Forensic Files - Season 12, Episode 7 - The Day the Music Died - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: For years, no one in Seattle knew who killed this rock singer. The evidence sat waiting in a freezer
until a computer identified a suspect 3,000 miles away. [theme music] In the early 1990s Seattle, Washington
was home to a revolution in rock music. Some people called it grunge. Others called it sub pop.
It was hard, it was edgy, and it drew thousands of people to the area. -Musicians were moving here from all over the world to play.
And there were fans moving here just to watch, just to see live music. Because you could go to a small club
and see pretty much what people thought would be the next big thing. -Back in the early 1990s, there were a million emerging bands.
And they all had the same kind of grunge sound. NARRATOR: Ground zero for this rock revolution
was a part of downtown Seattle known as Capitol Hill. Rents were cheap, drugs were plentiful,
and crime was rising. Early one morning, around 3:20 AM, a pedestrian found a woman's body
on the deserted city street. -And they tried to resuscitate her. She was still warm.
It appeared that she had expired literally just a few minutes before. NARRATOR: The victim was a young woman with no identification.
She'd been strangled with a cord from a sweatshirt bearing the name of a local rock band, The Gits.
The body's location made it look like there was a possible religious link to the crime.
-On either side of her, or either side of the street are religious buildings. One is a Catholic church and the other
is a Catholic services community area. -She was laying on her back, her feet were close together,
and her hands were out to her side, a sign kind of in a crucifix. NARRATOR: At the victim's autopsy,
something unexpected happened. The medical examiner recognized here. -He liked to go to the clubs and listen to independent music.
He knew who Mia Zapata was. [music - the gits] NARRATOR: 27-year-old Mia Zapata was the lead singer
and songwriter of The Gits, one of the most popular bands to emerge from the Seattle music scene.
-The local rock music community is saddened tonight by the death of a Seattle band's lead singer.
-The young woman was murdered and police are searching for her killer. The motive is unknown.
[music - the gits] -We had been on tour on the west coast. We were to be home for three or four days before we
were to leave on the road again. We had a US tour, a European tour, and another US tour planned consecutively.
NARRATOR: Investigators tried to reconstruct Mia's activities before her murder.
According to friends, she spent most of the night at a local bar. -Mia was at The Comet Tavern having
some drinks with friends. I believe she was there till about midnight. NARRATOR: From there she visited the apartment
of a friend who lived nearby. She left there on foot around 2:00 AM. -Mia really liked to walk and Seattle's
a great area to walk around in. And so I think that's why she chose not to take a cab.
NARRATOR: Her body was discovered about an hour and a half later on a deserted stretch of road, less than half
a mile from a friend's apartment. -So we know that in that 80 minute gap she had been accosted, attacked, kidnapped, brutalized.
So her killer was quite busy in those 80 minutes. We had a very clear and limited timeline here.
-I don't believe that Mia intentionally went in, or voluntarily went into anybody's car.
And the reason is that all of her friends were adamant on the fact that's something
that she simply would not do. NARRATOR: Unfortunately, the killer left very little forensic evidence.
-I thought it could be some ex-boyfriend. It could be a random creep. I could be a woman.
It could be a gang. It could be anybody. NARRATOR: The death of up and coming rock star Mia Zapata was
big news in Seattle, Washington. -I think a lot of people are really deeply hurt by her loss,
by losing her. And um, I just think everyone really wants to find out who did it.
And even though that won't bring her back, at least that will give somebody a sense of justice.
NARRATOR: Friends put up posters all over town asking for information about the murder.
Police were deluged with tips. -And right now, police have absolutely no suspects?
-At this point they say no. And in fact, they said drugs don't appear to be involved.
She was not into drugs or anything like that. It's still very much a mystery tonight.
-I think at that time since there were so few answers, a lot of people were just, you know, speculating.
Who could have done this? Was it someone she knew? Was it a complete stranger? NARRATOR: The case had serious problems.
There were no witnesses. And since the body was dumped, there was no evidence at the scene.
-When you broke down all the forensic evidence, or more accurately the lack of evidence, this
became a frustrating crime. NARRATOR: At Mia Zapata's autopsy, the medical examiner found she had been beaten,
strangled, and sexually assaulted. -The ME said that the blows to her abdomen, and a kicking,
and a kneeing, she would have died eventually on the scene had he not strangled her.
It was brutal. NARRATOR: The medical examiner noticed a bite mark on Mia's breast.
He swabbed the area and sent it to the forensic lab hoping the killer left his saliva, a possible source of DNA.
-DNA is being sloughed off from the cells from your cheeks inside your mouth, and also your gums.
And within those cells is the nucleated cells that have the DNA present. NARRATOR: To determine if the material on the bite mark
was saliva, the swabs were tested for the presence of amylase. This is an enzyme in saliva that breaks down food.
A solution extracted from the swab was placed in a perforated Petri dish containing a starch-based gel.
Essentially a food source. To simulate the conditions for digestion, the dish was placed in an incubator
and set at body temperature for 24 hours. When the dish was removed there were large white spots,
