She was said to be the female equivalent or “Janis Joplin of grunge music”. Mia Zapata from an early age showed a great passion for art, but music was her greatest passion. In the fall of 1986, together with her friends, she founded The Gits and began her meteoric career.
She had a bright future ahead of her. She died on the day of the last concert of the tour
Initially, the group performed on local stages, but in the late 1980s they moved to Seattle, where they began to play concerts for larger audiences. In the meantime, they recorded three singles and debuted on the phonographic market with the album “Frenching the Bully”, collecting only positive reviews. The culmination of their success was a tour of the US West Coast, during which they performed with TAD and Nirvana. It was then that Zapata was first described as the female version of Kurt Cobain.
On July 6, 1993, the band performed for the last time before the break, which was dictated by the start of work on the next album. After the successful concert, Zapata and the musicians went to the Comet tavern in Seattle to celebrate the success. The singer left the pub before midnight because she was scheduled to meet her ex-boyfriend, Robert Jenkins. They arranged to meet at the rehearsal room a block away, but the man wasn’t there. So she visited a friend who lived a few floors above and left the building around 2 am.
Less than 1.5 hours later, the police received information about the discovery on a street in the city center. Zapata wasn’t identified until the mortuary because the pathologist was a fan of The Gits and recognized her immediately. An autopsy showed that the 27-year-old was first beaten and then brutally raped and with sweatshirt strings. No traces were secured on her body other than foreign saliva, but such DNA material was not in the database at the time.
The DNA from the saliva made him guilty. The man was sentenced
A large-scale investigation did not yield any clues to explain what happened to the singer after leaving a friend’s apartment. Jankins was initially suspected, but the man had a solid alibi. The case stalled for nearly a decade. It was not until 2002 that the documents were transferred to the Unsolved Cases Department. It was then that another attempt was made to identify the saliva secured on the victim. The effects were astonishing.
It turned out that the DNA belonged to a then 48-year-old fisherman, Jesus Mezquia, who already had an extensive criminal record. Although the man lived in the Florida Keys, the arrest record showed that he had been in Seattle at the time of Zapata. During interrogation, he pleaded not guilty. He began calmly and cooperated until he was asked if he had raped or killed anyone in Seattle. At that moment, he stood up, stretched out his hands and declared loudly: “Look, I’m not shaking, I’m telling the truth” – the prosecutor. Finally, in early 2003, the man was arrested, and on March 25, 2004, after an eight-day trial, he was sentenced to 37 years in prison. Jesus Mezquia passed away on January 21, 2021.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
