Burning Suspicion on Addison Avenue

0:00Hey, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor, and host of The Drink. This month, Demi Lovato is my guest. The global superstar tells me that she is the happiest she's ever been right now. But getting there, it wasn't simple. Demi opens up about starting in Hollywood young and why she now thinks she may have started too soon. She talks about recovery, her new marriage, and the deeply personal reason behind her new cookbook. The drink is always about the journey to the top, and this was an honest conversation about what that takes. Hope you'll listen and follow The Drink wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges, their stories, or funny, and my candid. So I hope you'll join me each week and who knows. You might just come away with your own glass half full.

1:01Search Glass Half full with Craig Melvin from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Everybody out of the house? I don't know, but it's done fly really, but really, really strong that thing. The fire in the cottage on Addison Avenue was hungry, devouring almost everything in the bedroom. All right. We don't have fire department on the way to see smoke coming out of the window. It's pouring out of some countries like the house. Within minutes, firefighters knocked it down, the smoke clearing, the city water running in the streets. And then, as the mop up began, the word flashed out like something electric. The house was occupied, someone didn't get out. And up through the ashes of mystery flared, like a stubborn ember, glowed and smoldered, and demanded an answer. The inhabitants of the rented cottage, as investigators soon learned, were two young,

2:02beautiful people, the sort of glossy and successful types you might expect to see on some reality show. The names were Paul Zumat and Jennifer Skipsy. Jennifer and ambitious, award-winning real estate agent, who lived like a rock star or so said her buddy, Roy Enderman. You know, she'd be like, I'm knocking him out like Domino's baby. I just worked out, went to Starbucks, and I'm on my way to a meeting and it's only 6'33". So Paul seemed to be just the right kind of guy, for Jennifer, said Roy. 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 Zumat, sleek, attractive, educated, engaged me. We all owned a local hangout at Cafe, where customers could smoke flavored tobacco through water pipes called hookas, the place, and Paul, repopular. Niki said got stop was a fan.

3:04He's a good looking guy, you know, he looks good, he smells good. He presents well, he's witty, he's smart, and he's just, he's affectionate. So love it first sight, well maybe, said their friends. From the minute that he told me about her, he always talked about how wonderful she is and how she's perfect. He definitely was very charismatic, and he liked to joke around. And money? There was a lot of it around, apparently, too. And Jennifer and Paul, having worked hard to get it, seemed only too happy to spend it. When Jennifer and Paul first got together, Paul took Jennifer to New York City. And I remember he was like a kid in a candy store, just planning all these elaborate, wonderful things that they were going to do together. They were passionate, these beautiful people. They both had strong personalities, their love, burned hot. Jennifer was a very strong, independent woman, and she would not accept anyone disrespecting

4:11her, or even looking at her inappropriately. And she was very strong-willed in that. Me, like I always did, told him you need to be careful, you know, because girls can be evil. So he said, no, she's different, I love her, you know, I already love her, she's great. In so in September of 2009, Paul and Jennifer moved into that charming little cottage on Addison Avenue, here in Palo Alto, time to play house. Paul started to think about marriage. And for Paul's 36th birthday, Jennifer planned a party full of promise. She invited most of his close friends to dishdash one of his favorite restaurants. And they, I think they had over a dozen people there, almost 20 people or something. And Jennifer created a cute table setting, she created the perfect party for Paul, cake and everything. In fact, people who were there described the party as almost like a wedding reception.

5:11It lasted through the evening, into the wee hours of the morning. And now here it was just the very next evening. And it was gone in ashes, all of it, the excitement, the glamour, the promising future up in smoke, go along with the house on Addison. And the person inside. Next day Jim Skipsy was driving with his parents to a dinner engagement, his phone rang. It was an old friend. He picked it up. I said, Jake, you're going to tell me something bad, aren't you? And he said, Jim, Skips repeating your name? Yeah, he said like three times, I guess. So I said, Jake, hold on, man, I got to pull over. I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want to hear what he had to tell me. So I gave the phone to my dad, and he told my dad, my dad on the phone, and he just told

6:21I had his arms and me and my mom just like we were all holding each other, and he told us, Jenny was gone. It was his Jennifer, his daughter, who died in that fire. And now along with almost unbearable grief, something else started to burn inside Jim. Something searing, it was suspicion. You know, accidents will happen, there's a lot of tragic things that happen to a lot of people in this world, but this was no accident, it didn't have to happen. Well, the deadly fire was burning at his home on Addison Avenue. Paul Zumault was at his hook-alounds just minute away. Someone called, told him about the fire, he rushed over, but could only pace helplessly back and forth, as firefighters did their job.

