Zamora Confession Read Aloud in Court
(FORT WORTH, TEXAS - Feb. 3) "I love you, baby. Do you believe me now?"
According to Diane Zamora's alleged confession, those were the words her former fiancee David Graham
said to her after he had shot Adrianne Jones to death on Dec. 3, 1995. These words were read aloud
in court by Grand Prairie detective Alan Patton in the second day of Zamora's murder trial. Patton obtained Zamora's confession after she was arrested by Grand Prairie detectives on Sept. 6, 1996. As Patton read Zamora's confession, jurors heard Zamora describe her anguish when Graham told her about his affair with Jones.
"I knew something was wrong with him [David Graham]....He told me, 'You haven't been the only girl in my life,'"
Patton read. "'I have had sex with someone else before.' I just looked at him in shock, and I asked did he mean he wasn't a virgin when he met me, and he said he was. I think that made me feel even worse because that meant he lost his virginity to me but that he had been with someone else since. All I could do was question him and scream."
"I just didn't want to live with what he had said to me," Patton continued to read from Zamora's confession. "I felt I had lost everything...I screamed at him, 'Kill her, kill her.' He was just so scared that he wasn't about to say no to me. I was still banging my head against the floor. All David wanted to do was make everything better. It seemed like him agreeing to do that was the only thing that calmed me down. David promised that he would do that, and David has never broken a promise to me before."
According to Patton, Zamora then told him how she and Graham carried out the plan to kill Jones. Apparently, Zamora told the detective that the plan called for Graham to take Jones out on a date and break her neck at the beginning of a sexual encounter in his car. Zamora claimed that she was only supposed to help Graham dump Jones's body in a nearby lake. (This contradicts previous reports that Zamora, not Graham, was supposed to break the victim's neck.)
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Zamora told Patton that when murder initially did not go as planned and Jones ran out of the car after being hit by Zamora with a dumbbell, Graham went after her. Jones collapsed in the field before Graham could catch up with her. Seeing this, Zamora told Patton, Graham returned to Zamora in the car and said that Jones was dead. However, Zamora felt that she and Graham could not take any chances and told him to "shoot her [Jones]...kill her!" So, Graham took his gun and went back to Jones and shot her in the head twice."
After the shooting, Zamora told Patton, she and Graham went to his friend John Green's house and changed their bloody clothes. Zamora told Patton that she actually regretted that she did not get to know Jones better because she had heard from others that Jones was a sweet person.
Under direct examination by the prosecution, Detective Patton also insisted that Zamora's confession was not coerced and that he did not promise her probation or that she could go home in exchange for her confession. Patton also denied promising Zamora that she could see Graham, who had already been arrested at the time of her confession. The detective said that he had shown Zamora parts of Graham's confession to the murder before she admitted to her role in the crime.
Zamora's defense attempted to undermine investigators' tactics in obtaining her confession. Patton admitted under cross-examination that he neither audiotaped or videotaped Zamora's alleged confession. However, Nancy Robb, a Grand Prairie Municipal judge who testified before Patton, told the defense that Zamora was fully informed of her legal rights before interrogation by investigators.
Jurors also heard testimony from David Graham's mother, Janice Graham, the first witness called for the day. Mrs. Graham told the court that while she saw many favorable qualities in Zamora, she had a few concerns about Zamora's alleged clutch on her son. Under direct examination by the prosecution, Mrs. Graham told the jurors about an incident in during which Zamora expressed her unhappiness with the sleeping arrangements during a visit with Graham at the Air Force Academy in the summer of 1996.
During this incident, Mrs. Graham said, Zamora was annoyed when she requested that Zamora sleep on the other side of the couch in Graham's living room and not with him on the floor while in Mrs. Graham's presence. (David Graham apparently liked to sleep on the floor.) According to Mrs. Graham, Zamora started bating her and said sarcastically to Graham, "It's time to go to bed. Your Mommy says you should take your clothes off and go to bed." As Zamora said this, she took off Graham's shirt in his mother's presence. The prosecution tried to use Mrs. Graham's testimony to portray Zamora as a possessive woman who was obsessed with David Graham.
The defense, however, tried to use Mrs. Graham to portray David Graham as intimidating, dominant partner in the relationship who had a tendency towards violence and weapons. This witness hesitantly conceded that her son had an interest in guns and had a tendency to be "rough" with people. However, she stopped short of admitting that her divorce from her husband (David's father) was caused by Graham's alleged rough treatment of her.
The last witness called for the day was Jay Guild, Zamora's former classmate at Annapolis. He testified that Zamora told him about her role in Jones's murder. According to Guild, Zamora told him that she had no regrets about killing Jones because the victim "needed to die" for her affair with Graham. However, Guild did not initially believe her story and did not report her to Naval officials. (Because he did not adhere to the Navy Code of Honor that requires officers to report wrongdoing by other officers, Guild resigned from Annapolis shortly after Zamora's arrest.)
Guild and Zamora became close friends during her training at the Navy Academy in the summer of 1995. He knew about her relationship with Graham, but admitted that he had a romantic interest in Zamora. Under cross-examination by the defense, Guild admitted that he and Zamora had kissed once, but did not have sex. He claimed that Zamora told him that she and Graham's relationship had been dysfunctional and that Graham had threatened Guild over his friendship with Zamora. Allegedly, Graham had threatened to harm Guild if he pursued a relationship with Zamora.
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