proof there was saliva on Mia's body. -Our positive result is a colorless area. So an area that's not blue.
And this is due to the fact that the amylase is binding and breaking up the starch molecules.
NARRATOR: At the time, the sample was too small for DNA testing. So it sat in a storage freezer.
In their search for suspects, investigators began with Mia's ex boyfriend, Robert.
Apparently, they had broken up shortly before the murder. -Some people have said that she was a little bit upset
about a recent breakup with her boyfriend. There was some talk that she might try to find him that night.
But Mia's boyfriend said, if she stopped by his apartment he knew nothing about it.
He claimed he was out with his friends, an alibi that checked out. -Robert, her boyfriend, cooperated fully.
He always appeared when asked. He took a lie detector test. -He had an airtight alibi.
Very, very good, no creases in it. So he was eliminated immediately. NARRATOR: Investigators couldn't find anyone
who had a motive to kill Mia Zapata. And her circle of friends and acquaintances was fairly broad.
-Mia had a far ranging group of friends. A lot of these friends had criminal histories.
A lot of these people had violence in their past. A lot of people were somewhat obsessed with Mia.
-These people aren't the groups you're going to find at the PTA meetings or a the Rotary Club meetings.
NARRATOR: Unfortunately, none of this yielded any new suspects. -And it got to the point where there
was nobody left to look at. And at that point, that's when you get concerned. NARRATOR: Frustrated because the case hasn't been solved,
Steve Moriarty, The Gits' drummer and a friend of Mia's since college, joined with band members
to take a more active role in the investigation. -We decided to hire our own private investigator.
And we didn't have money, but we were going to find the money. And we were going to make sure that this,
this got solved immediately. NARRATOR: Moriarty and the band hired Leigh Hearon.
Her first step was to re-interview virtually everyone the police had talked to. -There were no eye witnesses.
And believe me, I tried. I mean, I went out a couple of nights with another investigator and talked with every prostitute
on the street to see if anybody knew anything. I talked with all the neighbors in the area.
People saw a car drive away, but they didn't see anybody in it around that time.
NARRATOR: Eventually, Leigh Hearon came to the same conclusions as the police. -I think that most people thought that this was
going to be an unsolved case forever. And I know that I thought that the only way it's going to be
solved is either someone talks or they get some DNA evidence. NARRATOR: The case went cold again,
this time for nine years. Until this man won the Nobel Prize and changed forensic science forever.
Just two months before her murder, Mia Zapata wrote a song about her own death at the hands of a stranger.
-We were in the studio, and I was there when she was writing the lyrics. And she said, I want to write a song about a serial killer.
I'm like, why do you want to do that? She goes, because it's happening so much. NARRATOR: The song was entitled, "Sign of the Crab."
[MUSIC PLAYING - THE GITS - SIGN OF THE CRAB] NARRATOR: The words were eerily similar to how Mia was killed.
-And it just seemed that that summer there was a lot of horrible, horrible crimes happening.
And it affected Mia, and it affected her writing. And it ended up being prophetic in that it happened to her.
NARRATOR: For nine long years, Mia's murder went unsolved. Frustrations mounted.
-I never thought that it would go unsolved for so long. And so as the days, and the months, and the years went by,
I knew that lots of other people were losing faith that it would get solved. NARRATOR: Mia's murder happened in 1993.
And something else happened that year too. Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize in chemistry
for inventing a technique known as Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR. This made it possible to perform DNA
testing on very small samples. -Well, with PCR what you have is this chemical photocopier.
So we were able to amplify that small piece of DNA up into large enough pieces that we can actually detect.
NARRATOR: The potential genetic sample in the Zapata case was so small that analysts, fearing the sample could still
be destroyed, waited until the PCR process was so refined that microscopic amounts could be used for testing.
In 2001, the swab from Mia's autopsy-- the swab that might contain the killer's DNA-- was
finally tested with PCR technology. The process amplified, or increased, the sample size,
making it large enough for testing. And it worked. -What I did develop was a mixed profile
that contained Mia Zapata's DNA along with, at the time, an unknown male profile.
The male DNA profile was isolated, then entered into CODIS, the nationwide computerized
database that is designed to store the DNA profiles of everyone in the United States
who has committed a felony. Unfortunately, there was no match. -So the good news is, there's the genetic profile.
You're on pins and needles. Who does it match? No one. NARRATOR: Was it possible the killer
had never committed another crime? Was he dead? Had he left the country? -It was amazing to me that there was so little evidence.
I mean, clearly there was just nothing there except for one, one piece of saliva that was found on Mia's breast.
And that was it. NARRATOR: The case went cold again. And this time, there was little hope
that it would ever be solved. But the CODIS computer program kept running night and day.
And 12 months later, the CODIS system reported a match. The DNA was from Jesus Mezquia, a Cuban exile
living in Florida. And he was no stranger to violent crime. -Who is this man? We found out that he's in the United States courtesy of Fidel
Castro from the Mariel Boatlift. We know that he was kicked out of Cuba because he was a felon.