7:22Soon after that, he sat down with Palo Alto Police to try to help sort out what happened. Though, as you can see on the video recording of the meeting, 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, neither one of them, what am I going to do? Why do you cause the fire? I don't care about this, I just want to know about the kind of for right now. I'm not sure that I know any more than you do. My job is basically 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 in Zuma 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, at least fine, you know, me and her and all the friends. Which her, again, that's your girlfriend? Yeah. Paul explained to police that he spent the afternoon at an appointment in San Jose, got

8:26back to Palo Alto just in time for his cafe to open for the evening. Then I came here and it was traffic, and I got to the cafe because that's when they opened the office, again, and to the computers. And as soon as I sat down on a smoke, I had a hook-a-lounge right here. So, I smoke in my landlord called me, said he houses on fire, I flew in, I flew through the red light that came in here. Now, I am really frustrated, I'm really confused, I'm really exhausted, and I want to know what happened. I care less about the house, because my Jennifer's safety. I just cannot think anything going on, guys, be honest with you, I just cannot think anything. Then, in the middle of his conversation with detectives, Paul's phone rang. It was Jennifer's mother, who told him she hadn't seen or heard from her daughter. You can see what happened. Paul fell to pieces. Yeah, I know, I know, yeah, I know, I know, I can't find him, you're not telling me anything. To this point, he told detectives he'd been clinging to the hope that Jennifer might

9:27be with her mother anywhere really, but at home. But she wasn't with her mother, wasn't anywhere, and that's when the officer broke this news. Okay, give me a round. What do you think about him, give him a round, please. Okay, and I'm trying to be a sensitive, possibly, can't be because I understand that this is your, you know, I don't know that this is Jennifer, but it's a really, really

10:35odd set of circumstances, okay, we need to figure out, is it's on purpose, is it's an accident, okay, this is just, unfortunately, this is just the beginning for all of us, okay, to try to answer some questions, okay, but of course, it had to be Jennifer and at probably wasn't an accident. As that news sank in, Paul began to think about who might have wanted to harm Jennifer, and came up with some potentially helpful information, two brothers, Hisham and Tony Gunma, at already threatened her, said Paul, there'd been a confrontation just weeks earlier. So what happened is, he called me, couldn't tell me I was gonna kill me, and he spoke in Arabic, and I speak Arabic fluently, and he spoke to her, so he called my police. Paul said that he and Jennifer had filed restraining orders against both brothers. Now she was scared from him, she was literally scared from the, I'm scared from the guy, so I know those guys like this, now yesterday she walked home and she said, hey, somebody

11:40if I were stalking me. Had the brothers killed her too, police listened, took some notes, and then just as a precaution of course, had Paul give them his clothes for forensic testing. Question by police, his home destroyed, his girlfriend dead, Paul Zumaad was very nearly in shock, said his friend Nikisa. His mind was that are they sure Jennifer's gone, and oh my god, she's never coming back. And as the weeks went by, said Nikisa, Paul was in a kind of days. And just of our conversations for the first few weeks were the fact that Jennifer's not coming back. He was completely distraught about the fact that Jennifer was in that fire. Meanwhile, as those same weeks went by, investigators went quietly and steadily about their task, picking through the cinders of the fire, and coming to the conclusion that none of it smelled right literally.

12:46He was a young Marine, she didn't care about convention, they made a life together. Then one night, the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, and utterly bizarre turn. I'm Josh McEwicz and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all new podcast from Dateline. Listen to all episodes of Trace of Suspicion now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Willie Geist here, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down Podcast. On this week's episode, I get to gather with Stand Up Comedy Superstar Nate Barghetsi in front of a live audience at New York City Winery to talk about his rise from small clubs to sold out arenas around the world. You can get my conversation with Nate for free, wherever you download your podcasts. The morning after the fire, that is an avenue, the ruins still warm.

