Burning Suspicion on Addison Avenue

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1:00Is everybody out of the house? I don't know, but it's on fire. Really, really strong. The fire in the cottage on Addison Avenue was hungry, devouring almost everything in the bedroom. All right, we'll have the fire department on the way. You see smoke coming out of the windows? It's pouring out of some inside the house. Within minutes, firefighters knocked it down. The smoke clearing. The sooty water running in 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.

1:45The inhabitants of the rented cottage, as investigators soon learned, were two young, beautiful people, the sort of glossy and successful types you might expect to see on some reality show. Their names were Paul Zumat and Jennifer Skipsy. Jennifer, an ambitious, award-winning real estate agent who lived like a rock star, or so said her buddy Roy Enderman. She'd be like, I'm knocking them out like Domino's, 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.

2:29And that's definitely a quality that Jennifer was looking for. Jordanian-American Paul Zumad. Sleek, attractive, educated, engaging. Paul owned a local hangout, a cafe, where customers could smoke flavored tobacco through water pipes called hookahs. The place, and Paul, were popular. Nekisa Gottschop was a fan. He's a good-looking guy. You know, he looks good, he smells good, he presents well, he's witty, he's smart, and he's just, 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 and how she's perfect.

3:15He 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. Jennifer was a very strong, independent woman, and she would not accept anyone disrespecting her or even looking at her inappropriately.

4:03And 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. And 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 Dish Dash, one of his favorite restaurants. And I think they had over a dozen people there, almost 20 people or something.

4:46and 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 morning.

5:06And now here it was just the very next evening, and it was gone in ashes. All of it, the excitement, the glamour, the promising future up in smoke along with the house. on Addison and the person inside. Yeah, we have a party. I need a medic in place. We have a party, family party. The next day, Jim Skipsy 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?

5:46and he said jim just kept repeating your name yeah he said like three times i guess so i said jake hold on man i gotta pull over and i didn't even 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 on the phone and he just held out his arms, and me and my mom, just like we were all holding each other. And he told us Jenny was gone. It was his Jennifer, his daughter, who died in that fire. And now, along with almost unbearable grief, something else started to burn inside Jim. Something searing. It was suspicion. You know, accidents will happen.

6:36there's a lot of tragic things that happened to a lot of people in this world but this was no accident it didn't have to happen

6:53well the deadly fire was burning at his home on addison avenue paul zumat was at 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 job. Soon after that, he sat down with Palo Alto police to try to help sort out what happened. Though, as you can see on the video recording of the meeting, sat is probably not the best description. Paul was full of nervous energy and frantic questions. At this point, nobody had told him that Jennifer was in that fire. I'm worried about my house. Not even worried about my girlfriend.

7:33What caused the fire? I don't care about this. I just want to know about the camera for right now. I'm not sure that I know any more than you do. My job is just basically to talk to you and find out what exactly you know, because you probably know more than me at this point. No, no. So, together, Felicia and Zuma talked about the hours before the fire. Where had she been? What had she and Paul been doing? Yesterday was my birthday. We went out. Everything's fine, you know. Me and her and all the friends. Who's her? Jennifer. And 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 just in time for his cafe to open for the evening.

8:18After I came here, there was traffic, and I got to the cafe, because that's when they opened. I had to log in to the computers. And as soon as I sat down on a smoke, I have the hookah lounge right here. started smoking. My landlord called me. He said, the house was on fire. I flew in. I flew in through the red lights and came here. Now I am really frustrated. I'm really confused. I'm really exhausted. And I want to know what happened. I care less about the house. I care less about Jennifer's safety. I just cannot think anything right now, guys. To be honest with you, I just cannot think anything.

8:50Then in the middle of his conversation with detectives, Paul's phone rang. It was Jennifer's mother who told him she hadn't seen or heard from her daughter. You can see what happened. Paul fell to pieces. 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. But she wasn't with her mother, wasn't anywhere. And that's when the officer broke this news.

9:29But there's a body in the house. It's been burned. So we have no way of doing you that is.

9:45Oh my God, please let me know.

9:53Okay, give me a breath.

