Posted on 12/16/2005 12:01:45 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
The husband of a Madison woman who was last seen 30 years ago is once again the primary suspect in her disappearance, police said Thursday, although they have yet to make an arrest.
Jeanette "Jean" Zapata sent her two teenage daughters and 6-year-old son to school shortly after 8 a.m. Oct. 11, 1976. They last saw her as she sat at the kitchen table in their East Side home near La Follette High School wearing blue corduroys and a striped top.
The 36-year-old flight instructor - who was divorcing her husband - was never heard from again.
Madison Police Capt. Tom Snyder said Thursday that the husband, Eugene J. Zapata, is their primary and only suspect. He lives in Nevada with his second wife.
According to a search warrant executed by police in August but kept sealed until Thursday morning, dogs trained to detect human remains reacted to two locations connected to Eugene Zapata - a crawl space in the couple's former home and a storage locker in Sun Prairie.
Two days after Jeanette Zapata's children saw her for the last time, Ivan Norton, an accountant at Frickleton School of Aeronautics, reported her missing because she hadn't come to work.
"If she told you to make an appointment at a certain time, she was there ahead of schedule to make sure it all went right," Norton, 69, said Thursday. "She was very nice and very prompt and that was the whole thing that was concerning us. She was like a time clock."
Immediately after she disappeared, her purse and other belongings, including her new car, were found at the home, but a .30-06 rifle was missing.
Investigators said in the search warrant:
Officers have questioned Eugene Zapata several times over the past 30 years and he sometimes provided contradictory statements.
Zapata told police he argued with his wife over visitation rights to their children a few days before she disappeared. The day she vanished, they met with the La Follette High School principal to discuss their oldest daughter. One time he told police he called the morning of Oct. 11 to cancel the meeting. On another occasion, he said he went to the house at 9 a.m. to pick her up.
Jean Zapata had obtained a court order that restricted his time with the children in the home to two hours on Saturday mornings.
His employment records at the state Department of Transportation indicate he worked from 7:45 to 8:45 a.m. the day she disappeared, was off work the following day, Oct. 12, and then came in to work at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 13.
He told police he took Oct. 12 off to care for his children at home, but investigators verified the children were at school.
Zapata did not respond to messages from the State Journal asking for an interview. In a 1987 State Journal article, he said he believed his former wife ran away.
"It may have been just the pressure of it because I filed for custody of the kids," Zapata said then. "She was a very strong-willed person. If she made up her mind that she wanted to disappear, she could do it."
Investigators suspected Zapata, but lacking leads they had shelved the case.
It was reactivated a year ago after one of Jean Zapata's childhood friends called asking about its status, Snyder said.
New detection techniques, including "cadaver dogs" that can find faint odors of human remains, pushed the investigation forward.
According to court documents, dogs twice signaled that they had found the scent of human remains in an unused basement crawl space at the Zapatas' former home on Indian Trace, and a human hair was excavated. Police will not say whether test results indicate that it belonged to Jean Zapata.
Eugene Zapata sold the house in 1997. In 2001, he moved to Nevada. He rented a storage facility in Sun Prairie that year and listed its contents as "boxes, mixture of son's and parent's stuff."
According to the search warrant:
On April 13, 2005, police left a message for Eugene Zapata with his wife in Nevada. The next day, the locker's key was returned to U-Store Mini Storage in Sun Prairie. The empty locker remained locked until Aug. 10 and 11 when police opened it.
Dogs detected the scent of decomposing or decomposed human remains inside and around the locker, the search warrant indicates. That prompted a search of four acres in rural Juneau County owned by Zapata since 1978.
Nothing was found on the land, which was for sale.
Snyder stopped short Thursday of saying he believes Jean Zapata was murdered by her husband and could not predict if an arrest was imminent.
But he did say he believes she met with foul play and her husband is the only suspect.
Anyone with more information can contact Crime Stoppers at 266-6014, he said.
And what about the second wife? Did she know he was suspected in the murder of the first wife? I can't imagine marrying someone with that uncertainty hanging over them.
Wonder what the kids (now adults) think happened to their mother and how their relationship with their father is.
Two days after Jeanette Zapata's children saw her for the last time, Ivan Norton, an accountant at Frickleton School of Aeronautics, reported her missing because she hadn't come to work.
Why didn't the kids report her missing?
He had an obvious motive.
He had plenty of opportunity.
He has a paper-thin alibi.
They had less on Scott Peterson than this guy.
"Why didn't the kids report her missing?"
Right, this article is completely confusing. Did he really just keep a corpse around for years, take it to Nevada, put it in a locker, kept it there for years, and nobody noticed this?
I'm sorry, this article just doesn't make sense to me. It may be just very poorly written, but it leaves more questions than anything.
"Did he really just keep a corpse around for years, take it to Nevada, put it in a locker, kept it there for years, and nobody noticed this?"
The dogs picked up the scent and they found her hair in both their old Madison home, and in a storage locker in Sun Prairie; both are in Wisconsin, within 30 miles of one another.
That same storage locker facility has yielded a number of dead bodies over the years. *Shiver*
I agree. There are some missing pieces, but since it was a cold case and they're just re-opening it, I'm assuming the cops aren't sharing all the details right now. The case evidence was sealed up until yesterday.
Stay tuned!
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