Diane Zamora: 'I’m not a killer'

Sgt. Allan Patton: I’ve been involved in 89 homicide investigations in the last 16 and a half years, and this is, without a doubt, the most senseless murder of all of those.

For nine months, the murder of 16-year-old Adrianne Jones remained a mystery.  Sgt. Allan Patton of the Grand Prairie, Texas police department.

Sgt. Patton: Her brother remembered her leaving about two o’clock in the morning.  There was no struggle, no sign of a kidnapping or forced abduction at the home.  It was as if she had just walked out of the house to go for a ride for a little while.

Police suspected that Adrianne may have known her killer.  But who could it be?

Stone Phillips, Dateline anchor: So there were just no leads?

Sgt. Patton: No sir.

Phillips: Didn’t know where to turn?

Sgt. Patton: Case was cold.

It was about to heat up.  By August 1996,  David Graham and Diane Zamora had graduated high school and entered two of the nation’s elite service academies—Graham now an Air Force cadet in Colorado, and Zamora finishing her first summer in Maryland as a midshipman at the Naval Academy. And, she says, trying to forget the bloody night that bound them together.     

Diane Zamora: I was trying to move on by then. 

Phillips: Move on?

Zamora: --without him.

Phillips: A young woman had been killed.  And you were there; and you knew.  And it was unsolved.

Zamora: I know.  I’m not saying that I reacted right.  I’m not saying that I made a bunch of right choices; because I know I didn’t.  I know I made a bunch of bad choices.  But it’s like I didn’t really know what to do. And I had never really had anyone to talk to about it.   

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

But Zamora was about to reveal their secret, when a rift developed between the now long-distance lovers. It started when Zamora became close with a fellow midshipman named Jay Guild. She says when Graham found out about this new rival, he began harassing her day and night, with threatening calls and e-mails.   

Zamora: He would explode at me.  And he even called the officials at the Naval Academy and said Jay was raping me.  Which they questioned me about.  And I told them, “That’s not true.”  I had so much stress by that point.  And for David to just keep adding to it like he was, I finally had enough.

During a Dateline interview shortly after his 1998 murder conviction, David Graham claimed he was only responding to Zamora’s pleas for help, and denied ever trying to threaten or control her.     

Phillips (1998 interview): “You are mine.  and no one else can ever have any of you. I earned you.  I own you.  You belong completely, one hundred percent to me.”

David Graham: Well, you’re only seeing one side of those letters.

Phillips: Is that not controlling?

Graham: She had me thinking, you know she was being abused by this guy.

Phillips: But David, you’re not talking about coming here and taking care of Jay Guild, you’re talking about coming here and getting her. “You better never be around Jay again, or I’ll do something drastic.  I’ll come and get you and that’s no lie.” That sounds like a threat to Diane.

Graham: I didn’t... at the time I didn’t know how to... I just didn’t know how to deal with something like that.

And Zamora didn’t know how to deal with his possessiveness. One night at Annapolis, she did what they’d both sworn never to do.  She talked.

Zamora: I don’t know what I was thinking.  Maybe I wasn’t thinking.  I was just reacting.  At that time when I got that e-mail, emotionally, it was like a dam burst in me. And I was like, “ I’m tired of this.”   

Phillips: Do you think you wanted to be caught?

Zamora: I think I wanted out.  And I couldn’t.  He wouldn’t let me.  He was threatening to kill Jay. He he would threaten me.  He would threaten me over the phone constantly.  Even all those miles away, I couldn’t live in peace. I just had to say something. I was tired.  And part of me just wanted to get rid of it all, to do away with it all and just get it out.

What Zamora told two roommates in separate conversations was so startling they were honor bound to report it.  Their accounts of what she’d said differed in some ways, but the basic story was the same— that a young girl in Texas had paid a terrible price for coming between Zamora and her boyfriend. And Diane, they said, didn’t seem bothered by it at all.  Zamora had also shared her secret with Jay Guild. And his description to Dateline was just as damning.    

Jay Guild: She just basically said that “I told him to kill her.” She felt she deserved it because she intruded on something that was hers.  And she said if she had to, she’d do it again.