13:53A yellow-lab named Rosie sniffed around what was by then the sealed crime scene. Rosie was trained to identify some of the tools of arson, caracene, oil, gasoline. Rosie stopped in her tracks, she'd apparently found something. Back then, Chuck Gilliam was a deputy district attorney in Palo Alto. Was gasoline there? No question at all. It's in her hair. You could smell it and you could smell it when you walked in just with your own nose. In fact, the remnants of the gas can was found next to her right hip. There were still enough remnants of the gas can for us to actually identify the type and make a model of the gas can. Wow, that's like somebody leaving the gun beside the body with their fingerprints over it or something. No fingerprints, obviously, and no physical evidence beyond that because it was so clear that it was an arson. Correct. It was not an issue. No, it was cold-blooded murder that was at issue because Jennifer Skipsy did not die in

14:54the fire according to forensic experts, she was dead before the fire started. The method, a particularly intimate form of killing, death by strangulation. Strangely, someone's a very personal killing. That's a very angry killing. It's not like shooting someone from a long way away. I don't imagine. Absolutely touching the person and feeling their life's blood ebbed from them. Who could have been so angry with Jennifer? All the told detectives that he and Jennifer had taken out restraining orders against those two brothers, Hisham and Tony Gahnma, both part of his social circle, men whom he considered former friends. There's people after us. What's that mean? They're trying to get us. They're trying to harm us. Oh, how do you harm me? Who is that? His name is Hisham. That's the guy. Okay. I was just trying to... I was just trying to... I was just trying to get against him. He hit me. He was just trying to get against me. And just one night before, after Paul's birthday party celebration, Paul told police, some guys on the truck tried to follow Jennifer home.

15:57She was walking her heels. She was... Somebody was just stalking her. And it was fine. It was okay with me. But we had people threatening us in the past. Okay. I don't know what's going on. I think that's what caused the fire. I believe. Drinking you? But somebody was threatening us all the time. Okay. So, as Paul zoomed on to something, detectives went to talk to the brothers. And of course, checked to see where both men were the day of the fire. And... There was no doubt. They were nowhere near the fire. They had alibis. At the time of the fire, we know exactly where both of them were. One of them gunned brothers was in their cafe, and he's on videotape. And the other was at Fry's Electronics in Home Depot, about 20 miles away. We have those receipts, and we have videotape from both of those locations. So, what's the gun my brothers were in the clear? The cops did what they always do in cases like this. In fact, it's practically police work 101. They took a closer look at the victim's boyfriend, Paul.

16:58And there was a curious moment in that police interview the day of the fire. When Paul admitted, he wasn't always the best sort of boyfriend. Me and my girlfriend were broke up. And thanks to the center, something that fell out to PD, they put an emergency restraining order on me in August. Because she said, Paul threatened me, blah, blah, blah. And I said, no. She came to the cafe, broke the door. Okay. And my cafe. But, you know, we had this problem with me in here. But, you know what? And I had domestic violence against the government. I never touched the government of my life. You could see the police reports. Suspicious, sure. But as they asked around among the couple's friends, police learned a few things that put Paul's behavior into context. Maybe he wasn't anymore to blame, but she was. Their relationship was chaotic. There's no disputing that, absolutely. But he was no more violent in the relationship than she was. Whether it be physically, verbally, emotionally. As police gathered evidence, bit by bit, asking around about Paul, one of them noticed something

18:00a 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. It was a murder. With that, I will be for my attorney. They charged Paul Zumat with arson and murder, which struck some observers as strange. After all, there had been just that one little inconsistency. And though Paul and Jennifer did fight sometimes, they seemed crazy in love, too.

