my dad on the phone, he told us jenny was gone. >> a house in flames. the body of a woman inside. >> we have a body. i need medics. >> but it wasn't the fire that killed her. she was dead before it started. >> accidents will happen. this was no accident. >> who wanted her dead? her boyfriend said he knew. >> there are people after us. >> what's that mean? >> they're trying to get us. >> but police knew better. >> strangling someone is a very

personal killing. that's a very angry killing. >> hello, and welcome to "dateline extra," i'm craig melv melvin. at first the fatal fire that struck a young couple's home appeared to be an accident. then investigators took a closer look and what they discovered around the fire and this couple left them with burning suspicion. here's keith morrison. >> is everybody out of the house? >> i don't know. it's on fire. really strong. >> the fire in the cottage on addison avenue was hungry. devouring almost everything in the bedroom. >> all right. we'll have fire department on the way. do you see smoke coming out of the windows? >> it's pouring out of from inside the house. >> within minutes, firefighters knocked it down. the smoke clearing. the city water running the streets. and then as the mop-up began, the word flashed out like something electric, the house

was occupied, someone didn't get out. and up through the ashes a mystery flared like a stubborn ember, glowed and smoldered and demanded an answer. the inhabitants of the rented cottage as investigators soon learned were two young beautiful peop people, sort of glossy and successful types you might expect to see on some reality show. their names were paul zumot and jenner in skipsi. jennifer an ambitious award winning real estate agent who lived like a rock star, or so said her buddy, roy. >> you know, she'd be, like, i'm knocking them out with dominos, baby, i just worked out, went to starbucks and i'm on my way to a meeting and it's only 6:33. >> so paul seemed to be just the right kind of guy for jennifer, said roy. >> because he was an entrepreneur and he seemed like he was a very driven person. and that's definitely the quality that jennifer was

looking for. >> jordanian american, paul, sleek, attractive, educated, enga engaging. paul owned a local hangout, a cafe. unusual place by north american standards, where customers could smoke flavored tobacco through water pipes called hookahs. the place and paul were popular. she was a fan. >> he's a good looking guy. he looks good. he smells good. he presents well. he's witwitty. he's senator. he's affectionate. >> so love at first sight? well, maybe, said their friends. >> from the minute that he told me about her, he always talked about how wonderful she is, how she's perfect. >> he definitely was very charismatic and he liked to joke around. >> and money? there was a lot of it around, apparently, too. and jennifer and paul having worked hard to get it seemed

only too happy to spend it. >> when jennifer and paul first got together, paul took jennifer to new york city. >> and i remember he was like a kid in a candy store, just planning all these elaborate wonderful things that they were going to do together. >> they were passionate, these beautiful people. they both had strong personalities. their love burned hot. >> squen fjennifer was a very s independent woman and she would not accept anyone disrespecting her. or even looking at her inappropriately. and she was very strong willed in that. >> me, like i always did, told him you need to be careful, you know? because girls can be evil. so he said, no, she's different. i love her. you know, i already love her, she's great. >> so in september of 2009, paul and jennifer moved into that charming little cottage on addison avenue here in palo alto. time to play house. paul started to think about

marriage. and for paul's 36th birthday, jennifer planned a party full of promise. >> she invited most of his close friends to dishdash, one of his favorite restaurants. and i think they had over a dozen people there. almost 20 people or something. jennifer created a cute table setting. she created the perfect party for paul. cake and everything. >> in fact, people who were there described the party as almost like a wedding reception. it lasted through the evening into the wee hours of the monk. and now here it was just the very next evening and it was gone. in ashes. all of it, the excitement, the glamour, all of it, the promising dpupromise ing future, up in smoke along with the house in addison. and the person inside -- >> we have a beody. i need medics in place. swre

we have a body badly burned. >> the next day jim skipsi was driving with his parents to a dinner engagement. his phone rang. it was an old friend. he picked it up. >> i said, jake, you're going to tell me something bad, aren't you? he said, jim. >> just kept repeati ining your name? >> yeah, said three times i guess so. i said, jake, hold on, man, i got to pull over. i didn't want to hear it. i didn't want to hear what he had to tell me so i gave the phone to my dad. and he told my dad. my dad hung up the phone and me and my mom, we were all holding each other. and he told us, jenny was gone.> it was his jennifer, his daughter who died in that fire. daughter who died in that fire. now along with almost unbearable

grief, something else started to burn inside jim. something searing. it was suspicion. >> you know, accidents will happen. there's a lot of tragic things that happen to a lot of people in this world. but this was no accident. it didn't have to happen. coming up -- police give paul the bad news. >> i don't know how to tell you this, man, but there's a body in the house. it's been burned. >> when "burning suspicion" continues. whoooo.

