Shortly after 2:00 a.m. on July 7, 1993, Zapata left the
Comet Tavern, a dive bar in Capitol Hill that was a popular hangout for the Seattle music community. She stayed at a studio space in the basement of an apartment building located a block away, and briefly visited a friend who lived on the second floor. This was the last time Zapata was seen alive. She may have walked a few blocks west, or north to a friend's apartment, or may have decided to take the long walk south to her home. Her body was discovered at 3:20 a.m. near the intersection of 24th Avenue South and South Washington Street. Zapata had been beaten, raped, and strangled, and it is believed she encountered her attacker shortly after 2:15 a.m. Her body was not initially identified as she had no identification on her when she was found. An episode of
Forensic Files revealed that she was identified after the medical examiner, who was a fan of the Gits and had been to their concerts, recognized her. According to the medical examiner, if she had not been strangled, she would have died from the internal injuries suffered from the beating. According to court documents, an
autopsy found evidence of a struggle in which Zapata suffered blunt impact to her abdomen and a lacerated liver. The
Seattle Police Department initially focused their investigation on Zapata's circle of friends, believing that her murderer must have been someone she knew. Frustrated by the lack of progress in solving the case, the surviving members of the Gits, the Seattle music community, including some of its most famous bands such as
Nirvana,
Pearl Jam, and
Soundgarden, helped raise $70,000 generated from benefit concerts and record sales, as well as their own money. They hired private investigator Leigh Hearon to supplement the police department's investigation. The funds dried up without any major breaks in the case, but Hearon continued to investigate on her own time. In 1996, the case gained national attention on an episode of
Unsolved Mysteries, and was later highlighted on several television programs, including
A&E's
American Justice,
Cold Case Files,
City Confidential,
CBS's
48 Hours,
FOX's ''
America's Most Wanted'', and
TruTV's
Forensic Files. In 1998, after five years of investigation, Seattle police detective Dale Tallman said: "We're no closer to solving the case than we were right after the murder." A
DNA profile was extracted from saliva found on a bite mark on Zapata's breast and kept in cold storage until the
STR technology was developed for full extraction. An original entry in June 2002 failed to generate a positive result, but Mezquia's DNA entered
CODIS after he was arrested in
Florida for burglary and domestic abuse in 2002. Mezquia had a history of violence against women including domestic abuse, burglary, assault, and battery. All of his ex-girlfriends, and his wife, had filed reports against him, and there was no known prior link between Mezquia and Zapata. Mezquia was arrested in Miami by Seattle police officers on January 10, 2003, and was charged with premeditated first degree murder, and alternatively, with first degree felony murder based on first or second degree rape. At the trial, the prosecution argued that Mezquia saw Zapata leave the bar and followed her a short distance before he attacked her. Her headphones covered her ears so she would have been unaware of any danger until he grabbed her and dragged her to his car, where he assaulted her in the back seat. Mezquia did not testify in his own
defense and maintained his innocence. He argued that either Robert Jenkins, Zapata's ex-boyfriend and a
Vietnam veteran suffering from
PTSD, or Scott McFarlane, a taxi driver who allegedly made incriminating statements about Zapata's murder, were responsible. On March 25, 2004, a jury convicted Mezquia of first degree felony murder and he was sentenced to 36 years in prison, the maximum allowed in the case under Washington state law. In August 2005, the state Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction, but reversed his sentence because the judge had exceeded the normal sentencing range without the jury's specific approval. Mezquia's case was sent back to the trial court for resentencing. However, after Mezquia waived his right to have a jury decide on his sentence, the trial court judge again imposed the same sentence of 36 years. Mezquia died in hospital in
Pierce County, Washington on January 21, 2021, at the age of 66. ==Legacy==