19:06Paul 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. For his life, that had just changed 100%. It certainly did. Paul Zumat was taken to jail to await trial on a charge of murder in the first degree. Big mistake that Paul Zumat. When I first saw him, he's, 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 took this. In the days after the fire on Addison Avenue, after Paul Zumat was charged with murder and

20:09hauled off to jail, events and Palo Alto seemed to freeze somehow. In confusion and denial from Paul's point of view, and unrequited grief among the people who loved Jennifer. It hurt. It hurt a lot. Unrequited partly because for some reason, though he'd been arrested, Paul wasn't entering a plea, which is what this was all about, candlelight vigils outside Paul's hookal lounge by Jennifer's friends and family. He 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, 9-1-1 calls. I mean, these were two people that were make-ups and break-ups and she gave verbally as good as she got. After one of their flare-ups, Paul was ordered to attend anger management classes, went

21:14to one the day of the fire, in fact. So why did two people who fought so much stay together for so long? There was a turned out an audio recording of Jennifer herself. Gillingham got hold of it, listened to her explanation. He wins her heart, so the first couple months is amazing, sweeps you off her feet, candles everywhere, flowers, not money items, but just romance against 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 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 tiger. By the way, the person she's talking to, he's Shamganma, remember, he's one of the brothers Paul told police he and Jennifer were afraid of, but here she was, confiding in him.

22:18Mind 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 all of my furniture and he kicked in my car. He 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, Paul was even talking marriage the night before the fire. And now here he was not much more than a year later on trial for her murder, listening to prosecutor Chuck Gillingham take the jury inside the last days of Paul's relationship with Jennifer. How did Gillingham do that? Jennifer's cell phone, detective discovered, and this was rather serious, that most of her text message history had been deleted, but the messages had not disappeared. The Palo Alto cops managed to find a phone expert all the way across the country in New Hampshire

23:19who 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 and the last few months of her life. And… Oh boy. From Jennifer. You're nothing but a selfish, cold-hearted, ungrateful human being scam artist liar, furious. That one didn't read like just any old quarrel, and the timing, Jennifer sent that text to Paul right at the end of the elaborate birthday party she threw for him, when she had perhaps 12 hours left to live. In fact, she was so upset about something that she refused to go to the hook-all-hound 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?

24:24She had to have been, I don't even know if I've ever even 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, and into 11, roughly 16 in the morning, she is now referring back to those text messages, and telling him he'd better bring a check. And don't come back where she's going to the San Jose Police Department file charges by 3 o'clock that day. And that's the last text message that anyone gets from her. That's the last contact she has ever with anyone. That said, yelling him just before noon is when Paul lost his temper and choked Jennifer to death. Then drove to a gas station, bought a can of gasoline. Later, returned home, towards the house. And somewhere along the way, said the prosecutor, erased all those angry text messages she

25:28sent in. Every single one between the defendant and her, every single one is gone, months worth. And that said, yelling him Paul used Jennifer's cell phone to send fake texts to her friends. So they believed she was still alive. To support that claim, Gillingham introduced an expert witness who testified that texts from Paul's phone and texts from Jennifer's phone were hitting some of the same cell towers all afternoon. So her phone must have been right there with him and his car. Which is why, when she missed a meeting with her friend Roy Enderman, the texts he got from her didn't make sense. They weren't a sensible response to the message he'd sent her. In fact, he got the same text twice. She didn't show up and her phone was off. And so as soon as I got that repeat text message, I was kind of worried because she wasn't responding to what I was saying. Jennifer was nowhere to be found. Jennifer was dead. Now what prosecutor Gillingham wanted the jury to think about was what happened or didn't

26:33happen much later after the fire. Here was the scene, house burning, Paul standing on the street outside watching the fire. At this point, he supposedly didn't know if Jennifer was inside or outside, whether she 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 then neither occasion did he leave Jennifer a message. He left messages for others. He spoke with others. He 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 what, if he called her and texted her once, surely that's enough, I mean she'll call him back. Cell phone records actually bear out, and he's a person that would call her text her two to 300 times a day when he wasn't around her if he wasn't able to get a hold of her. His silence especially at the crime scene was deafening because there's no text message. I would submit, and I did to the jury, that he stood at that location because he wanted