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welcome back to "dateline extra." jennifer skipsi and paul seemed like a perfect couple. she a gorgeous and successful real estate agent and he a handsome entrepreneur. they were both passionate about

their lives and passionate about each other. but one day, a terrible house fire left one of them dead and the other facing questions from investigators. here again is keith morrison. >> while the deadly fire was burning at his home on addison avenue, paul was as his hookah lounge just minutes away. someone called, told him about the fire. he rushed over but could only pace helplessly back and forth. as firefighters did their jobs. soon after that, he sat down with palo alto police to try to help sort out what happened. though as you can see in the video recording of the meeting, sat is not the best description. paul was full of nervous energy and frantic questions. at this point, no one told him jennifer was in that fire. >> i'm worried about my house. worried about my girlfriend. what caused the fire? i don't care about this. i want to know about jennifer right now. >> i'm not sure i know any more than you do. my job is basically to talk to

you and find out what exactly you know. you probably know more than me at this point. >> no. >> so together he and police talked about the hours before the fire. where she had been, what thhad e and paul been doing? >> yesterday was my birthday. went out. everything was fine. >> who's we? >> me and her and all the friends. >> who's her? >> jennifer. >> that's your girlfriend? >> yeah. >> paul explained to police that he spent the afternoon at an appointment in san jose, got back to palo alto in time for his cafe to open for the evening. >> there was traffic. i got to the cafe because that's when they opened. i had to log into the computers. and as soon as i sat down, i have a smoke at the hookah lounge. started smoking, my landlord calls me, says your house is on fire. i flew through the red lights and came here. now i am really frustrated. i'm really confused.

i'm really exhausted. i want to know what happened. i care less about the house. my jennifer's safety. i can't think anything right now, guys, to be honest with you. i cannot think anything. >> then in the middle of his conversation with detectives, paul's phone rang. it was jennifer's mother who told him he hadn't seen or heard from her daughter. you can see what happened. paul fell to pieces. >> yeah. i know. i know. yeah. i know. i can't find her. >> to this point, he told detectives he'd been clinging to the hope that jennifer might be with her mother, anywhere really, but at home? she wasn't with her mother, wasn't anywhere. and that's when the officer broke this news. >> i don't know how to tell you this, man, but there's a body in the house. it's been burned. we have no way of knowing who that is.

>> i need to get out of here. get out of here, please. >> okay. i'm trying to be as sensitive as i possibly can be. i understand this is your -- you know, i don't know that this is jennifer. >> i hope not. i hope not. >> listen, we have not confirmed who this is. but it's a really, really odd set of circumstances, okay? we need to figure out is this on purpose, is this an accident? okay. this is just, unfortunately this is just the beginning for all of us, okay, to try to answer some questions. okay?

>> but, of course, it had to be jennifer and it probably wasn't an accident. as that news sank in, paul began to think about who may have wanted to harm jennifer and came up with some potentially helpful information. two brothers, hisham and tony gonma, they'd already threatened her, said paul, there'd been a confrontation just weeks earl r earlier. >> so what happened is he called me, told me he's going to kill me. he spoke in arabic. i speak arabic fluently. he spoke to her. we called the police. >> he and jennifer had filed rye straining orders against both brothers. >> shes was scared from him. i'm scared from the guy. i know these guys like this. yesterday she walked home and said, hey, somebody was probably stalking me. >> had the brothers killed her, too? police listened, took some notes and then just as a precaution, of course, had paul give them

his clothes for forensic testing. questioned by police, his home destroyed, his girlfriend dead, paul zumot was very nearly in shock, said his friend, nikita. >> his mind was that are they sure jennifer's gone? and oh my god, she's never coming back. >> and as the weeks went by, she said, paul was in a kind of daze. >> the gist of our conversations for the first few weeks were the fact that jennifer's not coming back. he was completely destraut about the fact that jennifer was in that fire. >> meanwhile, as those same weeks went by, investigators went quietly and steady about their task. picking through the cinders of the fire and coming to the conclusion that none of it smelled right. literally. coming up -- was gasoline there? >> no question at all. it was in her hair. you can smell it and smell it when you walked in just with your own nose. >> investigators now knew the

fire was not an accident. what they discovered next was an even bigger shock.