9:58I need to get out of here. Get out of here, please.

10:10Okay, and I'm trying to be as sensitive as I possibly can be because I understand that this is your... I don't know that this is Jennifer. I hope not. I hope not. Listen, we have not confirmed who this is, okay? But it's a really, really odd set of circumstances We need to figure out, is this on purpose? Is this an accident? This is just, unfortunately, this is just the beginning for all of us, okay? To try to answer some questions.

10:40But 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 might have wanted to harm Jennifer and came up with some potentially helpful information. Two brothers, Hisham and Tony Ganma. It already threatened her, said Paul. There'd been a confrontation just weeks earlier. So what happened is he called me, and he spoke in Arabic, and I speak Arabic fluently, and he spoke to her, so he called the police. Paul said that he and Jennifer had filed restraining orders against both brothers. Now, she was scared from him. She was literally scared from him.

11:19I'm scared from the guy. So, I know those guys like this. Now, yesterday she walked home, and she said, hey, somebody fire worth 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 Zumod was very nearly in shock, said his friend Nikisa. 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, said Nikisa, 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.

12:09He was completely distraught about the fact that Jennifer was in that fire. Meanwhile, as those same weeks went by, investigators went quietly and steadily about their task, picking through the cinders of the fire and coming to the conclusion that none of it smelled right. Literally.

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14:47The 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. Back then, Chuck Gillingham was a deputy district attorney in Palo Alto. Was gasoline there? No question at all. It's in her hair. You could smell it. And you could 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. And so there were still enough remnants of the gas can for us actually to identify the type and make and model of the gas can.

15:30Wow, that's like somebody leaving the gun beside the body with their fingerprints all over it or something, isn't it? Well, no 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 Skipsy 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. That's a very angry killing. It's not like shooting someone from a long way away, I don't imagine.

16:12I 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 two brothers, Hisham and Tony Ganma, both part of his social circle, men whom he considered former friends. There's people after us. What's that mean? They're trying to get us. They're trying to harm us. They're trying to harm her or harm me. Who's that? His name is Hisham. That's the guy, okay. The guy that you have the restraining order against? I have a civil restraining order against him.

16:44He 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 broke her heel and somebody was just talking to her. And it was fine, it was okay with me, but we had people threatening us in the past. Okay, I don't know what's going on and I think that's what caused the fire, I believe. Tracking you? Somebody was threatening us. Oh, threatening. Okay. So, does Paul zoom out onto something? Detectives went to talk to the brothers and, of course, checked to see where both men were the day of the fire.

17:24And 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 Gamba brothers was in their cafe and he's on videotape. And the other was at Fry's Electronics and Home Depot, about 20 miles away. We have those receipts and we have videotape from both of those locations. So, once the Ganma brothers were in the clear, the cops did what they always do in cases like this. In fact, it's practically police 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.

18:05I mean, my girlfriend, we broke up. And thanks to San Jose, some of the Palo Alto PD, they put an emergency restraining order on me. in August, because she said, Paul threatened me, blah, blah, blah. And I said, no, she came to the cafe, broke the door in my cafe. But we had these problems, me and her. But you know what? And I had domestic violence against the girl, but I never touched the girl in my life. You could 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.

18:40Their 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.

19:22As 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'd discovered. Paul was arrested.

19:46They charged Paul Zumach with arson and murder, which struck some observers as strange. After all, there had been just that one little inconsistency. And though 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 Zumod was taken to jail to await trial on a charge of murder in the first degree.

20:34Big mistake, said Paul Zumont. When I first saw him, 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.

21:03In the days after the fire on Addison Avenue, after Paul Zumod 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 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.

21:49Not 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 that were make-ups and break-ups, 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 two people who fought so much stay together for so long? There was, it turned out, an audio recording of Jennifer herself. Killingham got hold of it, listened to her explanation.

22:29He wins your heart, so the first couple months is amazing, sweeps you off your feet, candles everywhere, flowers, not money items, but just romantic and 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, Hisham Ganma. Remember, he's one of the brothers Paul told police he and Jennifer were afraid of.

23:13But here she was, 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. And 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. 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.