Blind Love: The True Story Of The Texas Cadet Murder

Prologue

ROMEO & JULIET

OR

BONNIE & CLYDE?

The Truth About True Crime

"It’s a modern-day Romeo and Juliet—only they kill someone else instead of each other."

—Television producer

The hardest thing for some people to accept was the fact that the killers had lived among them for almost a year after the murder. For 270 days, after they left Adrianne Jones’s body in the weeds, David Graham and Diane Zamora attended classes, went to football games and movies, had their pictures taken by yearbook photographers, were feted by fellow students, praised by local reporters and smiled at by family members who fawned over their celebrity as prospective academy cadets—as if nothing had happened.

Without a confession, blurted one night in a Naval Academy dormitory room, the show may have continued indefinitely. And when the curtain finally came crashing down, so too did all manner of assumptions about who these bright shining stars were. It couldn’t be, was a refrain heard constantly after Graham and Zamora were charged with the murder of Adrianne Jones.

But the single big lie that the couple lived for those nine months seemed to make it difficult for people to remember them accurately. The murder had changed everything, they seemed to imply, including the facts.

Some part of Diane Zamora’s past surely propelled her to achieve the greatness that won her a Naval Academy appointment; another part of that past, however, pushed her to something quite different. And was the same gene that thrust David Graham to prominence also implicated in his descent into evil?

At the heart of most of the reports about the arrest of Graham and Zamora were not facts but questions. Questions about who planned the murder and who pulled the trigger; questions about motive and means. Mostly, they ran like veins to a central quarry: why would two young people with so much going for them throw it all away?

This book is meant as an early inquiry into that question. Because it was largely written before Graham and Zamora went to trial, this book necessarily leaves some truths unexplored; however, the fact that two separate juries would find Diane and David guilty of murder speaks volumes about the facts that I report here—and their relevance, on many levels, to the meaning of Adrianne Jones’s tragic death. The lengthy and detailed confessions of both suspects, for instance, were helpful in my reconstructing the specific events surrounding the murder; those confessions were later deemed admissible at trial and relied on heavily by jurors in making their judgments about the two former academy cadets’ guilt. In any case, every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the facts reported; no characters or scenes have been invented, and all dialogue has been constructed from primary or secondary sources. Two names have been changed; in every other respect, it is a work of nonfiction.

In that regard, a word must be said about the media coverage of Adrianne Jones’s death. Not every murder has the attentions of the New York Times and People magazine; of Prime Time Live and Current Affair; of book writers and made-for-television movie producers. In the media, the case enjoyed both a measure of seriousness and seediness.

Not surprisingly, there were complaints from all quarters. The mother of the victim as well as the alleged murderer protested the media’s relentless, often harsh, gaze. From jail David Graham exhorted a friend "not to believe ANYTHING you see or hear from the media, because they’re full of CRAP!!!"

No doubt even killers worry about how they are portrayed in the press. And much of the criticism is a result of numbers: one phone call from a reporter after your daughter is killed is an annoyance; hundreds of calls is an affliction. By the same token, the correct reporting by ten journalists may not overcome the wrong-headedness of a single docudrama.

That is what happened in this case.

Traditionally, journalists journey to places not accessible to everyone—farflung courtrooms and private living rooms, football fields and battlefields, crime scenes and scenes of disaster—and try to accurately report what they see. But in a world of 100-channel televisions, the path to the so-called inaccessible place often looks like an eight-lane highway. Now, there is not just a single knock on a door, but battering rams of tabloid television producers, docudramatists, newspaper reporters, magazine reporters, book writers, television newscasters, lights, cameras, satellite dishes—the works.

This is not too remarkable, except for the toll the trend takes on the patience and goodwill of the subjects of the story—and the facts. Whether because of too many competitive members of the communications media or simply an overstimulated cultural appetite for meaning, the traditional race to get the story has turned into a frantic rush to judgment. Facts get trampled—or turned into something else.

The murder of Adrianne Jones and the media attention paid to the arrest of Diane Zamora and David Graham for that murder illustrates the phenomenon. And at the heart of the question of fact and fiction, in this case, is a made-for-television movie:

Love’s Deadly Triangle: The Texas Cadet Murder read:

What you are about to see is based on an extensive article by Skip Hollandsworth in Texas Monthly, other news articles, independent research, and published excerpts from David Graham’s written confession.