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maybe that's why most of our clients come from other money managers. fisher investments. clearly better money management. welcome back to "dateline extra." investigators believe the fire that killed jennifer schipsi was no accident, but who would have wanted her dead and why? here again is keith morrison. >> the morning after the fire on addison avenue, the ruins still

warm, a yellow lab named rosie sniffed around what was by then a sealed crime scene. rosie was trained to identify some of the tools of arson -- kerosene, oil, gasoline. rosie stopped in her tracks. she'd apparently found something. chuck gillingham is a deputy district attorney in palo alto. was gasoline there? >> no question at all. it's in her hair. you can smell it when you walked in just with your own nose, and in fact, the remnants of the gas can was found next to her right hip. so there was still enough remnants of the gas can for us actually to identify the type and make and model of the gas can. >> wow. that's like somebody leaving a gun beside the body with their fingerprints all over it, isn't it? >> to fingerprints, obviously, and no physical evidence beyond that. >> but it was so clear that it was an arson? >> correct. and the arson was not at issue. >> no, it was cold-blooded murder that was at issue because jennifer schipsi did not die in the fire.

according to forensic experts, she was dead before the fire started. the method? a particularly intimate form of killing. death by strangulation. >> strangling someone is a very personal killing. it's a very angry killing. it's not like shooting someone from a long way away, i don't imagine. i mean, you're absolutely touching the person and feeling their life's blood ebb from them. >> who could have been so angry with jennifer? paul had told detectives that he and jennifer had taken out restraining orders against those brothers, hisham and tony ghanma. both part of his social circle, men whom he considered former friends. >> they're trying to get us. they are trying to harm me. >> who is that? >> hisham. that's the guy, okay -- >> the guy you have a restraining order against? >> several restraining against him. he hit me. he has a restraining order against me. >> and just one night before, after paul's birthday party celebration, paul told police some guys in a truck tried to

follow jennifer home. >> she had broken her heel and she says somebody was stalking her. it's fine. it's okay with me but we had people threatening us in the past, okay? i don't know what's going on. i believe that's what caused the fire. i believe somebody was threatening us. okay. >> so was paul zumot on to something? detectives went to talk to the brothers and, of course, checked to see where both men were the day of the fire. and there was no doubt they were nowhere near the fire. they had alibis. >> at the time of the fire, we know exactly where both of them were. one of the brothers was in their cafe, he's on videotape. the other was at fry's electronics and home depot about 20 miles away. we have videotape and receipts from both of those locations. >> so once the ghanma brothers were in the clear, the cops did what they always do in cases like this. in fact, it's practically police work work 101.

they took a closer look at the victim's boyfriend, paul, and there was a curious moment in that police interview the day of the fire when paul admitted he wasn't always the best sort of boyfriend. >> me and my girlfriend were broke up, and thanks to palo alto pd, put an emergency restraining order on me in august because she said paul threatened me, blah, blah, blah. i said, no, she came to the cafe and broke the door. in my cafe. we always had problems like this, me and her. i never touched a girl in my life. you can see the police reports. >> suspicious? sure. but as they asked around among the couple's friends, police learned a few things that put paul's behavior into context. maybe he wasn't any more to blame than she was. >> their relationship was chaotic. there's no disputing that, absolutely. but he was no more violent in the relationship than she was. whether it be physically, verbally, emotionally.

