looked at there was a real range of relationships, where some of the people were strangers and some of the Manson people were getting rid of the people they would encounter. "

The Manson case involved the August 1969 disappearance of Donald "Shorty " Shea, a ranch hand at the Spahn Movie Ranch, a crumbling southern California film set used by the Manson Family as its headquarters.

Charles Manson and Steve "Clem " Grogan were convicted of killing Shea, even though his body was not found until years later, when Grogan led authorities to his burial spot in 1979.

'Corpus delicti'

Another infamous and often-cited California case involved paint store clerk L. Ewing Scott, whose wealthy wife, Evelyn, vanished from their Bel Air home in May 1955. He told friends she had gone to a sanitarium for treatment. Police began looking for her 10 months later. Their investigation found he had raided her bank accounts using forged signatures and freely spent her money.

Scott was convicted of murder in 1959 and sentenced to life in prison, even though his wife 's body has never been found.

The case for which Denno was doing research involved Raphello Harris, who was convicted in U.S. District Court of the Virgin Islands for the 1989 murder of his former wife, whose body was never found. Harris appealed his conviction to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Among the three-judge panel deciding the case was future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

The court said that consistent with prior cases, "neither the body of the missing person nor evidence of the method used to produce death is required to establish the corpus delicti or to sustain a murder conviction. "

The term "corpus delicti, " Latin for "the body of the crime, " doesn 't necessarily mean the body of the victim. Rather, the court said, it refers to "the body or substance of the crime charged. " To establish that, it wrote, the government need only prove a crime has been committed.

Establish plausibility

Burr said that when his office ventured into uncharted waters in the Homberg case, he and Schwaemle sought advice from prosecutors in Michigan who had experience in bodyless homicide cases.

"We needed all the help we could get, " Burr said. "They certainly had suggestions on what you ought to try and do. "

In most cases, they learned, the task involves first establishing for the jury that someone is dead, then proving that the defendant in the case is the person with the most plausible motive and best opportunity to kill.

Burr said that 's what he and Schwaemle did in the Homberg case.

"We started out telling the jury she 's dead and here 's why, " he said. Running down a list of sources that were later used in both the Kutz and Zapata cases, Burr said investigators checked driver 's license records, passport records, credit cards, bank accounts, Social Security activity, mental health history and family relationships.

"You establish that this is not a person who would choose to disappear, " Burr said.

Investigators also found that Ruth Homberg, who was very particular about her hair, had taken neither of two hair dryers she would have taken if she had left willingly. They also tracked down jewelry Gary Homberg said was missing and found he had taken it to a jeweler, had it altered and gave it to a girlfriend.

The prosecution 's theory was that Ruth Homberg learned of an affair her husband was having with her son 's wife and, because of the infidelity, was going to blow the whistle on her husband 's embezzlement from the company where he worked in Stoughton.

Reasonable doubt

Burr said the lessons learned from the Homberg case were passed on to Assistant District Attorney Robert Kaiser when Kaiser and Lyn Opelt prosecuted Kutz in 2001.

Burke, who represented both Homberg and Kutz at their trials, said it can be difficult to challenge testimony about a person 's disappearance by those who lived their daily routines with them. But the fact that no body has been found is a "huge problem " for prosecutors.

"The jury is left wondering, and juries that are left wondering about things are unlikely to convict, " Burke said. A reasonable doubt is something that leaves you pausing or hesitating and it 's very difficult without a body not to have some hesitation about what went on. "

But according to Gordon Olson, the presiding juror in the Zapata case, he and his fellow jurors never discussed the lack of a body during its four days of deliberations.

"One of the first things we discussed was whether or not we agreed that Jeanette Zapata was dead, " Olson said. "We all quickly agreed that she was most likely dead and died probably on Oct. 11, 1976. "

At the time of her disappearance, Jeanette Zapata was becoming a successful flight instructor, her income was increasing, she was planning to divorce her husband and she likely would get custody of her children.

"There was no reason for her to leave at that point, because she had a plan for becoming financially independent of Eugene and divorce him, so things were going her way, " he said.Although nobody expressed a problem with the fact that her body had not been found, Olson said the jury deadlocked at 10 votes for guilty, one for not guilty and one undecided.

Burke said it 's a "tough sell " to convince an entire jury that someone who disappeared was murdered when a body has never been found.