Zamora: That’s not what I said.  I said that because of me someone was dead, and I believed that. And I felt it was my fault. And I had even come to blame Adrianne,  I turned a lotta my hatred towards her, because I couldn’t turn it towards David.  I had to blame somebody. And I didn’t even know her.

But if David Graham really acted alone, as Zamora insists, why would she hold herself responsible in any way for the murder?  She claims that after Graham shot Adrianne in the head, he wasted no time getting inside hers.

Zamora: He said he did it because of me.  That it was my fault, that I made him do it, and that’s what he told me immediately after. I made him do this. 

And just because Graham said it, she believed it? As capable and confident as she seemed, Zamora says she was no match for David Graham, that beneath his boyish exterior was a master manipulator who dominated her mentally and physically.   

Zamora: He would hit me.  He would strangle me. And then he would have sex with me.

David Graham (Dateline 1998 interview): I never did anything to hurt her.  I never dominated her.  You know the crazed sex, that was all just a story to get the jury on her side.

Phillips: You didn’t try to strangle her with a belt?

Graham: No, she tried to strangle herself with a belt a few times, but not me.

Phillips: He says he never strangled you.  That you—

Zamora: Oh.

Phillips: --strangle yourself.

Zamora: Oh (laughs).  All right.

Phillips: In an attempt to make him believe that you were suicidal. 

Zamora: He used to hold a gun to my head too. And he tried to have sex with me with a gun.

Zamora insists the violent fantasies were his not hers, and that even on the night of the murder when she was hiding in the trunk she worried what he might do.  Not to Adrianne, but to her.    

Zamora: I was terrified back there.  And one of my first thought was, “He’s gonna kill me.”

Phillips: He’s gonna kill you?

Zamora: That’s what I was thinking—and then I thought “No, he would never kill me.  He loves me.” 

Zamora says her wildly conflicting feelings toward Graham are what caused her to spill their secret, then just as quickly, try to take it back.  When authorities at Annapolis questioned her about what she had told her roommates, she could have come clean and broken Graham’s grip on her.  That’s not what Zamora did. 

Zamora: When they called me in, I told them, “I lied.  I was just—“  I told them, “I—I lied.” You know, I was trying to make him think I was tough. And you know, I just wanted to take back everything I had said.

As bizarre as it sounds, Zamora says all she could think about was protecting the one person from whom she needed protection—David Graham.

Zamora: I never wanted to hurt him. Even now. I know he’s done all this. Even now I can’t wish him hurt. Because a part of me will always love him. As horrible as he’s been, the horrible things he’s done. I can’t just hate him. And I’m not saying that’s reasonable. I know it’s not.

But the damage had already been done.  Officials at Annapolis sent Zamora home for two weeks while police investigated.  Despite her denials, she remained a suspect in the murder of Adrianne Jones. And what she did next raised even more suspicion.  She’d only been home in Texas for a few days when she boarded a plane for Colorado to see Graham.

Phillips: You say you wanted out of the relationship.  But you left Annapolis; and you went to see him in Colorado.

Zamora: Uh-huh (affirms). And I told him, “You know, I’m leaving because they questioned me and I wanna see you; I miss you.”  And he said, “It’s all right.  I love you.  Come see me.”

And that was a little scary.  I thought, “Oh no.  He’s luring me there and he’s gonna beat me up when I get there.” I waited ‘til everyone got off the plane.  And then I finally got off. And I was just terrified. I couldnt even look at him. I kept lookin’ at the floor.  And he lifted up my chin; looked at me, and said, “I love you.”  And I just broke down crying.

Phillips: What did he say about the fact that you had talked about this?  Was he upset?

Zamora: He didn’t act upset.  He acted really calm.  Which made me love him even more.  I thought, “How can I mess up like this, and him not want to strangle me?”  But he seemed like it was… just be all right.

It was parents’ weekend at the Air Force Academy. Graham’s mother and sister were visiting, as well.  David and Diane slipped out when they could for time alone.  What did they do when they were together?  More importantly, what did they talk about?  Was Zamora there to patch things up with her volatile boyfriend?  Or to meet with her accomplice and get their stories straight, as police closed in?  

Phillips: I asked David did the authorities put words in your mouth in your confession?  And he said “No, Diane did.”

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