Diane Zamora: 'I’m not a killer'

Stone Phillips Anchor • Profile

Diane Zamora and David Graham were high school sweethearts and among the nation’s best and brightest— until they were convicted of murder.

The so-called “Texas Cadet” murder case was one of the most notorious crimes of the ‘90s. The teenagers went from military academy life to life sentences for a brutal killing they covered up for almost a year. 

There was never much doubt about Graham’s role: He pulled the trigger. But Zamora claims that while she witnessed the murder and helped hide it, she never set out to kill anyone.  And the confession she gave police?  She says there’s explanation for that too. 

Is she telling the truth?  Does her story hold up under questioning? How about a lie detector test?  Below is a transcript to the “Dateline” exclusive.

Stone Phillips, Dateline anchor: What do you want people to know about you?

Diane Zamora: That I’m not a killer and that I’m not some witch.  I’m not some evil-hearted person, not even close.

It was as close as you can get to Diane Zamora— the glass divider is almost as thick as the cloud of despair that seems to surround her. The teenager who once marched so proudly at one of the nation’s elite service academies is now 29 years old, serving a life sentence at a Texas prison. As a convicted murderer, she knows that no one wants to hear about goodness in her heart. 

Zamora: People out there don’t care about what kind of person you are.  They care about evidence.  That’s what I really want them to look at, and look at it a little closer.

What happened along a country road in Grand Prairie, Texas in the early morning hours of December 4^th, 1995? Did Zamora and her boyfriend plan and carry out the murder of 16-year-old Adrianne Jones, just as they confessed?  Did Zamora demand the killing, in a jealous rage after Graham said he’d been unfaithful to her with the victim?    

In countless media reports and a made-for-TV movie, that’s how the story went.

MORE ON THE CASE Examiner's analysis of the lie detector test results Confronting Zamora with the results, analysis Read Diane Zamora's 1996 confession to police

At her 1997 trial, Zamora was convicted of capital murder, based largely on the confession she had given police.  Sergeant Allan Patton is the Grand Prairie police officer who arrested Zamora and took her statement.   

Sgt. Allan Patton: She said that the plan was to take Adrianne Jones out by the lake and to break her neck and to wipe her down and put her into Joe Poole Lake. And when Adrianne began resisting David’s attempt to break her neck or choke her, it infuriated her, that she was fighting with David.  And so she took a barbell from the floorboard and started hitting her in the back of the head with it. 

Phillips: She had missed several times and then finally landed a blow.

Sgt. Patton: Yes, sir. And that she told David, “You need to finish this.  We can’t stop here.”  And that David went over into the field and shot her with a pistol.

Shortly after confessing all that to police, Zamora claimed she’d lied. The jury didn’t believe her.

But a decade later, she still believes that testimony from the prosecution’s own witnesses proved her confession was false, that the government’s theory of the crime was flawed. She believes the story she told on the stand— the same one you’re about to hear in her first television interview— is the only one that she says fits the facts.

Phillips: What’s your version of what happened that night?

Zamora: It’s something I don’t like to talk about. And it’s something I hope I wouldn’t have to talk about it. Because it’s not something you want to remember.  It’s not something you want to relive. 

But reliving and retelling it is Zamora’s only hope of explaining away her own damning words.

Phillips: In your confession to police, you said that you told David to kill her.  “She’s not dead. Kill her.”

Zamora: I was lying. I also said I hit her in the head with a weight.  And we know that’s not true.

Zamora says to understand this twisted tale of how an attractive, athletic, fun-loving high school sophomore was murdered, you have to look at the whole sad story step by step, starting with the prosecution’s central claim—that while Graham fired the fatal shots with a semi-automatic pistol, it was Zamora who ordered him to kill her romantic rival. 

In her confession, Zamora told police, “I screamed at him, ‘kill her, kill her.’... He was just so scared that he wasn’t about to say no to me.... It seemed like him agreeing to do that was the only thing that calmed me down.” 

But it turns out investigators say Graham never had a tryst with Adrianne Jones. And Zamora’s jealous rage that was supposedly the motive? She says she suspected from the start that Graham had made up the story about Adrianne to punish her for trying to break up with him a month before the murder.

Phillips: You were breaking up?

Zamora: Yeah. And he sat  on the couch and looked at me and said, “I have something to tell you.”  And he told me he had cheated on me.  And I just started crying.  And I told him he was lying.  That was my first instinct.  He’s lying.  He’s trying to hurt me. And if he never slept with her, then how could he be trying to kill her to make up to me for sleeping with her?  It makes no sense.

But Zamora admits that because she couldn’t be 100 percent sure Graham hadn’t cheated on her, she joined him in concocting a plan.  David would call Adrianne and coax her into a late night rendezvous.

Zamora: He just said, “I wanna talk to you; and it’s about my girlfriend.”  And then I don’t know what she said.  And I heard him say, “Well, can’t you sneak out?”

Graham would take Adrianne for a ride, with Diane hiding in the trunk of her parents’ Mazda Protege. 

Phillips: Why did you go out there that night?

Zamora: I went out there to talk to her.

Phillips: Why?  About what?

Zamora: ‘Cause I didn’t believe he was telling me the truth. And maybe I just didn’t wanna believe it.  And now I know he was lying.

Phillips: But why go to those extremes?  I mean, Diane, you’re hiding in the trunk of a car.  You’re going out on this deserted lake.  I mean, it almost just doesn’t seem to square with a story that you just wanted to go out and talk to Adrianne about what had happened. 

Zamora: I didn’t know where it was gonna be.  That wasn’t my choice.  I didn’t know where we were go—where we were going.

Phillips: And what was the point of hiding in the trunk?

Zamora: He told me she wasn’t gonna wanna talk to me if I was there, which I can understand. If you slept with a guy’s girlfriend why are you gonna wanna get in a car with her there. And then when we were driving, somehow in the back of my mind, I knew something was wrong.

Zamora says the next thing she knew the car stopped. With Adrianne seated next to Graham up front, he reached into the back seat. 

Zamora: He pulled the hatch down.

Phillips: To let you out?

Zamora: To let me out, and it was really too dark to see very much. I can’t even remember her face. I know I saw her eyes at one point.  But I can’t even remember that.

She may not have been able to see very well, but Zamora says she could feel the tension escalating. 

Phillips: What else do you remember?

Zamora: I remember I was kinda mad.  And I just got mad for a second there.  And I’m like, “Well—did you enjoy sleeping with my boyfriend?”  And she just goes, “No.  There was too much guilt.”

Was Adrianne suggesting there really had been a tryst?  Or perhaps playing along with David to make Diane jealous? Zamora says she wasn’t sure.

Zamora: But something about the way she said that, there was anger. There was anger back in her voice that kinda stunned me for a second and just left me a little speechless.  And I didn’t know what else to ask.  And before I could ask anything else, she had jumped up from her seat and was fighting with him.

During the struggle, Zamora admits pulling Adrianne’s hair, but couldn’t stop the frightened 16- year-old from getting away.

Zamora: And she had gone out the window.  And I had gone after her. And I didn’t get further than the hood of the car.  And David was like, “Get back in the car.  I’ll go get her.  Get back in the car.”

And I told him, “I’m not finished talking to her yet.”  And he said, he just kept telling me, “Get back in the car.”

Adrianne Jones, a pretty, popular cross-country runner was running away.  Whether she knew how much danger she was in isn’t clear. But Zamora claims she had no idea. 

Zamora: I didn’t go out there with the intention of killing her. And when he did that, I didn’t know what to do.

Phillips: If you didn’t go out there to kill her, Diane, why did you confess?

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