http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/index.php?ntid=65383&ntpid=0
Jeanette Zapata case reopened
Husband is main suspect in 1976 disappearance
By Steven Elbow
December 16, 2005
Madison police have reopened a nearly 30-year-old case of a missing woman with her former husband as the primary suspect.
Jeanette L. Zapata was 36 when she vanished from her east side home on Oct. 11, 1976, after seeing her three children off to school.
Zapata, a flight instructor at the Frickelton School of Aeronautics at Truax Field, was in the midst of a messy divorce with her husband, Eugene, who is now 68 and living with his second wife in Henderson, Nev.
In recent months, police have taken cadaver dogs to two locations connected with Eugene Zapata, where the dogs alerted officers to the scent of decomposing human remains. A search warrant unsealed in Dane County Court today states that the dogs can detect the scent of a decomposing body decades or even centuries after a death.
In December 2004,
two cadaver dogs had separate hits in the basement of the Zapatas' former home at 5705 Indian Trace, where a forensic anthropologist excavated human hair.
And on Aug. 10 and 11 of this year,
two cadaver dogs separately alerted officers to decomposing human remains at a Sun Prairie storage locker that Eugene Zapata maintained until April 14 of this year.
The search warrant unsealed today was the result of an Aug. 15 search, also using cadaver dogs, of a 4-acre wooded lot owned by Eugene Zapata in the town of Fountain in Juneau County. The dogs found nothing there, the warrant states.
Zapata has not been charged or arrested and police today would not say if their investigation will extend to Nevada.
Police spokesman Mike Hanson said that the case was reopened when a good friend of Jeanette Zapata called detectives to inquire about the case.
"Detective staff reviewed it and said they need to go further," he said.
After Jeanette Zapata's disappearance, her husband emerged almost instantly as a suspect but investigators could not turn up enough evidence to charge him.
"There were other people we talked to, but they were all cleared with thorough alibis," Hanson said.
According to information in the search warrant, Eugene Zapata, a former state Department of Transportation employee, offered several conflicting accounts of his activities the day his wife went missing.
He admitted to detectives that he had argued with his wife three days before the disappearance over visitation rights. Barred by court order from the Indian Trace residence, Eugene Zapata was allowed there only between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Saturdays.
But the couple's disputes went beyond visitation, the warrant states. About a month before Jeanette Zapata vanished, her husband hired a private detective to follow her for five days "because her husband thought she was screwing around," the detective, Joseph Cerniglia, told police.
A friend of Eugene Zapata, Robert Coleman, told police that he often saw him sitting in the parking lot of the Left Guard, a bar frequented by Jeanette Zapata.
After her disappearance, a search of the Indian Trace home turned up a 20-gauge shotgun, but failed to locate a 30-06 rifle that was also supposed to be at the home, the warrant states.
Jeanette Zapata was believed to have been the only practicing female flight instructor in the Madison area, according to news accounts published at the time, and had taught her husband to fly.
After her disappearance, Eugene Zapata said that his wife likely left because he had filed for custody of the children. He suggested that she may have hired a business in Champaign, Ill., that specialized in creating new identities for people who wanted to vanish and start a new life.
E-mail:
selbow@madison.com
Published: 9:47 AM 12/16/05
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Exerpt from
http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/index.php?ntid=65363&ntpid=5
Zapata told police he argued with his wife over visitation rights to their children a few days before she disappeared. The day she vanished, they met with the La Follette High School principal to discuss their oldest daughter. One time he told police he called the morning of Oct. 11 to cancel the meeting. On another occasion, he said he went to the house at 9 a.m. to pick her up.
Jean Zapata had obtained a court order that restricted his time with the children in the home to two hours on Saturday mornings.
His employment records at the state Department of Transportation indicate he worked from 7:45 to 8:45 a.m. the day she disappeared, was off work the following day, Oct. 12, and then came in to work at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 13.
He told police he took Oct. 12 off to care for his children at home, but investigators verified the children were at school.
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I couldn't locate a reference as to what happened to the kids after their mother died. Since the ex had already filed for custody, its very possible that he got it.... but I couldn't find any confirmation on that.
but it would be interesting to hear their story after all these years....
