murder of his girlfriend and was determined to take the stand with the hopes of convincing the jury he was innocent. but, would this risky move pay off? here is keith morrison with the conclusion of burning suspicion. defense attorney mark geragos had done what he could to poke holes in the prosecution s murder case against paul zumot, arguing the prosecution had no scientific proof or clear evidence zumot was anywhere near jennifer when she was strangled and when the house was set on fire. anyway, he asked, if paul attacked jennifer, wouldn t she have put up some kind of a fight? why were there no defensive marks or scratches on paul zumot s body? did the prosecution even have a case? paul zumot wasn t going to take any chances. in fact, he was determined to tell the jury his side of the story. so gerados assigned a female colleague to question paul.
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 ugly, fat, a gold digger. by the way, the person she s talking to is hisham ghanma. one of the brothers he told police he and jennifer were afraid. 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 to all of my furniture. 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-dovey and paul was even talking marriage the night before the fire. and now here he was not more than a year later on trial for
because he was an entrepreneur. and he seemed like he was a very driven person. and that s definitely a quality that jennifer was looking for. jordanian-american paul zumot, sleek, attractive, educated, engaging. paul owned a local hangout, a cafe. unusual place by north american standards where customers could smoke flavored tobacco pipes called hookahs. the place and paul were popular. this lady was a fan. he s a good-looking man. he looks good, smells good, he s witty, he s smart and he s just affectionate. so love at first sight? well, maybe. said their friends. from the minute he told me about her, he always talked about how wonderful she is and how she s perfect. he definitely was very charismatic and liked to joke around. and money? there was a lot of it around
her murder, listening to the prosecutor take the jury inside the last days of paul s relationship with jennifer. how did gillingham do that? jennifer s cell phone. detectives discovered and this was rather curious that most of her text message history had been deleted. but law enforcement has changed a lot. it s had to, to keep up with high tech. 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 scam artist liar. furious. that didn t read like any old quarrel. and the timing? jennifer sent that text to paul
that word guilty, man. and it was just like, this relief, 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 issues about text messages and whether paul had jennifer s phone all afternoon wasn t as important as zumot on the stand. that s what made the difference. his 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 the stand and to me it didn t seem genuine.