-We had a criminal history in Florida and Arizona, nothing in Washington. And that bothered us because we figured,
well if he was here, why wasn't he messing up here? NARRATOR: Seattle investigators decided to question Mezquia,
who was out of jail and on probation. His last known address was in Marathon, Florida.
Police there told their counterparts in Seattle they wouldn't let Mezquia out of their sight.
-U.S. Marshals from Seattle contacted the people in Florida, can you check this guy out?
They said, we'll bird dog him. NARRATOR: But when Seattle investigators got to Florida,
Jesus Mezquia was gone. -We get to Marathon and there ain't no-- Jesus isn't around.
You've got to be kidding me. NARRATOR: For 10 years, Mia Zapata's murder went unsolved until a DNA database identified 48-year-old Jesus
Mezquia as the perpetrator. When Seattle police went to Florida to question him,
he was gone. -When we do get to his home in Marathon, he's not there. He's inexplicably gone.
Your paranoia once again takes over, and you think, oh, he's on to us. He's going to escape.
NARRATOR: But a few days later Mezquia returned home. He said he had been working a temporary job
on a fishing boat in Miami. Seattle investigators asked him if he was willing to answer
a few questions and he complied. He had no idea they were setting a trap. -So he's being cooperative.
And we put five pictures of people that we'd worked on on murders. And we had Mia Zapata's picture there.
Now, you've seen Mia's picture. Mia's not your average librarian. She stands out.
NARRATOR: Mezquia said he didn't recognize any of the women in the photo lineup.
-I said, what if I told you, you've killed one of these ladies. He says, no, no kill.
And he jumps up, he puts his hands out there, look, no shake. I said, OK, you're a human polygraph.
Sit down now. NARRATOR: If Mezquia said he knew Mia Zapata or spent time with her, then there
might be a plausible explanation for why his saliva was on her body. But when he said no, he sealed his fate.
-He denied ever knowing her, ever seeing her, ever having anything to do with her.
And his saliva is on her breast. I think the man's got a problem. NARRATOR: A fresh sample of Mezquia's DNA
was compared to the sample from Mia Zapata's autopsy. Again, there was a match. -And that was the smoking gun that we were able to solve
this case with, was that saliva. Had he not done this, we'd have nothing. NARRATOR: A decade after Mia Zapata's death, the killer
was finally charged. -It really hasn't sunk in yet. So I'm still in a sort of state of shock about it.
I just hope that this is real. NARRATOR: Investigators learned that Jesus Mezquia once
lived in Seattle, just three blocks from where he left Mia's body. When Mezquia was arrested from Mia's murder,
one Seattle resident called police to say she recognized his picture in the newspaper
as a man who had once exposed himself to her. -I mean, the defense was screwed at that point.
We've now got somebody who can testify-- a live person who can testify-- to what a sick puppy he is.
NARRATOR: Prosecutors believe Jesus Mezquia was out cruising the streets of Seattle when he saw
Mia Zapata walking home shortly after 2:00 AM. According to friends, Mia had been drinking.
Since she was wearing a Walkman headset listening to music, she most likely never heard Mezquia's car approach.
[car slowing to stop] Prosecutors think he abducted her. [woman screams] Then took her to a deserted location.
The DNA evidence proved he left his saliva on her body, then strangled her to death.
He dumped her body on a deserted street just blocks from where he lived. Investigators don't think the location
had any real significance. -And he just opened a car door, grabbed her hands, drug
her out, laid her there, and that's how she landed. Just happen chance. NARRATOR: In 2004, 11 years after Mia Zapata's murder,
Jesus Mezquia was tried and convicted of her murder. He was sentenced to 36 years in prison.
There was justice, thanks to an alert medical examiner who preserved forensic samples even though they
couldn't be tested at the time. -Thank god that the medical examiner saved the one piece
of DNA evidence that existed in this case. NARRATOR: It took more than a decade,
but that tiny piece of evidence and DNA technology finally caught up to a killer.
-This case did come down to a single swab. And that forward thinking by the medical examiner
paid off more than we could ever have imagined. -I'm fascinated by DNA science now.
And it's also fascinating and amazing that this medical examiner had the foresight to collect DNA
on a sample that wouldn't be viable for another 10 years. -Those swabs, I mean, were better than a smoking gun.
You know, I mean, I don't care-- I'll take, I'll take DNA over smoking gun and eyewitness any time.
And it was the whole case. It was the entire case as far as being solved was that swab.
[music playing - theme music]

Seattle police had no suspects in the violent murder of post-grunge singer, Mia Zapata. More than a decade passed before the evidence collected by a prescient medical examiner could be used by forensic scientists to identify the killer.

Forensic Files is the longest-running true crime series in television history. Evidence and interviews with experts help solve real crimes, disease outbreaks and accidents around the world.

Brief Summary

Mia Zapata's murder case was solved 11 years later through DNA evidence linking Jesus Mezquia to the crime.

Key points

Murder of Mia Zapata. The tragic murder of Mia Zapata, a rising rock star, shocked Seattle's music scene.
DNA Breakthrough. A decade later, DNA technology finally identified Mia's killer, Jesus Mezquia.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was brutal.

NARRATOR: At Mia Zapata's autopsy, the medical examiner found she had been beaten, strangled, and se

6:23WatchJan 27, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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