27:35people to see him there. But how could the jury be sure Paul was guilty? Prosecutor Gillingham offered her. Remember Rosie? The skillful police dog trained to alert to the faintest whiff of accelerant of the sort used in arson fire. She alerted when she smelled some of Paul Zuma's clothes. Suspicious, yes. Though not exactly iron-clad evidence. As you'll see, courtesy of Paul's high profile defense attorney. The man famous for defending Scott Peterson, his name? Mark Garagos. I've had many clients who I have no doubt were capable of the acts that they were accused of. This is just not one of them. Defense attorney Mark Garagos has made a name for himself defending clients in difficult

28:37and highly celebrated cases, not the least the Scott Peterson trial. But defending Paul Zuma would present his own set of challenges. Zuma was accused of killing his girlfriend, Jennifer Skipsy, and then trying to hide that fact by burning the house down. But as the trial began, he'd also been paid by the prosecution as an abuser, a violent man, an image Garagos set out to change. They both were passionate, romantic at times, hot at times as you would characterize it. I don't think it was a one-way street by any means. For a start, Garagos tried best he could to weed out possible jury members who might have been unduly swayed by angry text messages or stories about Zuma's temper. What jurors do or what you want to get a jury to do is to want to help your client and to kind of walk in the shoes of your client. And then when he presented his case, Garagos set out to reframe the events after that

29:39infamous party the night before the fire. He was at a place and it was for Paul's birthday. And it was planned by Jennifer and maybe 14 to 18 of their close friends that were there. And by all accounts at the party, everything was great. And the argument later, the angry texts, that was just the way Paul and Jennifer always were, said Garagos. After those angry text message exchanges, here's what happened, as Zuma described in his police interview. When police looked at Jennifer's cell phone, there was a video.

30:56She and Paul having sex after their fight, hours before she was murdered. So enthusiastically that anybody who watches this is never going to have the impression to take away from that, that this was somebody who was ready to kill her. And as for that cell tower evidence that prosecutor Gillingham presented, which seemed to show Paul had Jennifer's phone with him and was sending out fake messages in her name, that was nonsense, said Garagos. That was one of the pieces of information that was absolutely imploded. We went and got 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 Garagos, the prosecution's own timeline should have cleared Paul Zuma. It is. Investigators said Jennifer was strangled several hours before the fire started and it

31:56was lit no earlier than about 6.30 p.m. But early in the afternoon, after Paul had left the area, Garagos says, Jennifer was still alive, sending real, not fake, text messages, herself from her phone. By all accounts, she was alive at 117, and at 117, Paul was not at the house. So where was Paul? Trying to pick up paperwork at the Palo Alto Police Station and then at the hookal lounge where he appears on security cam footage around 117 p.m. And from there, says the defense attorney, he headed to his anger management class about 18 miles away. On the way, he stopped at the restaurant depot, senior on camera, around 3.30. So there simply wasn't time in between, said Garagos. For Paul to go to the cottage, strangle his girlfriend, and douse her body with gasoline. The solid alibi, said Garagos. His client simply couldn't have killed Jennifer, and he couldn't have started the fire.

33:01How could he have been in two places at once? And as for Rosie, the yellow lab who learned it to a gasoline smell on Zuma's clothes? Garagos simply pointed out that those very clothes were submitted to a test on state of the art equipment of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and they showed no evidence of gasoline at all. The ATF chemist has a protocol. And specifically, one of the things the prosecution also didn't tell this jury, which we brought out, was that the ATF also put out a protocol that said you never take a dog alert, a single dog alert, and draw a conclusion. And in fact, if the ATF says negative, then you should not allow in the dog alert. So why would people believe the dog over the ATF? Well, I think once again, you get into this idea of people have dogs that kind of describe supernatural powers to dogs. I mean, you know, I've got two large dogs and having been through a couple of cases with dog evidence as much as I love my dogs, I'm certainly not going to want to convict somebody

34:04and put their liberty at stake based on dog evidence. Still, as he presented his case, Garagos had a problem and he knew it. What it came down to was the character assassination block of the case. I mean, the first two blocks of this case revolved around what's so-called scientific evidence and that was absolutely destroyed and then you ended up with the character assassination block. The solution, Paul Zoom out himself appears to have demanded it, the chance to defend himself to the jury by testifying. Some courtroom observers believe that offense had already created a reasonable doubt that testifying was, in fact, risky, especially for Paul, said his friend, Nikisa. 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. Like you're not, Paul was determined to tell the jury his side of the story.