Though roundly criticized for airing just five months after Graham and Zamora’s arrest—many months before a trial—what was most troubling about NBC’s movie was its use and abuse of facts.

The based-on claim rings hollow since scenes, dialogue, and even characters are invented without telling the viewer what is real and what isn’t. Such invention knows no precedent in traditional journalism. And it did not come from the Texas Monthly article, an example of journalism at its best.

However, the makers of docudramas often claim the mofal high road. I hope a lot of teenagers watch it because there are a lot of relatable things going on that could make an impact on them, said Lindy DeKoven, NBC’s senior vice president for movies, about Love’s Deadly Triangle.

The best lies, as David Graham and Diane Zamora found out, are those sprinkled with facts. But while the piling of fictions onto facts may make for good entertainment, to call the result nonfiction is still a lie.

The news story substitutes for a plot and the writers feel free to put imagined dialogue into real people’s mouths, editorialized the New York Times on the day the movie aired. Violence and sex that would seem gratuitous in fiction can be justified as an educational experience—‘a cautionary tale.’

The commercialization of crime is no sin; distorting the facts is. And though the urge to give life to a story is a powerful one, a seamless narrative need not do disservice to the facts.

This book is an attempt to tell the story of a remarkable crime. It owes a great deal to the reporting of working journalists—not for a story line or a plot device, but for facts—who were there when memories were fresh and who often described events as they happened. But this writer also visited Texas, interviewed dozens of sources independently and made every effort to confirm the accuracy of all the information.

In the end, it is a true story.

Peter Meyer

February 11, 2000

1

A KNOCK ON THE WINDOW

It was well past midnight when Jay Green heard rapping at his window. Asleep, and not sure how long the tapping had been going on, he moved toward the sound, almost mechanically. He didn’t have far to go, since he had taken his bed out of the room and slept on the floor.

Graham, he whispered, as he reached over and popped open the window. He said it Gram, in a crisp single syllable that showed the traces of his Louisiana origins. What’s goin’ on?

Green reached out and gave David Graham the P.J., the handclasp from their para-rescue orientation course.

You don’t wanna know, said Graham as he clambered into the room.

The window opened onto a quiet residential street in Burleson, Texas, a straight 20 miles south of Fort Worth on I-35. Graham had been through it many times and knew the drill. Knock. Pop the screen. Climb in. Put the screen back. Green’s parents agreed to look the other way while friends came and went through their son’s front door, as long as the screen was put back up. Usually, it wasn’t this late.

What’s goin’ on? Green asked again, as his friend stood up. The two crew-cut teenagers were lean and muscled from their ceaseless exercising.

I need to stay, said Graham. Zamora’s here too.

Graham reached back and helped Diane Zamora climb through the window. She was a slim, dark-haired girl more than a foot shorter than the 6’ 2" Graham. Like Green and Graham, she was a Civil Air Patrol cadet and also, contrary to military decorum, Graham’s new love interest.

Zamora mumbled something to Graham and quickly slid into the shadows as Green plugged in the lights to his corner Christmas tree, bathing the small bedroom in an eerie red and green glow.

It was only December 4, but even Texas had Christmas coming and Jay Green, anxious to get in the holiday spirit, had thrown up the scraggly little plastic tree that he had carried with him from military school. He decorated it with shaving cream and, in place of a star on top, gently laid a model of a C-130 transport plane.

Even at 16, Green’s life, like Graham’s, who had turned 18 the month before, was all military. The two had met at the Civil Air Patrol, an Air Force organization that trained teenagers for military careers. Graham, who had been in C.A.P. since he was 12 and was in line to receive the Spaatz Award, the prestigious honor the national military organization gave, was headed to the Air Force Academy. But Green, who dreamed of nothing but being a Marine, was worried that his best friend was blowing it.

Just two weeks earlier Graham had been relieved of his Civil Air Patrol command by adult officers.

Now this post-midnight visit.

We were never here, okay? said Graham emphatically. If anyone asks, we were never here.

What’s goin’ on? asked Green.

You don’t want to know, Graham repeated. Don’t ask any questions. We were never here. This never happened.