>> as police gathered evidence, bit by bit, asking around about paul, one of them noticed something a little odd. paul told a friend, also a policeman, by the way, two slightly different stories about his whereabouts the day of the fire. first conversation, day of the fire, reported the cop friend, paul said he wasn't home all day. then, second conversation, next day, paul said he stopped briefly at home en route to his hookah cafe. as we say, odd. but people's memories can be tricky. was that one little difference enough to add up to suspicion of murder? police apparently thought so, especially once they added that to the rest of what they discovered. paul was arrested. >> i'm going to wait for my attorney. >> what's that? >> i will wait for my attorney. >> okay. >> they charged paul zumot with arson and murder, which struck some observers as strange.

after all, there had been just that one little inconsistency. and although paul and jennifer did fight sometimes, they seemed crazy in love, too. paul had been shopping for a diamond ring, for heaven's sake. >> there was a part of paul that was mourning his girlfriend, and then there was a part of him that was -- he didn't understand why he was in custody. and he didn't understand why he couldn't just cry for his girlfriend and for his life that had just changed 100%. >> it certainly did. paul zumot was taken to jail to await trial on a charge of murder in the first degree. big mistake, said paul zumot. >> when i first saw him, he -- all he was really still telling me is, you know, me being in custody, all of this is going to blow over with. you know, they're going to realize i'm not the person who did this, and this will be over with.

coming up -- drawing back the curtain for a peek of life with paul. in jennifer's own words. >> sweeps her off her feet. candles everywhere. flowers. >> when "burning suspicion" continues. my bladder leakage was making me feel like i couldn't spend time with my grandson. now depend fit-flex has their fastest absorbing material inside, so it keeps me dry and protected. go to depend.com - get a coupon and try them for yourself.

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welcome back to "dateline extra." i'm craig melvin. on the surface paul zumot and jennifer schipsi seemed like a match made in heaven but a prosecutor believed he had plenty of evidencecontrary. here, again, is keith morrison. >> in the days after the fire on addison avenue, after paul zumot was charged with murder and hauled off to jail, events in palo alto seemed to freeze somehow. in confusion and denial from paul's point of view and unrequited grief among the people who loved jennifer. >> it hurt. it hurt a lot. >> unrequited partly because for some reason though he'd been arrested, paul wasn't entering a plea which is what this was all about. candlelight vigils outside of paul's hookah lounge by jennifer's friends and family. >> we decided to stand in front of his establishment every night until he made his plea. >> eventually, no surprise, paul

did plead not guilty. and prosecutor chuck gillingham found himself sifting through the records of a two-year romance studded with restraining orders, bitter quarrels, scratches, bruises, 911 calls. >> i mean, these were two people, makeups and breakups and she gave verbally as good as she got. >> after one of their flare-ups, paul was ordered to attend anger management classes. went to one the day of the fire, in fact. so why did people who fought so much stay together for so long. there was an audio recording of jennifer herself. gillingham got hold of it. listen to her explanation. >> he wins your heart so the first couple of months is amazing. sweeps you off your feet. candles everywhere, flowers, not money items but just romancing, sweet talking and parading you around and wanting to introduce you to everybody. it gets me loving him and

admiring him that he admires me, and then it makes me trust his opinion and what he says about me and thinks about me so then as soon as he gets to that point, he flips it and calls me ugly, fat, a gold digger. >> by the way, the person she's talking to is hisham ghanma. remember, he's one of the brothers paul told police he and jennifer were afraid of, but here she was in confiding in him. mind you, it's a phone conversation that was recorded a few months before the fire, but then she was not happy about paul, not at that point, anyway. >> i have pictures of the damage that he did to all of my furniture. he kicked in my car. somebody saw him at starbucks spit in my face on my way to work. >> but things clearly changed after that. remember, they were all lovey-dovey and paul was even talking marriage the night before the fire.

and now here he was not much more than a year later on trial for her murder. listening to prosecutor chuck gillingham take the jury inside the last days of paul's relationship with jennifer. how did gillingham do that? jennifer's cell phone. detectives discovered -- and this was rather curious -- that most of her text message history had been deleted. but law enforcement has changed a lot. it's had to to keep up with high-tech. the palo alto cops managed to find a phone expert all the way across the country in new hampshire who had a very deep look into that cell phone and was able to pull up thousands, literally thousands of deleted text messages between jennifer and paul in the last few months of her life. and, oh boy. from jennifer "you're nothing but a selfish coldhearted ungrateful human being scam artist liar." furious. that didn't read like any old quarrel.