35:16Defense attorney Mark Garagos had done what he could to poke holes in the prosecution's murder case against Paul Zoom out, arguing that the prosecution had no solid scientific proof or clear evidence, Zumaad was anywhere near Jennifer when she was strangled when the house was set on fire. Anyway, he asked if Paul attacked Jennifer, wouldn't she have put up some kind of fight? Why were there no defensive marks or scratches on Paul Zumaad's body? Did the prosecution even have a case? Paul Zumaad wasn't going to take any chances, in fact, he was determined to tell the jury his side of the story. So Garagos assigned a female colleague to question Paul, trusted in a strategy, whispered courtroom observers. A way to show the jury that Paul could, in fact, interact well with a woman, but those observers were mistaken, said Garagos. Well, I generally, I don't think direct examination is my strong suit, and I was concentrating

36:18on cross-examination of the witnesses. So Paul Zumaad looked the jurors in the eye and told them, I did not kill Jennifer Skipsy, did not burn the house, and then he told them emotions building to a fever pitch, how despite their rollercoaster relationship, he truly loved Jennifer. His lawyer presented a love letter, in fact, that she'd written to him, and he broke down them, flood of tears. I was so relieved and 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, because it'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 already was going to testify. I think that's an understatement. I was very, very pleased. More than that. It was a gift, said Gillingham, and unexpected opportunity.

37:20Why? Well, the prosecutor had Paul right where he wanted him for as long as he wanted him. There were hours of questions, tough questions, baiting questions, questions designed to make Paul crack, and reveal what Gillingham believed to be a controlling personality at a red hot temper. My plan was to go through how he acted when he was angry, and then ask him questions that he couldn't have no good answers for. For instance, why all those text messages are deleted, and those were questions he could not answer, because he had not considered those questions. After three long days in the hot seat, Paul Zumaat's testimony was finally over. Had he persuaded the jurors that he was innocent? Do you feel he got a little bit chippy or arrogant on the stand? I don't think that he got arrogant, but I think clearly he was tired and he was exasperated. He'd wanted to tell his story, he was being cut off. But the jurors, once they got the case, said they were determined to look at the evidence, not just courtroom theater.

38:23Everyone was very committed to going over the evidence and discussing each of the witnesses and each of the crucial pieces of evidence. It was really encouraging. And it was crucial they decided to compare very carefully the different timelines claimed by the prosecution and the defiance. So we analyzed the timeline for the entire day, from his testimony where he said he was, and then other pieces of testimony and evidence to either validate or contradict. The jury took less than 14 hours and came back with a verdict, guilty. All I remember was I heard that word guilty, man, 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's inconceivable how they could get to the result that they got you. But to the jurors, the issue is about text messages, and whether Paul had Jennifer's

39:25phone all afternoon, wasn't as important as Zuma on the stand. That's what made the difference. Is tears, for example? Sometimes I feel like I'm too cynical, but I 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. 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. 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

40:29him. At his sentencing, an angry Paul Zuma, again, protested his innocence, but he was set away for 25 to life, for murder, plus eight years for arson. Case closed? Not exactly. In 2020, a federal judge granted Zuma a new trial, ruling that prosecutors had presented false evidence to the jury, while Zuma's defense team provided ineffective counsel. At his retrial in 2025, Paul Zuma had a new defense team, a different strategy. This time around, he did not take to witness Dan. But the jury came to the same conclusion as the first one did. He was found guilty, again, and sentenced to 30 years to life. After the fire that set this mystery in motion, the Palo Alto cottage was repaired. We love, perhaps, growing in there. Young people were still coming to the cafe to socialize in Smokuga.

41:31And 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 a voice, and I'll see her smile. I know she's here. I've always been a glass half-full kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges, their stories, or funny, and my candid. So I hope you'll join me each week, and who knows. You might just come away with your own glass half-full. Search Glass Half-full with Craig Nelson from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast.