The singer of a well loved punk rock band that people were sure would go on to be the next big thing is murdered leaving Seattle shocked with the case not being solved for ten years.
Mia Katherine Zapata was born on August 25 1965 in Chicago, Illinois. Mia was raised in Louisville, Kentucky and attended high school at Presentation Academy. Her parents Richard and Donna were television executives. Mia had one older brother and one older sister. In 1981 her parents split up and her father later remarried.
Mia Zapata
Mia showed an early talent and interest in music and learned to play the guitar and piano by the age of nine and she was greatly influenced by punk rock as well as jazz, blues and R&B citing artists such as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Hank Williams and Sam Cooke as her inspiration.
In 1984 Mia enrolled as a liberal arts student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In September 1986 Mia and three friends formed their punk rock band which they named The Gits, with Mia being the singer. The band relocated to Seattle, Washington in 1989 so that they could take part in the flourishing music scene there.
Mia found a job at a local bar and the four band members moved into an abandoned house that they named “The Rathouse”. The Gits went onto release a series of well received singles on local independent record labels from 1990 to 1991. While making a name for themselves the band often played support with their friends band, 7 Year Bitch, and in 1992 they released their debut studio album, Frenching the Bully. After this The Gits saw their popularity in the local scene grow and soon after they began what would be their second and final album Enter: The Conquering Chicken, which was released in 1993. Mia became popular among the feminist community at the time due to her being a woman in a largely male genre. Many believed The Gits would become the next big thing to emerge from the flourishing Seattle rock scene.
The Gits
Mia came from an affluent family and she had been raised in a comfortable environment but her music often dealt with the rejection of material items and financial comforts. Despite her upbringing, Mia was respected in the punk community and was popular, people often said she had a magnetism that drew people to her. Her bandmate, Andy Kessler described Mia as compassionate and big hearted.
Mia's Final Movements
On July 6th 1993 at around 10pm Mia met her friends at the Comet Tavern, one of her favourite bars. She was only going to be in town for a few days as The Gits were gearing up for their new tour which was due to start in a few days. She left the bar at around midnight and walked a block east to Pike Street to a local rehearsal studio in Seattle's Capital Hill neighbourhood. She had planned to visit her ex-boyfriend there but when he wasn't in the studio she changed her plans and decided instead to visit a friend who lived three floors up in the same building. At around 2am Mia left her friends apartment and told her that she would take a taxi home, she left the main entrance and planned to go to the corner to hail a ride home.
Comet Tavern
Mia didn't drive so she relied on taxis to get around and therefore she was familiar with many of the local drivers. This led police to suspect that her killer may have been a taxi driver, Mia was apparently not shy about giving her opinion which would sometimes get her into trouble. The police thought perhaps it was her lack of fear that had made her driver angry and led to her murder. No taxi driver reported picking Mia up that night though and as bars were closing around that time many of her friends were getting taxis and never saw her.
There was another scenario, Mia had gone in the opposite direction as a friend had asked her to spend the night with them, they lived about five blocks away. A man reported hearing a terrifying scream that night, it scared him that badly he went to the window to try and identify what had happened but he couldn't see the source of the scream. Friends noticed that a Gits demo tape and Mia's personal microphone were at the studio when they dropped by the next day, this was very odd as Mia always carried those items with her.
Who Killed Mia?
Mia’s body was found near the intersection of 24th Avenue South and South Washington Street at around 3.30am by a sex worker laying face up in an almost Christ like pose with her arms stretched out from her sides and her ankles crossed. She had been beaten, strangled and raped. She is thought to have come into contact with her killer at around 2.15am. The murder scene was two miles from the studio and three miles from the street where the man had heard the scream. The area was known for drug deals and prostitution. The case was made hard as the police didn't know where Mia's murder had taken place as they believed she had been dumped in the area after her murder. Police believed Mia had been listening to music when she was first attacked and so hadn't heard her attacker come up behind her.
Her murder sent shockwaves throughout the community, questions arose of who would want to kill the 27 year old, was it an obsessed fan? A jealous competitor? Or worse a random stranger? Mia's friends helped to set up "Home Alive", a self-defence organisation that showed women how to defend themselves from attackers. Singer Joan Jett stated this about Mia:
"Her legacy should be beautiful, strong punk-rock music coming from a woman's perspective, because that's who she was."
Mia
Initially Mia was classed as a Jane Doe as she hadn't had any identification on her but according to an episode on the show 'Forensic Files' that had covered her case, it was reported that the medical examiner was the one to finally identify her as he had been a fan of The Gits and of course recognised Mia. According to the medical examination, even if she had survived being strangled she would have died due to the internal injuries that she had suffered from the beating. Mia also showed signs of having fought her killer as she had suffered blunt force impact to her abdomen and a lacerated liver.
Mia's sweatshirt had been pulled up to her armpits and her hood had been tied tightly around her face and knotted under her throat. Her underwear, wallet and torn bra were stuffed into the pocket of her jeans. Mia's body was covered in scrapes and bruises and she had abrasions along the side of her nipples that were determined to have come from teeth. The murder weapon had been the drawstring from her sweatshirt.
Mia was buried at the Cave Hill Cemetery in her home town of Louisville, Kentucky and the mourners were asked to bring a yellow rose. The Seattle music scene turned out in force in her honour, this included Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden; they raised $70,000 and hired a private investigator to find the murderer. Leigh Hearon was hired initially for three years but unfortunately the money ran out much sooner without any major breakthroughs but Leigh continued the investigation in her own time.
Mia's grave
A Lasting Impact
Due to her death at the age of 27 Mia became a member of the 27 Club, a tragic club of famous people (mostly musicians) that have died at the age of 27. Suspicion fell on her ex-boyfriend whom Mia had been angry with over their break up but he provided a solid alibi and was not considered a suspect.
Mia's murder sparked fury from women who felt that the police weren't doing enough to protect them. Mia had simply been walking alone at night and a man had violently attacked her. Inga Muscio, a journalist for Seattle's The Stranger was furious over the newscasters lack of even saying the word rape and that rape cases weren't being taken seriously enough in the 90's.
In 1998 after five years of investigation Detective Dale Tallman admitted that they were no further forward in solving the case. It seemed that Mia had been the victim of a random crime, which is the hardest kind for the police to solve. The case had no blood, DNA or eye witnesses but there was unknown saliva from the bite wounds but there was no match in 1993.
The Murderer Found
In 2002 there was finally a breakthrough after investigators ran the unknown male DNA into CODIS and were met with a match, 48 year old fisherman Jesus Mezquia. Cuban born Mezquia had been living in Florida when he was named as a suspect but the police were able to ascertain that he had lived in Seattle from 1992 to 1994. His address was only a mile and a half from where Mia's battered body had been found, he had been living there with a woman but on the night of Mia's murder she had been out of town. Mezquia's DNA was new to the database having only been added that year due to an earlier arrest and conviction of possessing burglary tools.
Jesus Mezquia
Mezquia was arrested at his home in Marathon, Florida on January 10th 2003. He apparently came to the US in 1980 as part of the Mariel Boatlift, which saw a mass immigration of Cuban people into America, this had been caused by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy. He went on to have a lengthy criminal record in multiple states that included convictions for aggravated battery of a pregnant woman in 1997, kidnapping and false imprisonment, robbery and indecent exposure in Florida during the 80's and battery of a spouse and assault to commit rape in California in the late 80's and early 90's.
Mezquia reportedly came to Seattle in 1992 to live with an unidentified woman who had moved to the area. They lived in her mother's home initially but they later moved to an apartment in the Leschi area. They broke up in 2003 but they continued to live together and she had reportedly told a neighbour that Mezquia had a terrible temper. She wanted to distance herself from him so she got him a car and he moved first to California and then to Florida.
The police worked hard to build a solid case against Mezquia and were soon rewarded when they found an incident that had involved him indecently exposing himself and the attempted kidnapping of a woman which had taken place just five weeks after Mia's murder and even more damning was that this incident had happened close to where Mia's body had been found. The woman told the police that she had been walking down the street when she became aware that a man was following her in his car. He pulled down his window and tried to lure her into his car and then she noticed that he was masturbating whilst sitting in the drivers seat. Appalled by what she had witnessed the woman had been quick to make a note of the cars licence plate and the police used this information to establish that the vehicle belonged to Mezquia. The police were further able to consolidate their case against Mezquia when his ex-wife and former girlfriends made statements that they too had been subjected to abuse by him.
Jesus Mezquia at court
Upon being questioned about Mia's murder, Mezquia denied killing and raping her however he could not explain how his DNA had ended up on her body and he even denied ever being in Seattle. In March 2003 he was extradited to Washington to stand trial. At his trial the prosecution stated that they believed that on the night of her murder Mia was spotted by Mezquia soon after she had left the studio and that he had then followed her. Mia had headphones in so she didn't hear Mezquia following her until it was too late and he had grabbed her from behind. He abducted her and took her to a deserted location where he then raped, beat and finally strangled her. He then went on to dump her body on the street not far from his home.
On March 8th 2004 Mezquia finally stood trial for Mia's murder and on March 24th after several days of deliberation the jury convicted him of first degree murder. On April 30th he was sentenced to 37 years in prison. In August 2005 Mezquia's case took another twist when the length of his sentence was called into question citing aggravated circumstances, this involved the jury at the time not being presented with undisclosed facts and thus they were denied the right to review them. The judge involved in this new legal challenge then ruled that Mezquia's length of sentence was not based on the full facts of the case. In January 2009 Mezquia asked the judge to re-instate his original sentence of 37 years and this was granted. Having been in prison since 2003, on January 21st 2021, Jesus Mezquia died in prison at the age of 66, police declined to reveal the cause of death citing privacy laws. He never admitted or confessed to Mia's murder.
A One of a Kind Woman
Her bandmates, Andy Kessler, Matt Dresdner and Steve Moriarty said this of their friend:
"Mia Zapata was an extraordinary human being. She was a beloved friend, a gifted songwriter, musician, visual artist and performer. Rather than focusing on her death, we prefer to remember her friendship, talent, humour and the incredible art and music she left to the world."
Moriaty added that Mezquia had had a strongly negative impact on his and many others lives for years and he often wondered how he would feel if he was released, his comment upon Mezquia's death was "good riddance". Moriaty testified at the trial and taunted the murderer in his native Spanish in an attempt to provoke him.
The Gits performing
Our Conclusion
At Apollo's Raven, we find the murder of Mia a maddening one, she was yet another woman just walking down the street who was then viciously attacked. Mia is one of many women to fall victim to this and we applaud the Seattle community for standing up for women who fall victim to these awful crimes. Jesus Mezquia was clearly a man who hated women and thanks to the detectives who preserved the DNA evidence that led to his arrest he was never able to hurt another woman ever again.
We agree with the sentiments of those who loved her that her legacy should be remembered for the amazing music she created and her warm and strong nature, simply, we should remember her for the unique and strong woman she was and to not define her by her death. We think it is a touching tribute to her legacy that Home Alive continues to strive and has helped other women to escape the tragic fate that befell Mia.
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