Into Thin Air.....48 Hours Mystery

I watched a very interesting 48 Hours Mystery over the weekend. What I saw, reminded me of the way that Jennifer vanished. The following is a recap of the show.

Jean Zapata vanished from her home in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1976. She left behind 3 children, friends and a mystery that would take over 30 yrs. to solve.

Her daughter, Linda, remembers that she spent her whole life from age 11 just telling people that her mother had abandoned her, when they would ask about Jean. She only knew what her father had told her on the day that her mother had 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."

But, had Jean really just taken off and left her family and friends behind?

Jean's best friend, Peggy Weekly, never believed that Jean would simply abandon her family. Peggy said that because of the way that Jean had been raised, she would never have walked out on her children. It was just too deeply ingrained into Jean to take care of her kids and be a mom.

It all started in Madison in the early 1950's, when Peggy and Jean became best friends. Peggy was with her best friend for all of the good times, including when Jean married Eugene Zapata. Jean and Eugene had 3 children, Christine, Steve and Linda.

Eugene was an engineer that worked for the Dept. of Transportation and Jean was one of a few female flight instructors.

At home, things were not going well. According to Peggy, Jean was happy in her marriage for the first half of their time together. But, it became one of those marriages where behind closed doors, there was trouble.

According to Peggy, "Jean 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 they 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."

Jean wanted to try to keep the spark alive in her marriage, even if it meant agreeing to do things that "nice girls" didn't always do. But no matter what she did, nothing worked. Eugene moved out of the house.

On Monday, Oct. 11, 1976, Linda remembers seeing her mother drinking her morning coffee. Linda left for school and never saw her mother again.

Ivan Norton worked with Jean at the flight school, and was surprised when she didn't show up to teach a student pilot that day.

At the house, where Jean lived with the 3 kids, Eugene was already explaining to the children where their mother was. Linda remembers asking her father where her mom was at. He told her that she probably needed a vacation or break and that she would probably be home in a couple of weeks.

When Jean didn't show up for work after 3 days, Ivan Norton called the police and then called Eugene. "I says, 'Well, hey, have you turned her in missing to the police?' 'No, I haven't done it" said Eugene. 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 trying out for the detective squad, so he was assigned to what had been classified as just a routine missing persons 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 Zapata was classified as a missing person by the Madison, Wisconsin police department. But, Martin was learning some things about the Zapata's marriage, which added to his suspicions. "Eugene had placed an ad for her in a swingers type magazine."

One day the post office had called Jean to complain about some x-rated material in a mailbox that was rented by Eugene. It was the first that she'd heard about a mailbox. She went to look and was horrified by what she found. According to her best friend, Peggy, "She (Jean) 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." Jean's divorce attorney, Daphne Webb, learned that the swingers' magazine was only part of the story.

Jean not only wanted a divorce, she wanted a restraining order.

Eugene moved out, but he did not 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 am and 11am on Saturdays. That was the only time that he was permitted to be at the house.

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

When she was 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 that 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 did tell the police about what had happened at the time.

After just 3 weeks, the case went cold. Eugene moved back into the house, and for Linda, it was if her mother had simply never existed. Linda says, "It's really odd, but somehow, no one talked about it. No one brought her up. I don't think that I used the word "mom" until I was in my late teens, early 20's. I don't know why. Back then, it was so taboo. And, no one told me not to talk about it, but the 3 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 that 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 best friend. Peggy 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. Det. Statz said that she was immediately struck that more could probably be done with the case.

The detective did not believe that Jean had simply run away, like her husband had claimed for the past 28 years. Statz contacted every agency that she could think of inquiring about Jean. After a fairly extensive search, Statz concluded that Jean was most likely dead.

The detective started talking with anyone involved in the case back in 1976. She found Linda, the only Zapata child still living in Madison. Linda was working as a nurse at a local clinic, where the detective went to talk with her.

They went into a private room and the detective explained who she was, and that the investigation into her mother's disappearance was reopened.

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

Statz knew that 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 just abandoned me?, Statz asks.

Ever since Jean vanished when Linda was just 11, she not only believed that she had been abandoned by her mother, but that she was also to blame for her mother leaving. Linda remembers, "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."

