Mia Zapata
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| Mia Zapata | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Mia Katherine Zapata |
| Born | August 25, 1965 |
| Origin | Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Died | July 7, 1993 (aged 27) |
| Genre(s) | Punk rock |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals |
| Years active | 1986–1993 |
| Associated acts | The Gits |
Mia Katherine Zapata (August 25, 1965 – July 7, 1993) was the lead singer for the Seattle punk band The Gits. Highly influential in the Seattle, Washington music scene, she was considered a dynamic live performer and a uniquely gifted lyricist and painter. Zapata is claimed as a major influence by fellow Seattle punk band 7 Year Bitch, singers Cinder Block of hardcore punk bands Tilt and Retching Red, Andrea Zollo of indie rock band Pretty Girls Make Graves and Brody Dalle of the punk band The Distillers.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Music career
Zapata was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky where she learned to sing and play guitar. Zapata was heavily influenced early on by singers Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Hank Williams and Sam Cooke, television entertainers the Three Stooges, hardcore punk, imaginal poetry such as Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations and artwork by Egon Schiele and Willem De Kooning.
In the fall of 1986, she helped co-found The Gits while attending Antioch College, a liberal arts college located in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1989, Zapata, along with the rest of The Gits, relocated to Seattle, Washington. The band was successful in Seattle, and released a series of well-received singles on local indie labels from 1990 to 1991. In 1992, the band released its debut album Frenching the Bully, and received good reviews. Notoriety progressively increased before the band entered the studio in 1993 to begin work on their second album Enter: The Conquering Chicken.
[edit] Death
On the morning of July 7, 1993, Zapata decided to walk home from a friend's house shortly after 2 am, following a night of drinking at local watering hole, the Comet Tavern. The friend offered to put her up for the night or even to call a taxi but she decided to walk the 1.5 miles to her apartment. On the way home, she was brutally raped and murdered. It is believed she encountered her murderer shortly after 2:15 am. According to Unsolved Mysteries, a couple watching a late show from about two blocks from where she was found heard what sounded like screams around 3 am. A prostitute found her beaten and mutilated body posed in a Christ-like fashion around 3:30 am, under a streetlight in a vacant lot nearly halfway between her home and the friend's house that she had left. According to the medical examiner, if she had not been strangled she would have died from the internal injuries suffered during the beating.
Mia Zapata is interred at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.
[edit] Post-mortem
In the aftermath of her murder, friends created a self-defense group called "Home Alive," which exists to this day. "Home Alive" has organized benefit concerts and CDs with the participation of many of Seattle's music elite, such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Heart, and the Presidents of the United States of America. Joan Jett also recorded an album with the surviving members of The Gits called "Evil Stig" ("Gits Live" backwards). The Home Alive group has its own instructors. They hold a range of courses, from anger management and use of pepper spray to the martial arts.[1]
Portland, Oregon-based alternative rock band Everclear dedicated their 1993 album World of Noise to Zapata.
Punk rock band 7 Year Bitch, who were good friends and briefly label mates of both Zapata and The Gits, named their 1994 album ¡Viva Zapata! in tribute to Mia Zapata. The album cover also featured a painting by artist Scott Musgrove featuring Zapata wearing bullet sashes. The song "M.I.A.," which explicitly deals with Zapata's death, appears on this album.
Mia was also one of the featured artists in the 1996 documentary movie HYPE!
In 2005, a documentary The Gits Movie was produced on her life, The Gits and the Seattle music scene. Its first showing occurred at the Seattle International Film Festival in May of that year. Another version of the film appeared two years later at the 2007 SXSW (South By Southwest) Film Festival, and the final cut of the film will be released theatrically in over 20 North American cities on 7/7/08, the 15th memorial anniversary of Zapata's death. The following day will see the film released on DVD along with a Best of the Gits CD (both from Liberation Entertainment).
[edit] The murderer
A jury convicted Florida fisherman Jesus Mezquia of her murder on March 25, 2004, and he was sentenced to 36 years in prison. The case was featured on Investigators, Forensic Files, Unsolved Mysteries, American Justice, City Confidential and on 48 Hours.
Mezquia was linked to the crime in 2003 when a DNA profile was extracted from a saliva sample left on Zapata's body. It had been 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 databank after he was arrested in Florida for burglary and domestic abuse in 2002.
Mezquia lived in Seattle at the time and his home address was about three blocks from where her body was found. He had a history of violence toward women including domestic abuse, burglary and 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. Mezquia never testified in his own defense and still maintains his innocence.
The main reason this crime took so long to solve was because this was the prime example of a "stranger" crime: there was little or no prior contact between the victim and the perpetrator except for that moment. Such crimes are difficult to solve, but since many of those involve sexual violence, DNA evidence helps to a proper resolution.
[edit] References
- Johnson, Tracy. "11 years later, justice for slain singer Zapata". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. March 26, 2004.
