Zamora Cross-Examination Underway
(FORT WORTH, TEXAS - Feb. 11) One day after blaming her former love David Graham for Adrianne Jones's murder
and contradicting her alleged confessions to the murder to four different people, Diane Zamora told prosecutors
that most of the people to whom she spoke "misinterpreted" her statements.
During cross-examination by prosecutor Michael Parrish, Zamora denied that she ever told her former roommate at Annapolis
Jennifer McKearney that Jones was a tramp who deserved to die. Zamora
also claimed that she neither told McKearney that it was easy for her to give up her virginity to Graham because
she loved him so much nor that she had told her parents about her involvement in the murder. With regard to the
prior testimony of Jay Guild, she denied telling him that Jones
deserved to die and that she would do it again if given the choice. Zamora said she did not ask Guild whether he
thought she deserved the death penalty. In addition, Zamora claimed she did not tell Guild about her "bizarre
promise" to Graham that if she ever cheated on him, she would kill the person with whom she had the tryst.
When confronted about her alleged confessions to Guild, McKearney, and her former best friend
Kristina Mason, Zamora said that Guild and McKearney
only misunderstood her statements. But Zamora clearly called Mason a liar. "Kristina Mason is a liar...she has
a lot of reasons to lie," Zamora said. "I didn't give her details [about the murder] because she didn't want
to hear about it." Zamora claimed that she never gave these previous witnesses the full details of Jones's murder.
The jury was the first to hear the complete story of Jones's death.
Zamora insisted that she and Mason were not best friends during her senior year in high school because
they rarely spent time together. However, prosecutor Parrish pointed out in Zamora's own planner that she
slept over at Mason's house several times that year. Zamora claimed that she had only scheduled several
sleepovers at Mason's house, but Graham allegedly did not permit her to spend time with Mason.
Regarding her alleged confession to police, Zamora insisted that, despite testimony of previous witness
Julie Bain (a police officer who witnessed her interrogation at Annapolis), she did not initiate her
conversation (and eventual confession) to police officers. Rather, Zamora said, police detective Dennis
Clay started the conversation. Zamora also claimed that Naval attorney Patrick McCarthy had been "inaccurate"
in his prior testimony about their interview where he claimed that she expressed a desire to talk to Grand
Prairie detectives about the murder. The defendant said that she told Navy officials that she had lied to
her roommates about the murder.
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Feb. 11: Prosecutor Michael Parrish confronts Zamora
about differences between her confession and David Graham's confession. |
Prosecutor Michael Parrish then read Graham's written confession aloud in court. Parrish compared Graham's
confession with
Zamora's alleged confession. Confronting Zamora with her prior assertion that she had memorized certain
portions of Graham's confession and was only mimicking his version of the murder, Parrish asked Zamora to
explain certain discrepancies. In Graham's confession, he never mentions that Zamora asked him to go back
into the field to shoot Jones to make sure she is dead. However, Zamora voluntarily offers this information
in her confession. Zamora explained this difference in their confessions by saying, "David left a lot of
things out...his statement was very self-serving. I added some things [to the confession] because I was trying to cover up for him."
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The prosecution questions Zamora
on inconsistencies between her confession and Graham's |
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During defense attorney John Linebarger's re-direct examination of Zamora, the defendant said that before
giving sworn pre-trial depositions Mason had read Graham's confession as it was published in The Dallas Morning Star.
This implied that Mason had learned about details of the crime from the newspaper and not from Zamora. In addition, Zamora
told the jury about the camping trip in which Graham allegedly slashed a tent and slammed her head repeatedly
against the inside of the side of a truck. Zamora repeated her previous day's
testimony about Graham allegedly threatening her with a illustration he drew during her visit with him in
early September 1996, days before their arrest.
The final witness called for the day was defense forensic psychologist Michael Lobb. This expert examined
Zamora during several sessions since the spring of 1997 and claims to be an expert in dominant submissive
relationships, acute stress disorder, and implanted memory syndrome. Dr. Lobb based his opinions on Zamora's actions and relationship with
Graham on the letters she and Graham exchanged while they were in prison as well as other documents. However,
Lobb was not allowed to express his opinions because prosecutors needed time to evaluate the other documents on
which he formed his opinions. Court recessed for the day; Dr. Lobb will return to the stand tomorrow morning
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