Diane Michelle Zamora (born January 21, 1978) is a former
United States Naval Academy
The United States Naval Academy (US Naval Academy, USNA, or Navy) is a federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy. The Naval Academy ...
midshipman and convicted
murderer who, in 1995, murdered Adrianne Jessica Jones, who she believed was a romantic rival for her ex-fiancé and accomplice, David Graham. Graham had confessed to giving Adrianne a ride home and having sex with her one month earlier, leading an enraged Zamora to demand that he kill Jones. In the early morning of December 4, 1995, Graham picked up Jones in Zamora's car while she hid in the hatchback. They went to a remote location and got into a struggle, at which point Zamora hit Jones over the head with weights and Graham shot her twice after she broke away from them.
Following the murder, Graham attended the
United States Air Force Academy
The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is a United States service academy in El Paso County, Colorado, immediately north of Colorado Springs. It educates cadets for service in the officer corps of the United States Air Force and U ...
in
Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...
,
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...
, while Zamora attended the United States Naval Academy in
Annapolis,
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
. Zamora confessed the crime to her roommates, which ultimately led to notification of the local police in
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
, where the murder occurred. Both Zamora and Graham were arrested on September 6, 1996. They were both convicted in separate trials and are currently serving
life sentences
Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes ...
. Zamora's attorney filed an
appeal in 2005, stating that
prosecution
A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the Civil law (legal system), civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the ...
withheld the information that Graham did not give Jones a ride after the meet, and probably did not have sex with Jones.
Murder of Adrianne Jones
Background
Diane Zamora and David Graham met at a
Civil Air Patrol meeting at Spinks Airport, near
Crowley
Crowley may refer to:
Places
* Crowley, Mendocino County, California, an unincorporated community
*Crowley County, Colorado
* Crowley, Colorado, a town in Crowley County
*Crowley, Louisiana, a city
* Crowley, Oregon (disambiguation)
* Crowley, Te ...
,
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
, when they were both aged 14. Zamora had wanted to be an
astronaut and Graham wanted to be a pilot. The two began dating about four years later in August 1995, when they were both high school
honor students.
Zamora was a student at
Crowley High School, and Graham was a student at
Mansfield High School.
About a month after they began dating, Zamora and Graham announced their engagement to their families. They planned to marry after their college graduations.
Graham went to school with Adrianne Jones, who was on the cross-country track team with him. Jones, known to her acquaintances as A.J., was also an honor student who planned to attend
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...
and become a
behavioral analyst. Jones's family included her mother Linda,
her father Bill and two brothers.
Graham claimed that on November 4, 1995, he had given Jones a ride home from a regional meet and that during the ride he stopped the car to have sex with her.
During her
confession
A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of persons – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information th ...
to police, Zamora said that she believed it was this night when Graham came over to her house, carrying a stuffed animal and having "this look in his eyes that was horrible, he looked so scared."
In Zamora's confession, she stated that about a month later she questioned Graham about other girls, including Jones. They got into a fight when he pressed her to study for the
SAT
The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...
. Graham then said that he had not had sex only with her, but also had sex with Jones. Zamora began screaming and hitting her head against the floor, shouting, "Kill her, kill her!" She said that beginning December 2, they tried to get in touch with Jones, and Graham continually tried to calm Zamora down.
Graham claimed in 2008 that Zamora told him that she would kill herself or leave him if he did not kill Jones.
Although they were goal-driven and intelligent, Zamora and Graham each had issues "beneath the surface" that were reflected at times in their behavior.
Court TV said that "from a surface view, no one would have expected that Diane and David would become a lethal combination. Although they both continued to advance in the military, their single-minded quests for recognition covered up deep-rooted problems leading to obsession and murder."
