(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . IVH: The Gits, Mia Zapata and the murder that shook Seattle [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-05-11 The Gits (L-R: Mia Zapata, Steve Moriarty, Matt Dresdner, Andy Kessler) ** TRIGGER WARNING: SEXUAL ASSAULT, MURDER ** Tonight’s selections from Seattle band The Gits. A band on the verge of breaking out until tragedy struck. It’s hard to come to a fair appraisal of the Gits and their contribution to the Pacific Northwest scene in the early-’90s, because the band’s music will forever be overshadowed by the death of singer Mia Zapata, who was raped and strangled to death in 1993. There is a temptation to either sensationalize her band’s music and treat it as background to the crime, or aggrandize it to make it compensate for the senseless waste of life. And for Zapata, who represented a kind of female empowerment in the traditionally misogynistic rock scene, to die in a male-perpetrated sex crime is almost too symbolic an outrage to resist expounding, but it may be trivializing to do so in the context of a record review. Suffice it to say that in light of Zapata’s death, which brought attention to danger that sexual violence continues to represent and led to a great deal of advocacy promoting female self-defense, what the Gits signify has to do with much more than their music. — Pop Matters . Seaweed . In 1989, the Gits left Ohio and headed to Seattle, moving into a rundown home they dubbed The Rathouse. More than being the Gits’ practice space, the house was the center of a thriving music community that included acts like 7 Year Bitch and D.C. Beggars. “We didn’t fit in when we got there,” Moriarty recalls of those early years in Seattle. “So we had to form our own scene, play our own shows. I think we would’ve liked to have the attention of a record label and be one of the cool kids on the block. But we weren’t. We had to forge our own path.” The Gits played played everywhere along the West Coast, sharing bills with Nirvana, Sublime, Beck and Green Day; they also toured Europe in 1991. The following year, the Gits independently released their debut album, Frenching the Bully [AlDo: fantastic title!], which made a little splash locally, according to Dresdner. By 1993, the Gits were finishing their second album and were slated to play their first-ever gig in New York City; as recalled in The Gits documentary, Atlantic Records made an offer to sign the Gits.“The band was getting better and better,” says Kessler. “The live shows seemed to be getting more and more intense. It was continually moving upward.” On the evening of July 6th, 1993, Zapata was out drinking with her friends at the Comet Tavern in Seattle’s Capitol Hill area; her friend Agnew recalls Zapata being in good spirits after she recently performed a solo show in Los Angeles. Zapata reportedly left the bar around midnight to look for her former boyfriend, Robert Jenkins, at a rehearsal space located in an apartment building about a block away from the bar. When he wasn’t present, Zapata went to a friend’s apartment in that same building, where she stayed until about 2 a.m. It was the last time she was seen alive. — Rolling Stone . Another Shot of Whiskey . Mia left the Comet around 1 a.m., reportedly saying that she was going to try and locate Jenkins. She retraced her steps from earlier, walking east on Pike for about a block, back to the Pancreas Production Studios. Finding the studio empty and no trace of Jenkins, she went to the third floor of the adjoining Winston Apartments, where a friend of hers, “T.V.,” lived. T.V. was also a member of Jenkins’ band and remembered that Mia was not only very drunk but angry because she couldn’t locate Jenkins and wanted to talk to him about their relationship. Mia spent about an hour at T.V.’s apartment before deciding to leave. At 3:20 a.m., just over two miles southeast from the Winston Apartments, a prostitute made the terrible find of a body. Located on 24th Avenue between South Yesler and South Washington, the body was discovered in the street, next to the curb and close to a nearby field. The sex worker immediately notified authorities. [...] She had no pulse and did not appear to be breathing but the paramedics did not believe she had been lying there long and attempted resuscitation, which proved unsuccessful. She was pronounced dead and sent to the morgue as a Jane Doe, to await the medical examiner, Seattle’s 33rd murder victim of 1993. While the fire department and paramedics had no idea who the woman was, the medical examiner had no doubt. A fan of the underground music scene, he had attended many of