Diane Zamora: 'I’m not a killer'

Diane Zamora insists she was there the night of the murder only to question, not to kill, Adrianne Jones.  But in the car that night there was a metal weight.  And Zamora herself gave investigators reason to believe that, wielding it from the backseat, she had battered her 16-year-old rival.        

Stone Phillips, Dateline anchor: In your confession to police, you said that you had hit her with a dumbbell, that you’d struck several times, you had missed her several times, then—and then finally landed one blow.

Diane Zamora: And that she had run out of the car with that blood on her head and across the street. 

According to Zamora, all those details from her confession were lies. And why would she have lied?  She would explain that later in the interview.    

Phillips: So you’re claiming she was not hit in the head when she left the car?

Zamora: No.

Phillips: Where are you saying she was first struck in the head?

Zamora: In the field.

Phillips: By David with the pistol?

Zamora: I saw the crook of his arm come down.  And then I heard the gun go off.

Phillips: But there was blood in the car.

Zamora: Yeah.

Phillips: On the passenger side door.

Zamora: Mm-hmm (affirms).

Phillips: Police believe she did bleed in the car, that she was struck in the car.

Zamora: Well, he brought her back to the car, I think to tease me or to taunt me. 

Zamora says she didn’t know if Adrianne had been hit by that first bullet fired outside the car. Again it was hard to see.  But she was unconscious and bleeding.

Zamora: I don’t know how alive she was when he brought her back. I just knew she looked dead to me. And I don’t know how long it took her to die. I saw her hair.  And I saw blood.  And I wasn’t really trying to get a good look at her.  I was terrified.  And I was crying. 

During her trial, prosecutors argued that Zamora did hit Adrianne with the weight.  But defense attorney John Linebarger pressed the medical examiner about the shape of Adrianne’s skull fracture and the object most likely to have caused it. 

(At trial) Attorney John Linebarger: Well let me ask you this, can you say for certain that any object that you’ve seen or examined is the object that inflicted that?

Medical examiner: I have seen one object that is consistent with those dimensions and that configuration, yes sir.

Attorney: Okay.  And what is that?

Medical examiner: It is the butt of a semi-automatic pistol.

And the cross-examination wasn’t done.   If, as prosecutors claimed, Adrianne had been hit with the weight inside the car, did the medical examiner really believe she would have been capable of climbing out the window and running away? 

Medical examiner: Looking at activity by persons who sustain significant head trauma like this, you would have to say that almost without exception they would, they would be rendered unconscious upon the infliction of that injury when the blow was struck.

By the time David Graham went to trial a year later, prosecutors had abandoned the theory that Zamora hit Adrianne with the weight.  Zamora says all this is key, because if she lied about the weight, it calls her entire confession into question. 

According to Zamora, what really happened is that after knocking Adrianne unconscious and dragging her back to the car, Graham took her into a field. Then minutes later, more gunshots.

Phillips: So you’re saying he brought her back to the car and then brought her back out into the field?

Zamora: Yeah. 

Phillips: What was your reaction when you heard the shots and you knew that he had killed her?

Zamora: I was in denial.

But as the reality set in, Zamora says she was anything but a cold, callous instigator who had driven her boyfriend to murder. 

Zamora: I was crying.  I was shaking.

Phillips: And Graham?

Zamora: He was calming me down and he was hugging me and had his arms around me and was saying, “It’s going to be ok, baby, it’s going to be alright.”

And that’s exactly how this friend of Graham’s described the couple when they showed up at his house just hours after the murder.

(at trial) Atty. Linebarger: When Diane came in she was whimpering  wasn’t she?

Mr. Green, Graham's friend: Yes sir, she was.

Linebarger: She was crying wasn’t she?

Green: Yes, sir.

Linebarger: She was emotionally upset, wasn’t she?

Green: That’s correct.

Linebarger: David was not crying, was he?

Green: No.

Linebarger: David was not emotionally upset, was he?

Green: No.

Phillips: What did you hope the jury would take from that?

Zamora: I hoped that they would see that if I had meant to go kill her that I would have been as calm as David.  And I wasn’t.  That I wasn’t reacting like some witch woman that was ordering a murder.  Cuz that wasn’t how it was.

Phillips: It proves you were distraught, but it doesn’t necessarily prove you were innocent, Diane. If you were so troubled by it, how is it that you were composed enough to clean up the car the next morning?

Zamora: I wasn’t.  I mean, I wasn’t composed.  I was crying when I was cleaning.  I was angry.  I was scared. 

Scared, she says, that her father would be upset that they’d messed up his car...

Zamora: All I could think, “My father’s gonna kill me.”  He was gonna go into a rage.  He’s gonna want to know what happened. 

And angry at Graham for sleeping, while she scrubbed away at the blood-stained car in her parents’ driveway. 

Zamora: I would go back to the room, periodically, where David was sleeping, and say, “Aren’t you gonna help me?  Look at what you did.  You know, you’re makin’ me do this all by myself.”  And you know, he would say he was too sleepy, or he didn’t want to back in the car, he didn’t want to face the car.

Even worse, she says, was Graham’s indifference to the enormity of what they’d done and to her growing distress.   

Phillips: How did you get through the months after this murder? Knowing what had happened?

Zamora: Well, I did, you know, attempt suicide a couple times.  I tried overdosing on some of my pain medication.  And David stopped me.  He repeatedly stopped me.

Phillips: Because this was eating away at you?

Zamora: I kept thinking about it. When I would try to talk to him, he didn’t—he would say, ‘Oh no, the house could be bugged,’ or ‘The car could be bugged.’  And there was no one to talk to.  There was nothing I could do. 

Phillips: Maybe you should have gone to police immediately.

Zamora: I know that.  Now I know that.  But at the time I was thinking with my heart and not my head.  And more than anything, I wanted to protect him.

Why was Zamora protecting the man who, she says, dragged her into a murderous plot she knew nothing about?  Or, was Diane Zamora in on it all along... and protecting herself? 

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