and the timing? jennifer sent that text to paul right at the end of the elaborate birthday party she threw for him when she had perhaps 12 hours left to live. in fact, she was so upset about something that she refused to go to the hookah lounge after the party. walked all the way home on a broken heel texting all the way. jennifer -- "good, stay away from me. i just got home." paul, "i'm staying away this time for good. what a way to end my birthday." >> for jennifer to walk home alone at night with a broken heel and upset, she had to have been -- i don't even know if i've ever seen her that mad. >> but that was the night before. angry messages buzzing back and forth. then, as the cell phone revealed, the pair made love during the night before jennifer's morning text messages again turned red hot angry. the subject seemed to be a debt

she claimed he owed her. >> right around 10:30, 10:45 into 11:16 roughly in the morning, she's now referring back to those text messages and telling him he better bring a check and don't come back or she's going to the san jose police department to file charges by 3:00 that day. and that's the last text message anyone has with her, the last contact she has ever with anyone. >> that said, gillingham, just before noon, is when paul lost his temper and choked jennifer to death, then drove to a gas station, bought a can of gasoline, later returned home, torched the house. and somewhere along the way, said the prosecutor, he erased it all of those angry text messages she sent him. >> every single one between the defendant and her, every single one is gone. months worth. >> and then paul used jennifer's cell phone to send fake texts to her friends so they believed she was still alive.

to support that claim, gillingham introduced an expert witness who testified that texts from paul's phone and texts from jennifer's home were hitting some of the same cell towers all afternoon. so her phone must have been right there with him in his car, which is why when she missed a meeting with her friend, roy, the texts he got from her didn't make sense. they weren't a sensible response to the message he sent her. in fact, he got the same text twice. >> she didn't show up, and her phone was off. so as soon as i got that repeat text message, i was kind of worried because she wasn't responding to what i was saying. >> jennifer was nowhere to be found. jennifer was dead. >> now what prosecutor gillingham wanted the jury to think about is what happened or didn't happen much later after the fire. here was the scene, house burning, paul standing on the street outside watching the fire. at this point he supposedly didn't know if jennifer was

inside or outside, whether she was alive or dead. but -- >> in the time he was there, he made 38 calls and text messages two of which went to jennifer. and neither occasion did he leave jennifer a message. hi left messages for others. he spoke with others. he text messages the same friend multiple times. but in that two-hour period, at no time does he leave that location to look for jennifer perhaps, to go to the other side of the blocked off street. >> you know, if he called her and texted her once, surely that's enough. i mean, she'll call him back. >> the cell phone records actually bear out that he's a person that would call or text her 200 to 300 times a day if he wasn't around her, able to get a hold of her. his silence especially at the crime scene was deafening. because there was no text message, would submit, and i did to the jury, that he stood at that location because he wanted people to see him there. >> how could the jury be sure that paul was guilty? prosecutor gillingham offered

her. remember rosie, the skillful police dog trained to alert to the faintest whiff of accelerant of the sort used in arson fire? she alerted when she smelled some of paul zumot's clothes. suspicious? yes. though, not exactly ironclad evidence. as you'll see, courtesy of paul's high-profile defense attorney, the man famous for defending scott peterson. his name, mark geragos. >> i've had many a client who i have no doubt was capable of the acts that they were accused of. this is just not one of them. coming up -- in the last hours of jennifer's life, something was caught on camera. does it prove paul is not guilty? >> so you had sex last night with her and videoed it? >> yeah. >> anybody who watches this is never going to have the impression that this was somebody who was ready to kill her. >> when "burning suspicion" continues. [ doorbell rings ]