But he said Kaiser, who also prosecuted Zapata, is a dogged, determined and capable prosecutor who raised tough points in his closing argument. Zapata was represented by Stephen Hurley and Dean Strang, who argued there was no direct evidence tying their client to his wife 's disappearance.

"People close to this case thought that it would be easy for the defense, " Burke said. "Having been through this twice, I knew it wouldn 't be easy. It was never a slam dunk for the defense, by any means. I always thought it would be close. And obviously it was incredibly close. "


Bodyless murder cases from Wisconsin or that have Wisconsin ties

2000: Beth Kutz disappeared from her rural Poynette home. Her estranged husband, Daniel Kutz, was convicted of murder in 2001.

1999: Chimene Ellena, of Springfield, Ill., disappeared. Her boyfriend, Daniel Gilbert, was convicted in Illinois of murder later that year. Her body was found near Janesville in October 2000.

1994: Darlene Oelerich, of Black Wolf, was bludgeoned to death by her husband, Gerald Oelerich, who dumped her body into Lake Winnebago. Her torso was found in the lake in July 1998.

1994: Terrence Runte, a Wisconsin native and screenwriter, disappeared in Jamaica. Elvis Martin of Kingston, Jamaica, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.

1983: Ruth Homberg of Stoughton vanished. Her husband, Gary Homberg, was found guilty of first-degree murder in 1989.

1981: Yvonne Rickman of Green Bay disappeared while on a shopping trip to Appleton with her husband, Ronald Rickman. He was convicted of her murder in 1991.

http://www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/inde...=247380&ntpid=1

Capitol Times 1976

Mike Miller
February 18, 2008

Former state worker Eugene Zapata has confessed to strangling his
wife more than 31 years ago, dumping her body in a wooded area near
Madison and eventually moving it to the Juneau County Landfill after
detectives reopened an investigation into the case.

While there has been no sign of Jeanette Zapata, 36, since she
disappeared on Oct. 11, 1976, her many family and friends in the
Madison area now know for certain that her husband Eugene killed her
and how he disposed of her body.

It is little consolation for those who wondered for more than three
decades what became of the vivacious flight instructor from
Frickleton Aviation in Madison, who was never seen again after
sending her three children off to school that day.

Today, Zapata entered a plea admitted to killing his wife and said he
did so when he snapped during an argument as the two were going
through a messy divorce. As part of a plea bargain prosecutors
eventually reached with Zapata, 69, they read a statement he gave to
detectives in which he admitted to the killing and told how he
disposed of his wife's body.

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/273077

Zapata Daughter To Honor Mother At Memorial
Eugene Zapata Admitted To Killing Wife

UPDATED: 8:03 pm CDT April 11, 2008


MADISON, Wis. -- A local woman is finally able to hold a memorial for her mother more than three decades after she disappeared and about two months after her father admitted he killed his then-wife.

VIDEO: Watch The Report

The life of Madison mother of three and flight instructor Jeanette Zapata will be honored at a church service Saturday morning. But it's only one way her memory will live on.

That's because her youngest daughter, Linda Zapata, a Cottage Grove nurse, told WISC-TV that she and some Madison police officers are starting up a Web site named after her mother.

The Jean Foundation will help other families in the U.S. who also have missing loved ones, a journey that for Linda Zapata has pretty much come full circle.

In her first interview since the sentencing of her father for her mother's death, Linda Zapata told WISC-TV that, "The last 30 years were the worst. Those were so painful."

Linda was 11 years old when she and her older brother and sister were supposedly abandoned by their mother. At least that is what their father told them. But more 30 years and one confession later, it's now clear that was not the case.

The truth came out mid February when Jean Zapata's husband back in 1976, Eugene, finally admitted that he bludgeoned and strangled her, then hid her body for decades before dumping it in a landfill.

His detailed confession was shared with Linda Zapata.

"It was like, OK, you know. I'm going to listen to this and I'm going to listen to every word he says no matter how gruesome and horrible it is because I'm going to be there for her that morning when he did that," Linda Zapata said.

For Linda Zapata, the reopened cold case has been a surreal journey, from the search for human remains at a landfill to her father being charged and ultimately confessing. But Linda Zapata said that now at least there is some closure, in the form of an official obituary and religious memorial service.

Thirty-two years after Jean Zapata died, her life and accomplishments will be remembered Saturday by long lost friends and family.

Linda Zapata said she has been bombarded with phone calls and e-mails from long-lost relatives, who are now part of an extended family she never knew she had.