The crime
![Joe pool lake lynn creek park 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Joe_pool_lake_lynn_creek_park_1.jpg)
According to Graham, he and Zamora planned to kill Jones and put her in a lake with weights tied to her body. Graham called Jones on the night of December 3, 1995, and arranged to drive her to
Joe Pool Lake
Joe Pool Lake is a fresh water impoundment (reservoir) located in the southern part of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in North Texas. The lake encompasses parts of Tarrant, Dallas and Ellis counties. The lake measures with a conservation st ...
while Zamora hid in the hatchback of
her car. Zamora said in her confession that they arrived at a spot by the lake after 12:30 a.m. on December 4, 1995. She said that when Graham stopped the car she came out from the hatchback and asked Jones if she had sex with Graham. She claimed Jones said that she had, but hadn't enjoyed it because she felt guilty. Zamora became enraged.
Zamora and Graham both said in their confessions that they got into a struggle, Zamora hit Jones on the head with the weights, and Jones fought back. She got out of the car and ran into a field. Graham shot her twice with a 9mm handgun after she fell down.
According to Zamora's confession, when he returned to the car, Graham said, "I love you, baby, do you believe me now?"
Shortly thereafter, Zamora asked what they had just done, to which David answered, "I don't know. I can't believe we just did that".
They cleaned up
and/or disposed of their bloody clothes and went home.
Zamora and Graham each said that she then cleaned her car that had blood in it, and that at that time Graham was vomiting.
She wrote in her calendar for the day, "Adrianne 01:38 a.m."
The investigation and arrest
Jones' body was found in an open field on Seeton Road, near Joe Pool Lake, on December 4, 1995.
She was brought in to the medical examiner as a Jane Doe. It did not appear that she had been sexually assaulted, but it was clear that she had been shot and had "blunt traumatic head injury". The shooter had stood within a few feet of Jones when pulling the trigger. The second bullet was fired when the killer stood right over her, hitting her right between the eyes. Her body was positively identified to be the missing Adrianne Jones when the medical examiner received a photograph of Jones.
After the murder Graham went to the
Air Force Academy
An air force academy or air academy is a national institution that provides initial officer training, possibly including undergraduate level education, to air force officer cadets who are preparing to be commissioned officers in a national air for ...
in Colorado Springs and Zamora went to the
Naval Academy
A naval academy provides education for prospective naval officers.
See also
* Military academy
A military academy or service academy is an educational institution which prepares candidates for service in the officer corps. It normally pro ...
in Annapolis, Maryland. While there she confessed to the murder to her two roommates, who contacted the authorities at the academy.
The Grand Prairie police were then contacted, and Zamora and Graham were arrested for capital murder on September 6, 1996. They were held in the
Tarrant County Jail.
Graham was interrogated for 30 hours, during which he confessed to killing Jones.
Zamora also confessed to the murder during her interrogation by the police.
The key details of the event were similar; each said that Jones was killed because Graham had sex with her, she was taken to a remote lake, and she was hit over the head by Zamora and shot twice by Graham.
Both later recanted their confessions.
Graham said that he was not guilty of killing Jones, but helped cover up the murder, which he claimed Zamora committed by herself. Zamora claimed that Graham committed the murder by himself.
A 9mm handgun, alleged to be the murder weapon, was found in the attic, which could be reached through David Graham's bedroom.
The police had investigated the case for nine months.
Law enforcement officials associated with the case have stated that the sexual encounter between Graham and Jones did not happen, but was invented by Graham. Sgt. Alan Patton of the Grand Prairie Police Department stated: "For those who don't remember, this was a totally brutal, unnecessary murder. David had lied to Diane about an alleged sexual tryst that never happened with Adrianne Jones. If he had said, "I was just kidding, I was just trying to make you jealous", Adrianne Jones would still be alive today". However, Graham has since admitted that his original confession was accurate and the only reason he lied about the sexual encounter not happening was because of his defense lawyer's advice.
The trial
Zamora's two-week trial began in February 1998 in Fort Worth with Judge Joe Drago presiding.
Linda Jones, Adrianne's mother, asked that the death penalty be removed as a sentencing option from both trials.
During the trial, Zamora admitted to being at the scene of the crime, but denied participating in the killing of Jones. The Naval Academy Midshipmen to whom Zamora confessed and another witness stated that she showed no remorse over Jones' death.