The Gits’ concerts and immediately recognized the body of Mia Zapata on his table. He determined that Mia had been strangled with a ligature and believed it to be the drawstring of her sweatshirt. [...] They felt that Mia had been walking along with her headset on, listening to music, and was ambushed. — Loria Johnston/Medium . A Change Is Gonna Come x YouTube Video . The horrific and violent nature of Zapata’s death added to the dark cloud hanging over the scene, with multiple people in the music community that Zapata was part of falling under suspicion. “You can imagine, this vibe that sort of came over Seattle when it happened — people just not knowing [who did it],” Gits friend and collaborator Joan Jett says. “If it was one of their friends, you know, or an acquaintance, or an audience member, you just didn’t know.” “Partly because it was a murder, Zapata’s death genuinely transformed the smaller, more local scene in which she was a leading light,” NPR music critic Ann Powers wrote in a 1994 Village Voice story. “Talking about Kurt [Cobain] with people in clubs and cafes, I actually feel his presence less than Zapata’s. She is mentioned over and over. Posters asking for information adorn the wall of the Comet Tavern … on some street corners, you can see the fliers made by friends a long time ago. There’s Mia’s warm, big, charming face, and the words: ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’” — Rolling Stone No witnesses, no leads. The case went cold. It was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and other television shows. Still, no break in the case . Guilt Within Your Head . [D]espite the publicity, the case went cold for almost a decade as Bradshaw and the Seattle homicide unit were still working on the investigation. Then a major break occurred in December 2002 when the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab ran a DNA check – based on preserved swabs of saliva collected from Zapata’s body nine years earlier – and came up with a match: Jesus Mezquia, a fisherman living in Florida. — Rolling Stone . In 2003, Florida fisherman Jesus Mezquia, who had come from Cuba in 1980 in the Mariel boatlift, was arrested and charged in connection with Zapata's murder based on DNA evidence. A DNA profile was extracted from saliva found in bite marks on Zapata's body and kept in cold storage until the STR technology was developed for full extraction. An original entry in 2001 failed to generate a positive result, but Mezquia's DNA entered the national CODIS database after he was arrested in Florida for burglary and domestic abuse in 2002. Mezquia had a history of violence toward women including domestic abuse, burglary, assault, and battery. All of his ex-girlfriends, and his wife, had filed reports against him. There was also a report of indecent exposure on file against him in Seattle within two weeks of Zapata's murder. However, there was no known prior link between Mezquia and Zapata. Mezquia did not testify in his own defense and maintained his innocence. Mezquia was convicted in 2004 and initially sentenced to 37 years. On appeal he was given a sentence of 36 years, beginning in January 2003. Mezquia died in a Washington hospital on January 21, 2021, at the age of 66. — Wikipedia . Second Skin . Here is a three-word summary of how intense this documentary [The Gits] is: Joan Jett cries. We don't exactly see her cry, of course—c'mon, she's Joan Jett—but during her interview, she gets so choked up she has to stop for a moment, and seeing rock's tough girl overwhelmed by emotion and unable to speak somehow says it all. — Metro Silicon Valley In 1994 Joan Jett joined the remaining members of the Gits to form Evil Stig (“Gits Live” backwards) to play (mostly) Gits songs at benefit shows. They released an album in 1995. . Evil Stig :: Go Home . REST IN POWER MIA WHO’S TALKING TO WHO? Jimmy Kimmel: Chris Pratt, Vin Diesel, Lukas & Micah Nelson (R 4/27/23) Jimmy Fallon: Edward Norton, Ego Nwodim, Parker McCollum (R 3/30/23) Stephen Colbert: Elizabeth Olsen, Jena Friedman (R 4/19/23) Seth Meyers: Bill Burr, Keith Morrison, Abby McEnany (R 9/21/21) James Corden: Max Greenfield, Alec Benjamin (R 5/6/21) SPOILER WARNING A late night gathering for non serious palaver that does not speak of that night’s show. Posting a spoiler will get you brollywhacked. You don’t want that to happen to you. It's a fate worse than a fate worse than death. LAST WEEK'S POLL: LOONEY TUNES: THE NEXT GENERATION Foghorn Leghorn 31% Marvin the Martian 19% Roadrunner 19% Sylvester 0% Tasmanian Devil 0% Tweety 0% Yosemite Sam 0% Wile E. 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