"It's a joy to be able to get everybody together for the memorial service and give her the respect she was due," Linda Zapata said.

And Jean Zapata's memory won't fade away after the service because of The Jean Foundation Web site. In the murdered mother's memory, it will provide funding and expertise so other law enforcement agencies can help other families caught in the same turmoil.

"There's definitely a population out there in the United States that are truly suffering from their missing loved ones, and every time human remains are found those families hold their breath. We just really want to take Jeanette's story and maybe curtail some of the pains and help someone else," said Caren Corcoran, one of the Madison police officers spearheading the effort to get the Web site running.

Corcoran's cadaver dogs played a key role in charging Eugene Zapata. She, the lead detective, and Linda Zapata said they hope to develop a clearinghouse of cold case help on the yet-to-be formulated Web site to help other cities can solve their missing person cases, too.

Those who are interested in helping develop the Web site, have a special expertise to contribute or would just like to make a donation that would go towards searches and other expenses, organizers said you can send mail and memorials to The Jean Foundation, PO Box 68, Cottage Grove, WI, 53527.

The memorial mass will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Monona.

http://www.channel3000.com/news/15861841/detail.html

Into Thin Air
Can Detectives Solve The 30-Year Mystery Of A Missing Mom?
Oct. 18, 2008

Eugene and Jean Zapata (Wisconsin State Journal)

More From ADA Bob Kaiser
Assistant District Attorney Bob Kaiser talks more about Jeanette Zapata's disappearance, and the case against her former husband Eugene. | Share/Embed

48 Hours Mystery
The Jean Foundation

(CBS) When Jean Zapata vanished from her home in Madison, Wis., in 1976, she left behind her daughter Linda, two other children, a lot of friends, and a mystery that would take more than 30 years to solve.

"I spent my whole life from age 11 just telling people when they asked, 'My mom abandoned me,'" Linda remembers.

She only knew what her father had told her when on the day her mother disappeared. "At age 11, when my dad said she took off because she was stressed out, it was cemented in my head. She took off and she's raising another family somewhere."

Had Jean really taken off and left her family and friends behind? As Richard Schlesinger reports, a set of new detectives would take a fresh look at the case decades later, and try to solve the question everyone wanted to know: what really happened to Jean Zapata?

Jean's best friend, Peggy Weekly, never believed that Jean would simply abandon her family. "Because she could not have walked out on her children because of the way she was raised. It was just too deeply ingrained in her to take care of those kids, to be a mom," Peggy says.

A lifetime of nagging questions and haunting memories would bring Peggy and Jean's daughter Linda together. Neither could have predicted it, but digging for the truth would involve terrible choices and betrayal.

It all started in Madison in the early 1950's, when Peggy and Jean first became best friends. Peggy was with her best friend for all the good times, including when Jean married a promising engineer, Eugene Zapata. They had three children: Christine, Steve and Linda.

Eugene went to work for the Department of Transportation, but Jean was no stay-at-home mom: once the kids were in school, she returned to her other love, flying, and became one of the few female flight instructors of her day.

But at home, not all was well. According to Peggy, Jean was happy in her marriage with Eugene for the first half of their time together. It became one of those marriages where behind closed doors, there was trouble.

"She told me that they were having problems in the bedroom, but she didn’t go into any detail at all. She seemed to think that he had a lot more testosterone before she said 'I do.' But we didn't talk about that a lot. After all, we were nice girls. And nice girls didn’t have problems with their marriage," Peggy says.

Jean wanted to keep the spark alive, even if it meant agreeing to do things nice girls didn't always do. But no matter what she did, nothing worked. In May 1976, about 17 years after they married, Jean filed for divorce.

Eugene moved out of the house and Jean began to explore life as a newly single woman. Before long, she met Paul Lee, and they had an instant connection. Jean and Paul talked every day, but the relationship didn't last long.

On Monday, Oct. 11, 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."

Linda never saw her mother again.

Ivan Norton worked with Jean at her flight school, and was surprised when she did not show up to teach a student pilot that day.

At the house where Jean and the kids lived, Eugene was already explaining to his children where their mother was. "I asked, 'Where's Mom?' And he said, 'She probably needs a break or a vacation. And she'll probably be home in a couple weeks,'" Linda remembers.

When Jean didn't show up for work after three days, Ivan called the police and then called Eugene. "I says, 'Well, hey, have you turned in her missing to the police?' 'No, I haven't done it.' And I said, 'Well, you don't have to. I did,'" Ivan recalls.

