and at 1:17, 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 hookah lounge where he appears on security camera video footage around 1:37 p.m. and then from there he headed to his anger management class about 18 miles away. on the way, he stopped at the restaurant depot seen here on camera around 3:30. so there simply wasn t time in between, said geragos, for paul to go to the cottage, strangle his girlfriend and douse her body with gasoline. a solid alibi, said geragos. his client simply couldn t have killed jennifer, and he couldn t have started the fire. how could he have been in two places at once? and as for rosie, the yellow lab who alerted to a gasoline smell
i flew through the red lights and came here. i m really frustrated and confused and exhausted and i want to know what happened. i care less about the house but jennifer s safety. i cannot think anything right now, guys. to be honest with you, i can t 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. yeah, i know. i know. i know. i can t find her. they re not telling me anything. to this point, he told detectives that he had been clinging to the hope that jennifer might be with her mother. anywhere but at home. but she wasn t with her mother. wasn t anywhere. and that s when the officer broke this news. i don t know how to tell you this, man, but there s a body in the house that s been burned.
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, the texts he got from her didn t make sense. they weren t a sensible response to the message he sent her. in fact, he got the same text twice. she didn t show up, and her phone was off. 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 gillingham wanted the jury to think about is 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 or outside, whether she
police listened, and then had just as a precaution, of course, paul give them his clothes for forensic testing. questioned by police, his home destroyed, his girlfriend dead, paul zumot was very nearly in shock, said his friend. his mind was, are they sure jennifer is gone and oh my god he s never coming back. as the weeks went by, paul was in a kind of daze. the gist of our conversations for the first few weeks is 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, picking through the cinders of the fire and coming to the conclusion that none of it smelled right. literally. coming up was gasoline there?
the sooty water running in the streets. and then as the mop-up began, the word flashed out like something electric. the house was occupied. someone didn t get out. and up through the ashes, a mystery flared like a stubborn ember that glowed and smoldered and demanded an answer. the inhabitants of the rented cottage, as investigators soon learned, were two young, beautiful people. the successful glossy types that you might expect to see on a reality show. their names are paul zumot and jennifer schipsi. jennifer, an ambitious, award-winning real estate agent who lived like a rock star, or so said her buddy roy. she s like, i m knocking them out like dominos. i just worked out, went to starbucks and on my way to a meeting, and it s only 6:33. so paul seemed to be the right kind of guy for jennifer, said roy.