Green looked at Zamora. David, it hurts, she said to Graham. She was rubbing her right hand, still heavily bandaged from the September accident in which she wrecked Graham’s pickup truck—and nearly lost her life. As far as Green was concerned, Zamora was a large cause of his friend’s problems. With apirations of being an astronaut, Zamora had also joined the Civil Air Patrol. Everything was fine until that hot Tuesday evening a few months before, when Graham and Zamora began nudging each other affectionately at a C.A.P. meeting. Now they were engaged to be married.

It’s going to be okay, Graham told Zamora, Then he turned to Green. Can we stay for a while?

Okay. Okay, Green nodded. Sure.

Graham was, after all, his commanding officer as well as best friend. With their fellow cadet Joseph Uekusa, they had shared many a good time over the last couple of years and Green considered Graham as close as a brother. We were all on the same wavelength, Green would recall. We all knew what we were going to do with our lives. All they dreamed of was living lives of patriotic duty—Graham in the Air Force, Green and Uekusa in the Marines—as members of anti-narcotics and covert operations teams fighting evil in South America, the Middle East and Asia. Uekusa was so hardcore, said Green, he considered the Air Force a civilian branch of government.

David, who had a pilot’s license at age 14, wanted to join the American equivalent of the British Special Air Service, the elite of the elite in counterterrorism. He always talked about how he’d some day be flying me and Uekusa in to some covert place and drop us off and leave us, said Green. And Green and Uekusa wanted nothing more than to be dropped off in the jungles of enemy territory.

While roaming the back roads in Graham’s old pickup truck or sitting around tables in the Brahms Diner or the Dairy Queen, the three discussed the world’s hotspots, allowing the Irish Republican Army a grudging respect for fighting against British imperialism and hating drug lords for poisoning America’s youth. They considered themselves hard realists about the world and girded themselves for that. They made themselves good with guns—collected them, cleaned them, fired them—and hardened their bodies with constant push-ups and sit-ups, miles of running in the rain, sleeping in bags on hard floors.

Next to Green’s sleeping bag was a wall of floor-to-ceiling shelves that held mostly the stuff of battle—knives, ammunition, rope, gas masks, an AK-47 pouch, aerospace manuals—much of it belonging to David Graham, who, except for the last couple of months, seemed to spend as much time at Green’s house as his own.

The younger teen now motioned toward a section of the carpeted floor near his small writing desk, just a couple feet from his own sleeping bag. Sure, stay if you want, he said.

Green hadn’t seen Graham for a few weeks, itself an indication of how things had changed lately. But Graham hadn’t been himself ever since the summer, when he returned from a week-long international cadet exchange program in Ottawa. He had lost his virginity to a Royal Australian Air Force cadet named Helen and for weeks could talk about nothing else. And no sooner had Green and Uekusa convinced him that he couldn’t carry on a love affair from halfway around the world—Graham, why don’t you find someone who at least lives in the States? Green had laughed—Graham took up with Zamora, which had even more serious consequences.

For one thing, she was an N.C.O., recalled Green, a noncommissioned officer, so there was a conflict in rank. Besides that, he was her commanding officer. A lot of times she’d just not do stuff because she could get away with it.

Worse, Graham lost his edge. He started skipping C.A.P. meetings and haircuts. He began wearing rings—not trinkets, but gaudy things that cost $50 and $100 at the mall—and rock music T-shirts. He outfitted his beat-up pickup with $2000 worth of new stereo equipment, paid for with his dad’s credit card, bought a pager and, for a few weeks, was calling Green from a new cellular phone. And he became irresponsible with guns. He fired off one of his Russian-made machine guns in his front yard and once put a hole through the floor of his bedroom with one; he especially liked his 9-mm Russian Makarov pistol, which he had begun to carry around with him. Green remembered the time he and Uekusa took the firing pin out of the Makarov as a joke.

He and Zamora went out with it, Green recalled, and he came back really mad. He didn’t think it was so funny. He said some wild dogs came up on them and he was going to shoot them, but couldn’t. It was pretty strange.

It was a remarkable transformation for the ramrod-straight boy who carried the flag to the middle of the Mansfield High football field at halftime and whom Green and Uekusa counted on to figure out what to do in a crisis. These days Graham seemed to be doing just fine creating his own