A week after Jean went missing, Police Officer Greg Martin showed up at the Zapata house. He was just trying out for the detective squad, so he was assigned what had been classified as just a routine missing person case. "I went in and I noticed there was no damage, no evidence of a fight, no evidence of a struggle or anything that we could see. The first thing I noticed that was totally out of order was that her purse was there," he remembers. "A woman goes nowhere without her purse."

Officially, Jean was classified as a missing person by the Madison, Wis. police department. But Officer Martin noticed something strange about Eugene's behavior following the disappearance of his estranged wife. "He was like a blank sheet of paper. I mean there was nothing on him to read and that bothered me," he remembers.

Martin says he asked Eugene to take a lie detector test, and he agreed. "The test was inconclusive," Martin says. "In other words, they were not able to establish a pattern on him that you could say he did lie or he didn't lie."

And that proved nothing. The following day, Martin says he was met at Eugene's front door by his lawyer, who said, "No more questions. We are done."

Martin's hunch about Eugene remained just that - a hunch. His only other possible suspect, Jean's boyfriend Paul Lee, took and passed a lie detector test and was cleared of any suspicion.

But Martin was learning some things about the Zapatas' marriage, which added to his suspicions. "Eugene had placed an ad for her in a swingers type magazine," he explains.

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," Peggy says.

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," Peggy says.

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.

Eugene moved out, but he didn't move on. The divorce was bitter, and he seemed obsessed with Jean. "In today’s terms I would say she was describing stalking behavior. He would come to the house on the pretext of seeing the children and he would go through her underwear drawer and her possessions. And she found it very disturbing," Webb says.

The restraining order limited Eugene's visitation rights with the children to 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Saturdays. That's the only time he was permitted to be at the house.

On the Monday morning that she disappeared, Jean telephoned her attorney at about 8:15 a.m. and left a message. When Webb returned the call about an hour later, it was Eugene who answered. "Which was surprising because he was not supposed to be in the house," Webb points out.

Asked what she said to Eugene, Webb says, "Well, I said, 'I'm returning Jeanette's call.' And, he said, 'Well, I don't know where she is.' Her car is still here.' I think he said her purse was still on the table, and I didn't suspect any foul play… So, I just said, 'Well, I returned her call. Let her know when you see her.'"

Webb told police all that at the time, but there was no physical evidence of foul play.

And after just three weeks, the case went cold. Eugene moved back into the house, and for Linda, it was as if her mother had simply never existed. "It's really odd, but somehow, no one talked about it. No one brought her up. I don't think I used the word 'Mom' until I was in my late teens, early 20s. I don't know why," she says. "Back then it was so taboo. And no one told me not to talk about it, but the three of us kids, I think we all just shut down. For me, there was this enormous uncomfortable elephant in the middle of the room. And no one talked about it."

Two years after Jean disappeared, Eugene married his current wife Joan. Linda now had a stepmother, but she still waited and hoped her own mom would return.

Years and decades passed, and the Zapata children grew up and moved out.

Peggy moved away from Madison, but she never forgot about her best friend.

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 Department to see if they had a Cold Case Squad.

They didn't, but the case landed on the desk of Det. Marianne Flynn Statz. Asked what she thought when she read the case, Statz says, "I immediately was struck that more could probably be done with the case.

The detective didn't believe Jean had simply run away, as her husband had claimed for the last 28 years. Statz contacted every agency she could think of inquiring about Jean: had she used her Social Security number or tried to renew her pilot's license or get a passport? They even tried Interpol.

After a fairly exhaustive search, Statz concluded Jean was most likely dead.

The detective 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.

"And we went into another room. And I explained who I was and that the investigation into her mother’s disappearance was reopened," Statz remembers.

"And 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?'" Linda remembers. "It just came out. And I said 'I don't know why I asked that.'"

Statz knew when she started investigating Jean's disappearance that Linda might have to face a horrifying possibility. "What's worse? My father killed my mother? Or my mother abandoned me," Statz asks.

Ever since Jean vanished when Linda was just 11, she not only believed she had been abandoned by her mother, she also believed she was to blame. "I overheard my brother and sister saying it was my fault she left because I was a brat. And I'm sure I was, 10, 11-years-old," she remembers.

