was alive or dead. but in the time that he was there, he made 38 calls and text messages, two of which went to jennifer, and neither occasion did he leave jennifer a message. he left messages for others and spoke with others, 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 blocked off street. you know, if he called her and texted her once, surely that s enough. i mean, she ll call him back. the cell phone records actually bear out that he s a person that would call or text her 200 to 300 times a day if he wasn t around her, able to get a hold of her. his silence especially at the crime scene was deafening. because there was 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. how could the jury be sure that paul was guilty? the prosecutor offered her. remember rosie
what about my girlfriend? what caused the fire, and i don t care about this. i just want to know about jennifer right now. i m not sure i know anything more than you do. my job is 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 zumot talked about the hours before the fire. where had she been? what had she and paul been doing? well, yesterday was my birthday. we went out, and everything was fine, you know. who s we ? me and her and all of our friends. who is her? jennifer. your girlfriend? yeah. paul explained that he spent the afternoon at an appointment in san jose and got back in time for his cafe to open in the evening. there was traffic, i got to the cafe because that s when they open. i had to log into the computers. as soon as i sat down i have a hookah lounge. my landlord calls and says your house is on fire.
of the sort used in arson fire? she alerted when she smelled some of paul zumot s clothes. suspicious? yes. though, not exactly ironclad evidence. as you ll see, courtesy of paul s high-profile defense attorney, the man famous for defending scott peterson. his name, mark geragos. i ve had many a client who i have no doubt was capable of the acts that he was accused of. this is just not one of them. coming up in the last hours of jennifer s life, something was caught on camera. does it prove paul is not guilty? so you had sex last night with her and videoed it? yeah. anybody who watches this is never going to have the impression that this was somebody who was ready to kill her. when dateline continues.
according to forensic experts, she was dead before the fire started. the method? a particularly intimate form of killing. death by strangulation. strangling someone is a very personal killing. it s a very angry killing. it s not like shooting someone from a long way away, i don t imagine. you re touching the person and feeling their life s blood ebb from them. who could have been so angry with jennifer? paul had told detectives that he and jennifer had taken out restraining orders against those brothers, hisham and tony ghanma. men part of his inner circle who he had considered former friends. they re trying to get us. they are trying to harm me. who is that? hisham. the guy you have a restraining order against? several restraining against him. he hit me. he has a restraining order against me. and just one night before, after paul s birthday celebration, paul told police some guys in a truck tried to
anybody who watches it is never going to 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 the prosecutor gillingham presented that seemed to show that paul had jennifer s phone with him and sending out fake messages in her name? that was nonsense, says geragos. that was one of the pieces of information that was 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 geragos, the prosecution s own timeline should have cleared paul zumot. investigators said jennifer was strangled several hours before the fire started, and it was lit no earlier than about 6:30 p.m. but early in the afternoon,