threw for him when she had perhaps 12 hours to live. she was so upset about something that she refused to go to the hookah lounge after the party. walked all the way home on a broken heel texting all the way. jennifer good, stay away from me. i just got home. paul, i m staying away this time for good. what a way to end my birthday. for jennifer to walk home alone at night with a broken heel and upset, she had to have been i don t even know if i ve ever seen her that mad. but that was the night before. angry messages buzzing back and forth. then, as the cell phone revealed, the pair made love during the night before jennifer s morning text messages again turned red hot angry. the subject seemed to be a debt she claimed he owed her. right around 10:30, 10:45 into 11:16 in the morning she s
jennifer schipsi. in the days after the fire on addison avenue, after paul zumot was charged with murder and hauled off to jail, events in palo alto seemed to freeze somehow. in confusion and denial from paul s point of view and unrequited grief from the people who loved jennifer. it hurt. it hurt a lot. unrequited partly because for some reason, even though he d been arrested, paul wasn t entering a plea, which is what this was all about. candlelight vigils outside of paul s hookah lounge by jennifer s friends and family. we decided to stand in front of his establishment every night until he made his plea. eventually, no surprise, paul did plead not guilty. and prosecutor chuck gillingham found himself sifting through
the records of a two-year romance studded with restraining orders, bitter quarrels, scratches, bruises, 911 calls. these are two people who had makeups and breakups and she gave verbally as good as she got. after one of their flare-ups, paul was ordered to attend anger management classes. went to one the day of the fire, as a matter of fact. so why did people who fought so much stay together for so long. there was an audio recording of jennifer herself. gillingham got hold of it. listen to her explanation. he wins your heart so the first couple of months is amazing. sweeps you off your feet. candles everywhere, flowers, not money items but just romancing, sweet talking and parading you around and wanting to introduce you to everybody. it gets me loving him and admiring him that he admires me, and then it makes me trust his opinion and what he says about
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 burning suspicion continues.
think direct examination is my strong suit and i was concentrating on cross-examination of the witness. so paul zumot looked the jurors in the eyes and told them, i did not kill jennifer schipsi, did not burn the house. then he told them how despite their roller coaster relationship, he truly loved jennifer. his love letter presented a letter she had written him and he broke down then, a flood of tears. i was so relieved. i thought, you know, if there was any way this jury thought this man was responsible for this, now they know for sure that he s not. but he s so obvious to me that he s telling the truth. but listening to all of this with his experienced ear was prosecutor gillingham. you must have been rather pleased when you heard he was going to testify. i think that s an understatement. i was very, very pleased.