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True crime podcasts in five minutes or less.
Welcome back to INFRACTION FILES, where free episodes are three to five minutes long, and is a part of The Files Network.
In July 1993, 27‑year‑old Mia Zapata, lead singer of the Seattle punk band The Gits, left a friend’s apartment in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and never made it home. Hours later, her body was found on a street; she had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled.
Seattle’s music community and fans across the country were stunned. Police canvassed clubs, interviewed friends, and pursued tips, but the initial investigation stalled. The killer left few obvious clues, and the case went cold for nearly a decade.
Crucially, investigators preserved biological evidence from Zapata’s body. As DNA technology advanced in the late 1990s and early 2000s, detectives submitted the sample for comparison against national DNA databases.
In 2003, there was finally a hit. The DNA profile matched a Florida resident, Jesus Mezquia, whose samples were already on file from an unrelated case. Detectives linked his history, travel, and physical characteristics to the 1993 crime in Seattle.
Mezquia was extradited to Washington and charged with Zapata’s murder. At trial, DNA evidence formed the core of the prosecution’s case, connecting him to the assault and killing beyond reasonable doubt. The jury convicted him of first‑degree murder, and he was sentenced to decades in prison, closing a case that had loomed over the early‑90s Seattle music scene for years.
That closes the file on the murder case of Mia Zapata. Thank you for tuning into Infraction Files, a part of The Files Network. Follow us on social media for updates and more TRUE CRIME content.