The case received national media attention, providing
Court TV with some of its highest ratings ever in its film coverage of the trial. Some of the interest centered on whether Zamora was the submissive victim or the jealous driving force behind the murder. Under Texas law, murder is the intentional killing of another human being, while capital murder includes murder with an underlying felony of kidnapping, robbery, aggravated sexual assault, arson, or obstruction. In this case, the prosecutor believed that Jones was deceptively lured from her home by Graham asking her for a bogus date, or she would not have been in the car. Moreover, the couple committed obstruction when Zamora allegedly ordered Graham to stalk Jones into the field and to shoot her so that she could not tell the authorities.
The jury was asked to deliberate on the charges of capital murder or the lesser charges of assault, kidnapping, or false imprisonment. On February 17, 1998, after more than six hours of deliberations over two days, the jury found Zamora guilty of capital murder in the death of Adrianne Jones. Because of the Jones family's request that prosecutors not seek the death penalty against her, Zamora received a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment and would be eligible for
parole
Parole (also known as provisional release or supervised release) is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or ...
after 40 years.
On July 24, 1998, after a separate trial, a jury found Graham guilty of capital murder.
During the trial, Wendy Bartlett, also on the track team, and Coach Lee Ann Burke stated that Bartlett was the one who drove Jones home after the meet on November 4, 1995, and that Graham had left earlier, leaving Jones and Bartlett to put away equipment from the meet.
Graham did not drive Jones home on the night he claimed to have had sex with her, lending credence to his later recantation. However, he ultimately repudiated his recantation, saying his lawyer had pressured him to lie, and again claimed to have had sex with Jones. Adding that to Zamora's story about Jones admitting to having had sex with Graham when Zamora asked her about it just before the murder, it might be that Graham and Jones had sex at some other time.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
David Richards, Zamora's attorney, used the testimony from Bartlett and Burke as the basis of an appeal for Zamora. The petition, made in 2005, stated that the prosecution withheld this information during Zamora's trial. "From these witnesses, the state knew, and should have known, that the testimony it sponsored in support of a sexual encounter between Jones and Graham was probably false".
Due to the prominence of the case, in 2015 Tarrant County, authorities chose to keep the paper court documents of the case as historical documents even though they have been digitized.
Incarceration
![Entrance to TDCJ Mountain View Unit](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Entrance_to_TDCJ_Mountain_View_Unit.jpg)
Zamora was transferred from a jail in Fort Worth, Texas to the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails ...
. She was initially held in a state prison diagnostic unit in
Gatesville, Texas
Gatesville is a city in and the county seat of Coryell County, Texas, United States. Its population was 16,135 at the 2020 census. The city has five of the nine prisons and state jails for women operated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. ...
in February 1998,
then held at the
Murray Unit, also in Gatesville.
At one point she was held in protective custody at
Mountain View Unit
Mountain View Unit is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison housing female offenders in Gatesville, Texas. The unit, with about of land, is located north of central Gatesville on Farm to Market Road 215. The prison is located in a 45 ...
in Gatesville, but she was later moved to the general prison population in the
William P. Hobby Unit The William P. Hobby Unit (HB) is a prison for women in unincorporated Falls County, Texas, United States. Named after William P. Hobby, Lieutenant Governor of Texas, it is a part of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). It is located ...
near
Marlin
Marlins are fish from the family Istiophoridae, which includes about 10 species. A marlin has an elongated body, a spear-like snout or bill, and a long, rigid dorsal fin which extends forward to form a crest. Its common name is thought to deri ...
. she is back in protective custody in the
Lane Murray Unit. Zamora, opposed to her placement, filed a civil rights complaint with the
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the complaint was dismissed.
Graham was held at the
Ellis Unit
O. B. Ellis Unit (E1, previously Ellis I Unit) is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison located in unincorporated Walker County, Texas, north of Huntsville. The unit, with about of space, now houses up to 2,400 male prisoners. near
Huntsville
Huntsville is a city in Madison County, Limestone County, and Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Madison County. Located in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama, Huntsville is the most populous city in th ...
after the trial.
In 2016 he was held at the
Darrington Unit near
Rosharon.
he is held at the
Allred Unit in
Wichita Falls
Wichita Falls ( ) is a city in and the seat of government of Wichita County, Texas, United States. It is the principal city of the Wichita Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Archer, Clay, and Wichita counties. According ...