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vchipsi? a whole new light. here again is keith morrison. >> defense attorney mark geragos has made a name for himself defending clients in difficult and highly celebrated cases, not the least, the scott peterson trial. but defending paul zumot would present its own set of challenges. zumot was accused of killing his girlfriend jennifer schipsi and then trying to hide that fact by burning the house down. but as the trial began, he had also been pegged by the prosecution as an abuser, a violent man, an image geragos set out to change. >> they both were passionate, romantic at times, hot at times, as you would characterize it. i don't think it was a one-way street, by any means. >> for a start, geragos tried to weed out possible jury members who might have been unduly swayed by angry text messages or stories about zumot's temper. >> what jurors do or what you want to get a jury to do is to want to help your client and to kind of walk in the shoes of

your client. >> and then when he presented his case, geragos set out to reframe the events after that infamous party the night before the fire. >> the party was at a place and it was for paul's birthday. and it was planned by jennifer and the -- and maybe 14 to 18 of their close friends that were there. and by all accounts at the party, everything was great. >> and the argument later, the angry texts? that was just a way that paul and jennifer always were, said geragos. his proof? after those angry text message exchanges, here's what happened, as zumot described in his police interview. >> we talked, we smoked hookah. everything is fine. we did what we did, you know. and we slept together and we took two xanaxes. she took two more before me and we went to bed.

and i got up at 11:00. >> so you slept in the same bed. >> >> oh, yeah. made up and then we video ourselves. i mean, honestly, i probably shouldn't be saying that but that's -- her phone, her video. >> videoed yourself, what do you mean? >> when we had sex, we videoed. >> so you had sex with her last night and videoed it? >> yeah. >> sure enough. when police looked at jennifer's cell phone, there was a video. she and paul having sex after their fight hours before she was murdered. >> so enthusiastically that anybody who watches it is never going to have the impression or take away from that that this was somebody who was ready to kill her. >> and as for that cell tower evidence that the prosecutor gillingham presented that seemed to show that paul had jennifer's phone with him and sending out fake messages in her name? that was nonsense, says geragos. >> that was one of the pieces of information that was imploded. we went and got the engineer, the actual engineer from the carrier to come in and say he

looked at the evidence and what this guy said was the phone pinging off the same towers was not. it was just merged data from the cell phone. >> why is that important? because, says geragos, the prosecution's own timeline should have cleared paul zumot. that is, investigators said jennifer was strangled several hours before the fire started. and it was lit no earlier than about 6:30 p.m. but early in the afternoon, after paul had left the area, geragos says, jennifer was still alive, sending real, not fake, text messages herself from her phone. >> by all accounts, she was alive at 1:17. >> okay. >> okay. and at 1:17, paul was not at the house. >> so where was paul? trying to pick up paperwork at the palo alto police station and then at the hookah lounge where he appears on security cam

video footage around 1:37 p.m. and then from there said his defense attorney, he headed to his anger management class about 18 miles away. on the way, he stopped at the restaurant depot seen here on camera around 3:30. so there simply wasn't time in between, said geragos, for paul to go to the cottage, strangle his girlfriend and douse her body with gasoline. a solid alibi, said geragos. his client simply couldn't have killed jennifer, and he couldn't have started the fire. how could he have been in two places at once? and as for rosie, the yellow lab who alerted to a gasoline smell on zumot's clothes? geragos said those clothes were sent to the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms, and they showed no evidence of gasoline at all. >> the atf keptist has a protocol. specifically, one of the things the prosecution didn't tell this jury which we brought out is the atf also put out a protocol that

said you never take a dog alert, single dog alert, and draw a conclusion, and in fact, if the atf says negative, then you should not allow in the dog alert. >> so why would people believe the dog over the atf? >> i think once again you get into this idea that people have dogs, they kind of ascribe supernatural powers to dogs. i have two large dogs and one -- having been through a couple of cases with dog evidence, as much as i love my dogs, i'm certainly not going to want to convict somebody and put their liberty at stake based on dog evidence. >> still, as he presented his case, geragos had a problem. and he knew it. >> what it came down to was the character assassination block of the case. the first two blocks of this case revolved around the -- what so-called scientific evidence, and that was absolutely destroyed. and then you ended up with the character assassination block.