Some 30 years later, Statz was convinced that Jean had been killed, but there was no body and no hard evidence. "It's one thing to believe something. It's another thing to solve something. And it's a completely different thing to charge it and be able to prove it in a court of law."

Early on in her investigation Statz went to the house where the Zapatas lived. There, she discovered a crawl space in the basement. It had not been mentioned in the original police reports in 1976. So Statz enlisted the help of some specially trained colleagues who can detect even the faintest scent of human remains.

Madison Police Officer Carren Corcoran has trained and handled cadaver dogs for the last ten years.

"It's hard to imagine that a dog can detect something from 30 years in a basement. How is that possible?" Schlesinger asks.

"I think that an entire body decomposing, possibly early on and in a space like the crawlspace, which was really [a] primo environment to contain scent. There's no wind. There's no rain. The temperature stays about the same all the time," Corcoran explains.

On Jan. 6, 2005, Statz, Corcoran and Cleo the cadaver dog went to work in the crawlspace. "Right away she started really working and working, and working the area of both outside the crawlspace, and into the crawlspace. And then she eventually provided a formal indication, which is a bark for Cleo," Corcoran remembers.

Then, a second dog reacted the same way. Police started excavating the crawlspace.

"We found some hairs. We collected bug carcasses and a Burger King cup. We found things. But we did not find anything that we could tie to Jeanette Zapata," Statz says.

Even though the search didn't turn up any useful evidence, Linda was pretty sure they 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," she says.

Linda's 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.

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. Linda immediately called Detective Statz.

Statz says she was concerned Eugene might tamper with evidence, namely, Jean's remains.

Eugene managed to avoid the detective and flew back to Nevada. Two months later, Statz paid a surprise visit to his house, but it was clear that Eugene was not going to admit to anything.

The detective returned home without a 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 a storage locker just outside Madison. She also discovered he had visited a landfill about 80 miles from that locker, but not before he had gone on a shopping trip to Wal-Mart.

"I call the Wal-Mart and I get faxed the receipt. And at that point, it became so very clear to me, you know, what he was actually doing," Statz says.

Here's what Eugene 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.

Statz says it looked to her like supplies he would need if he was disposing of a body.

Statz looked into the history of the storage locker. Eugene rented it in 2001, just before he moved to Nevada, and had moved everything out of it on his last trip to Wisconsin in April 2005.

Statz says nobody had rented it since he had vacated it on April 14.

Officer Corcoran and the cadaver dogs were brought in again. This time they smelled something at the storage locker and in the car Zapata had rented. "I strongly believed that Jean's remains had been in the storage locker since 2001 when he rented it. And that on April 14th, when he moved out, that he took her to the landfill in the trunk of the car," Statz says.

Finding Jean's remains in the large landfill would be next to impossible. But the police were close enough to cracking this case that they thought maybe Eugene would finally confess, if not to them, then maybe to his daughter. They needed Linda's help again. And this time she'd have to make the most difficult decision of her life.

"A hundred times a day torn back and forth. How can I betray one or not betray the other? How could I do that to my dad? What kind of daughter am I? You know? But then my mom, she has no one else to speak for her," Linda explains.

Nine long months after the case was re-opened, there was still no sign of Jean, and still no evidence to tie her ex-husband Eugene to any crime.

It would take some new piece of evidence, something big, to make this case. And Det. Statz had an idea that would be, to say the least, one tough sell. "I asked Linda if she would place a phone call to her father and talk to him about her mother's disappearance," the detective says.

"I mean what kind of daughter is gonna 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?" Linda recalls.

In August 2005, almost 30 years after her mother went missing, Linda agreed to make two calls to her father, and let the police tape everything. In the recorded call to her father Linda asks, "Just between you and me, can you at least tell me if - do you think she’s alive?"

"Well, first of all. I didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance or anything - but after all these years, you gotta think that no, she’s not," Eugene replied.

It took a while, but Linda worked herself up to making an awkward, and painful accusation. "I don’t know. I guess my gut is that you did it. Which…," she said.

"Wow, that’s pretty powerful," her father replied.

"I know it is, but I still love you and nothing’s changed between me and you," Linda said.

The phone calls helped, but Statz needed more. So she went back to Nevada, where Eugene 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,'" And despite the instructions, Statz explains, "We couldn't read 'em quickly enough. What they included were 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."

Eugene's detailed notes were the evidence prosecutor Bob Kaiser had been hoping for. In a written statement sent to 48 Hours, Eugene says he was just building a case to help him win custody of his children.