.
[ He is currently enrolled at the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary's inmate seminary in order to become a pastor behind bars. In 2008, Graham said that his confession to the police was correct and expressed remorse for killing Jones. He also said that if he had it to do over again he would have pleaded guilty to murder.]
Marriage
Zamora got to know Steven Mora, a fellow Texas inmate, through the mail. He had committed auto theft and burglary and was in prison for threatening someone related to one of his cases. Although they never met in person, the two decided to get married and petitioned Bexar County
Bexar County ( or ; es, Béxar ) is a county in the U.S. state of Texas. It is in South Texas and its county seat is San Antonio.
As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,009,324. Bexar County is included in the San Antonio–New Brau ...
for a marriage license in 2003. A wedding ceremony was performed on June 17, 2003. Zamora's mother and a male friend stood in for the imprisoned couple in the county's first proxy marriage, which was performed by a judge in San Antonio. They were divorced on or around 2008.
2007 interview
Zamora was interviewed by Stone Phillips on ''Dateline
A dateline is a brief piece of text included in news articles that describes where and when the story was written or filed, though the date is often omitted. In the case of articles reprinted from wire services, the distributing organization i ...
'' in a show broadcast in April 2007. Her appeals were exhausted, and with her lawyer's permission she took a polygraph
A polygraph, often incorrectly referred to as a lie detector test, is a device or procedure that measures and records several physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while a person is asked ...
test administered by ''Dateline''. Her new story was that Graham and she had been breaking up, and that Graham was using the murder to "tie her to him". She noted that she obstructed justice by cleaning the car afterwards and was an accessory after the fact; however, Zamora pointed out that the jury had convicted her of intending to kill Jones, which she denied. When she took the polygraph, the administrator repeatedly told her to stop her exaggerated breathing, a counter-measure for such tests. He said that he believed he had enough to actually say that Zamora had failed the crucial question on whether she had intended to kill Jones. Two other independent polygraph administrators, who were not at the test, were contacted by ''Dateline'' and asked to review the results; they said that they could offer no opinion due to counter-measures. Zamora responded to Phillips that she was nervous and hyperventilating despite being told all the questions in advance and reviewing them with the administrator before the test.
Popular culture
* In 1996, Ellise Pierce of the ''Dallas Observer'' wrote that the crime "has become part of Mansfield teen folklore; kids obsess about the details of the crime as if they were unraveling a plot from ''The X-Files''".
* Before Zamora's trial began, the case was the subject of a 1997 made-for-television movie called '' Love's Deadly Triangle: The Texas Cadet Murder''. Zamora was played by Holly Marie Combs
Holly Marie Combs Ryan (born December 3, 1973) is an American actress and producer. She is known for her roles as Kimberly Brock in the CBS series '' Picket Fences'' (1992–1996), Piper Halliwell in The WB series ''Charmed'' (1998–2006) and ...
.
* Two books were written about the case.
: *
: *
* Zamora and Graham's crime was discussed at length in the ''American Justice
''American Justice'' is an American criminal justice television program airing on the A&E Network. From 1992–2005, the show was hosted by television reporter Bill Kurtis. The show features interesting or notable cases, such as the murder ...
'' episode "Duty, Honor, and Murder", which aired in 1999.
* The ''Cold Case'' first-season episode " Love Conquers Al" is based on this murder.
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
*
* {{NYTtopic, people/z/diane_zamora
''Texas v. Diane Zamora''
at CourtTV.com (archived April 12, 2008)
- Crime Library
Crime Library was a website documenting major crimes, criminals, trials, forensics, and criminal profiling from books. It was founded in 1998 and was most recently owned by truTV, a cable TV network that is part of Time Warner's Turner Broadcas ...
1978 births
Living people
20th-century criminals
United States Naval Academy alumni
American female murderers
American murderers
American people convicted of murder
American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
Criminals from Texas
People convicted of murder by Texas
Place of birth missing (living people)
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Texas
People from Crowley, Texas
1995 murders in the United States
Murder in Texas
Military personnel from Texas
Criminal duos