>> the solution? paul zumot himself appears to have demanded it. the chance to defend himself to the jury by testifying. some courtroom observers believe the defense had already created a reasonable doubt that testifying was in fact, risky. especially for paul, said his friend. >> knowing paul the way i know paul and the way he could be interpreted incorrectly, i was very nervous about paul taking the stand. >> risky or not, paul was determined to tell the jury his side of the story. >> coming up. >> i thought, you know, if there was any way this jury thought this man was responsible for this, now they know for sure he's not. >> but what did the jury think? when "burning suspicion" continues. you wouldn't accept an incomplete job

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and now with the conclusion to our story "burning suspicion" once again keith morrison. defense attorney mark geragos had done what he could to poke holes in the prosecution's murder case against paul zumot arguing the prosecution had no solid proof or clear evidence paul zumot was anywhere near jennifer when she was strangled, when the house was set on fire. anyway, he asked, if paul attacked jennifer, wouldn't she have put up some kind of fight? why were there no defense marks or scratches on paul zumot's body? did the defense have a case? paul zumot wasn't going to take any chances. in fact, he was determined to tell the jury his side of the story. so geragos assigned a female to question paul. it must have been a strategy the

observers whisperred. but they were wrong said geragos. >> direct examination is not my strong suit. >> so paul zumot looked at the jurors and said i did not kill jennifer schipsi. and despite their roller coaster relationship, he truly loved jennifer hp his lawyer presented a love letter she'd written to him, and he broke down there, a flood of tears. >> i was so relieved and i thought if there's any way the jury thought this man was responsible for this, now it's not because it's so obviously to me he's telling the truth. >> listening to all of this with his experienced ear was

prosecutor gillingham. >> you must have been pleased when you heard he was going to testify? >> that's an understatement. i was very, were please. >> more than that, it was a gift said gillingham, an unexpected opportunity. why? well, the prosecutor had paul right where he wanted him, there were hours of questions, tough questions, baiting questions. questions designed to make paul crack and reveal what gillingham believed was a controlling personality and a red hot temper. >> my plan was two go through how he acted when he was angry and ask questions he had no good answer for. for instance, why all the text messages were deleted. and those are not questions he could answer because he did not consider them. >> after three long days in the hot seat, paul zumot's testimony was finally over. had he persuaded the jurors he

was innocent. >> did you think he got arrogant on the stand. >> i don't think he got arrogant, he was irritated. he wanted to tell the jury his case and he got cut off. >> but the jurors were committed to looking at the evidence. >> everyone was committed to going over the evidence and discussing each of the witnesses and the pieces of evidence. it was really encouraging. >> it was crucial they decided to look at the different time lines claimed by the prosecution and defense. >> we analyzed the time line for the entire day from his testimony where he said and other pieces of evidence, to either validate or contradict. >> the jury took less than 14 hours, and came back with a verdict, guilty. >> all i remember is i heard that word guilty and it's like this -- this relief, this release of tension.

>> i was very shocked by the verdict. i think a lot of people were shocked by the verdict. because if you sat through the weeks and weeks of trial, it just -- it's inconceivable how they could get to the result that they got to. >> but to the jurors, the issues about text messages and whether paul had jennifer's phone all afternoon wasn't as important as zumot on the stand. that's what made the difference. his tears for example. >> sometimes i feel like i'm too cynical, but it was universally held opinion, i think. the entire jury believed it was a manufactured moment. what was the problem with his testimony? >> there was two things that struck me. one was when he broke down on the stand. and to me it didn't seem genuine. and the other portion of his testimony was when he had the opportunity to tell us where he was and what he was doing, he

chose to basically lie to us three times. and we were able to prove that he lied to us by the hard evidence that we had with the phone records and with the video surveillance and those items. and i just -- to me that hurt him very badly. >> if he hadn't testified, i can't say for sure, but i don't -- i don't think i could have convicted him. >> at his sentencing, an angry paul zumot again protested his innocence but he was sent away 25 to life for murder, plus eight years for arson. after the fire, the palo alto cottage was repaired. perhaps new love growing in there. young people were still coming to the cafe to socialize. paul, like a love that vanished with its victim in a cloud of smoke. >> i can still hear her voice

and see her smile. i know she's -- i know she's here. >> that's all for this edition of "dateline extra" i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. due to mature subject matter, viewer discretion is advised. a convicted sex offender becomes the victim of a brutal assault that leaves him unconscious and in the hospital. his assailants say the attack was warranted. >> i'm proud of that because that mother [ bleep ] went to the hospital. >> what they don't know might bring regret. >> let me tell you the facts of the case and why i'm so pissed off ab.