their lives and passionate about each other. but one day, a terrible house fire left one of them dead and the other facing questions from investigators. here again is keith morrison. reporter: while the deadly fire was burning at his home on addison avenue, paul was at his hooka lounge just a few minutes away. he rushed over but could only pace back and forth as firefighters did their job. soon after that, he sat down with the palo alto police to help sort out what happened, though, as you can see on the video recording, sat is probably not the best description. paul was full of nervous energy and frantic questions. at this point, nobody had told him that jennifer was in that fire. i m worried about my house, 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.
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 a 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. and the other portion of his testimony was when he had the opportunity to tell us where he was and what he was doing, he chose to basically lie to us three times.
reporter: as police gathered evidence, bit by bit, asking around about paul, one of them noticed something a little odd. paul told a friend, also a policeman, by the way, two slightly different stories about his whereabouts the day of the fire. first conversation, day of the fire, reported the cop friend, paul said he wasn t home all day. then, second conversation, next day, paul said he stopped briefly at home en route to his hookah cafe. as we say, odd. but people s memories can be tricky. was that one little difference enough to add up to suspicion of murder? police apparently thought so, especially once they added that to the rest of what they discovered. paul was arrested. i m going to wait to talk to my attorney. what s that? i will wait for my attorney. okay. they charged paul zumot with arson and murder, which struck some observers as strange.
after all, there had just been that one little inconsistency and though paul and jennifer did fight sometimes, they seemed crazy in love, too. paul had been shopping for a diamond ring, for heaven s sake. there was a part of paul that was mourning his girlfriend and then there was a part of him that was he didn t understand why he was in custody. and he didn t understand why he couldn t just cry for his girlfriend and for his life that had just changed 100%. reporter: it certainly did. paul zumot was taken to jail to await trial on a charge of murder in the first degree. big mistake, said paul zumot. when i first saw him, he all he was really still telling me is, you know, me being in custody, all of this is going to blow over with. you know, they re going to realize i m not the person who did this and this will be over
she claimed he owed her. right around 10:30, 10:45 into 11:16 in the morning telling him you better bring a check, don t come back or she s filing charges by 3:00 that day and that s the last text message anyone has with her, the last contact she has ever with anyone. reporter: and just before noon is when paul lost his temper and choked her to death, drove to a gas station, bought a can of gasoline, later, returned home towards the house. and somewhere along the way, said the prosecutor, he erased it all of those angry text messages she sent him. every single one between the defendant and her, every single one is gone. months worth. and then paul used jennifer s cell phone to send fake texts to her friends so they believed she was still alive. to support that claim, he