But 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? Yes. That's what he was doing. Breaking into her house, looking through everything in the house," Kaiser says.

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 Jean’s remains in that huge landfill Eugene had 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. And 30 years after the case began, Kaiser ordered police to arrest Eugene Zapata.

Linda's father was charged with killing her mother, and on Sept. 4, 2007, Eugene went on trial for first-degree murder.

Once again Linda would play a major role in the case against her father. She became the first witness for the prosecution. Asked what was going through her mind as she was on the witness stand, Linda says, "Mainly, although I never regret for a second doing it, I felt bad."

The judge ruled testimony about what the dogs found was unreliable and threw it out. So prosecutors had to rely on evidence of Eugene's movements, and those notes he tried so hard to conceal.

Eugene's one big mistake, argues the prosecution, was answering the phone on the morning of Oct. 11, 1976, a morning he was barred by court order from being at the house.

It takes the defense less than one hour to present their case. They argued that the prosecution failed to connect Eugene to any crime.

"But you will not leave with proof, and certainly not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I ask you to find Eugene Zapata not guilty," defense attorney Steve Hurley said in closing arguments.

Eugene never talked in court, and never talked to 48 Hours.

"We had come so far from nothing. We were asking a lot of a jury to convict without a body and convict without DNA," Statz says.

But anyone looking for answers to this 30 year-old mystery would have to keep looking. Because behind closed doors, the jurors argued and debated, but even after four days they could not decide what happened to Jean, no matter how hard they tried. They left the judge no choice: he declared a hung jury.

On Sept. 17, 2007, Eugene walked out of court a free man. But the father of three who kept silent during his trial was about to stun everyone.

After three decades, two investigations and one trial, Eugene is about to break his silence and tell a chilling story.

"I felt he had gotten away with it for 30 years. But I don't like a guy to get away with a crime for 30 minutes," Kaiser says.

The prosecutor was ready to go back to court to try Eugene again. And that's when Eugene suddenly announced he was willing to plead guilty.

Eugene was ready to finally answer the 30-year-old question: what happened to his wife? But he'd only give that answer if prosecutors would reduce the charge from murder to reckless homicide.

The district attorney thought that Eugene's daughter Linda should be the one to decide whether they should accept his plea, or start all over again in court. "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,'" Linda says.

The deal was done. Eugene, who had lied to all his children, broke his silence, and told his story to Statz.

Eugene told Statz that he had gone over to the house, and that shortly thereafter, an argument broke out. It turned violent in the kitchen, he said, when he grabbed a paperweight and hit Jean in the back of the head.

Statz says Jean lay on the ground still alive; the detective says Eugene then strangled 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, like a tent cord, and wrapped that around her neck to make sure that she was dead."

According to Eugene’s statement, he cleaned up the kitchen and began a grisly 30 year odyssey with Jean’s body, burying it, exhuming it, and re-burying it. He claims his wife was never in the crawlspace. 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 the 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.

Asked what it was like seeing that confession, Linda says, "I just still 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 comin' out. This is what happened. And it was big, almost a relief."

Eugene Zapata returned to court once more, this time to face his sentence and to face his daughter. Linda directly speaks to her father,” Dad, although I don’t condone what you did to mom, I do forgive you and I love you.”

Zapata said nothing. He was sentenced to five years for reckless homicide - all the judge could give him. And under the sentencing laws of 1976, when the crime was committed, Eugene will have to be released after only three years in prison.

Kaiser says justice was done. "Because we know what happened. In this case, on these facts, that was justice."

In that written statement he sent to sent 48 Hours, Eugene says the real reason he took the plea was to avoid the expense and embarrassment of a second trial. In fact, in spite of his plea his wife and two other children continue to believe he's innocent. But Linda however believes the truth is finally out.

"I have a huge weight off my shoulders. Huge," she says. "You know it's such a corny line but the truth, you know, the truth will set you free. It's true. At least for me."

Linda now knows her mother didn't abandon her and she could begin mourning. On April 12 2008, she held a memorial service in the same church where Jean had once been a member.

The police and prosecutor who worked so hard to make sure Jean was not forgotten, also gathered to honor the memory of a woman they never knew.

"You know, there's sadness, but I just had a smile on my face a lot of the time during the service, 'cause 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," Linda says.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Linda has been cut off from her immediate family. Her father, brother and sister no longer speak to her.




http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/16/...in4526029.shtml