he headed to his anger management class about 18 miles away. on the way estopped 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 a gasoline smell on zumon s clothes, those clothes were submitted to a test on state of the art equipment of bureau of tobacco and firearms. they showed no evidence of gasoline at all. the atf chemist has a protocol. and specifically one of the things the prosecution didn t tell this jury which we brought out was the atf also put out a protocol that said, you never
three times, and we were able to prove that he lied to us by the hard evidence that we had with the phone records and with the video surveillance, and those items. and i just to me, that hurt him very badly. if he hadn t testified, i can t say for sure, but i don t think i could have convicted him. at his sentencing, an angry paul zumot again protested his innocence, but he was sent away for 25 to life for murder. plus, eight years for arson. after the fire, the palo alto cottage was repaired. new love perhaps growing in there. young people were still coming to the cafe to socialize and smoke hookah. paul, gone like the romance that burned too bright before it vanished with its victim in a cloud of smoke. and i can still hear her voice and see her smile.
paul zumot himself appears to have demanded it. the chance to defend himself to the jury by testifying. some courtroom observers believed the defense thought testifying was risky, especially for paul said his friend nakisa. knowing paul the way i know paul and the way that he could be interpreted incorrectly, i was very nervous about paul taking the stand. risky or not, paul was determined to tell the jury his side of the story. coming up. i thought, you know, if there was anyway this jury thought this man was responsible for this, now they know for sure that he s not. but what did the jury think? when burning suspicion continues. shoe. she had so many children she had to buy lots of groceries. while she was shopping for organic fruits and veggies, burglars broke into her shoe. they stole her kids mountain bikes and tablets
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 jy believed that it was a manufactured moment. what was the problem wh 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
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 time line should have cleared paul zumott, that is, 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, after paul had left the area, geragos says, jennifer was still alive, sending real, not fake, text messages, herself, from her phone. by all accounts, she was alive at 1:17. okay. okay. and at 1:17, paul was not at the house. so, where was paul? trying to pickup paperwork at the palo alto police station, and then at the hookah lounge where he appears on security cam footage at 1:37 p.m. and from there says the defense attorney,