Linda was pretty sure that the investigator was on the right track in her investigation, and looking at the right suspect.....her father. Linda's siblings did not believe that their father had killed their mother. But, as painful as it might be, Linda was now determined to help the detectives find out whether it was true or not.

In April, 2005, word got back to her father, Eugene, that the case had been reopened. He and his 2nd wife were living in Nevada, but he suddenly showed up unexpectedly in Madison. Linda immediately called Det. Statz. The detective said that she was concerned that Eugene would tamper with any evidence he knew of in the case. 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 he was not talking or admitting to anything.

Linda was torn back and forth. She wondered how she could betray one and not betray the other. She wondered how she could do that to her dad and what kind of daughter was she. But then, she also realized that her mom had no one else to speak for her.

In August, 2005, almost 30 years after her mother went missing, Linda agreed to make 2 calls to her father and let the police tape the conversations.

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?"

Eugene replied, "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."

It took Linda a while, but she worked herself up to making an awkward, painful accusation, by telling her father that her gut told her that he had killed her mother.

All Eugene could say was, "Wow, that's pretty powerful".

Linda went on to tell her father that she knew it was, but that nothing had changed between them and she still loved him.

With a lot of work, Detective Statz was finally able to uncover handwritten notes made by Eugene. The detailed notes were just the evidence that prosecutor Bob Kaiser had been waiting for. The notes showed 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 said.

Even though Jean's body had never been found, Kaiser went with what he did have, circumstantial evidence that Jean had been murdered. So, after 30 years from the time that Jean had vanished, Kaiser ordered police to arrest Eugene Zapata. Eugene was charged with first degree murder and on Sept. 4, 2007, he went on trial for the first degree murder of Jean.

The prosecution had to rely on evidence of Eugene's movements and the notes that he had tried so hard to conceal. According to the prosecution, Eugene's biggest mistake was answering the phone at Jean's home on Oct. 11, 1976, a morning that he had been barred from being there by a court order.

It took the defense less than one hour to present their case. They simply argued that the prosecution had failed to connect Eugene to any crime. Eugene never said a word in court.

Anyone looking for answers to this 30 year old mystery, would have to keep looking. Behind closed doors, the jurors argued and debated, but even after four days of deliberations, they could not decide what had happened to Jean, no matter how hard they tried. They left the judge no choice but to declare a hung jury.

On Sept. 17, 2007, Eugene walked out of court a free man. But, the husband of Jean and the father of her children, who had kept silent during his trial, was about to stun everyone. After three decades, two investigators and one trial, Eugene was about to break his silence and tell a chilling story. The prosecutor was ready to go back into court to try Eugene again. That's when Eugene suddenly announced that he was willing to plead guilty. Eugene was ready to finally answer the 30 year old question: what had happened to his wife and the mother of his children. BUT, he'd only give the answer if they would plead him down from murder, to a lesser charge.

The district attorney thought that Jean's daughter, Linda, should be the one to decide whether they should accept Eugene's plea, or start all over again in court. Linda said, "The only thing I want is for him to admit he did it. Tell us what happened to her. How he did it. And above all, I needed to see it come out of his mouth. I needed to see him say, 'I killed her.'" The deal was done, and Eugene, who had lied to his children, broke his silence and told his story to Det. Statz.

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

Jean laid on the ground still alive, and then Eugene strangled her. He claimed to have no memory of actually having his hands on her throat, but he did have a memory of his hands and forearms hurting a lot. He then got a cord and wrapped it around her neck to make sure that she was actually dead.

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.

When Linda was asked what it felt like seeing her father's confession, she says, "I just felt sick to my stomach. I felt so sad. But, it was also very therapeutic. I felt like I was there for my mom again. The truth is coming out. This is what happened. And it was big, almost a relief."

Eugene Zapata returned to court once again, this time to face his sentence and to face his daughter. The same daughter that he had lied to for 30 years.

Linda stated that she felt as if she had a huge weight off of her shoulders. She now knew that her mother did not abandon her and she could begin the mourning process. On April 12, 2008, she held a memorial service in the same church where Jean had been a member.

She said that it was if her mother were saying, "What took you guys so long?"