Paul Zumot did not kill Jennifer Schipsi.

Part One — The Evidence

What the physical evidence actually shows

On the way to the 2025 retrial, forensic evidence and testimony came to light that the original jury never fully heard. Here is what the record shows, in plain terms.

1DNA: None of It Points to Paul

The fire that killed Jennifer Schipsi started at the stove. Crime lab testing on the stove knobs — the ignition point itself — excluded Paul as a contributor. A cell phone earpiece recovered from the scene showed no male DNA at all.

The DNA from the neck area — the site of the strangulation — was never tested with modern Y-STR methods until 2024, when it finally was, at the request of Paul and his defense attorney. The result: a mixture with three distinct contributors — Jennifer, a weak partial match to Paul that roughly 1 in 20 men would also match, and at least one additional, still-unidentified male.

0of Paul's DNA found on the stove knobs — the fire's point of origin

1 in 20men would match the partial profile tied to Paul — it is not unique to him

Source: Santa Clara County DA Crime Lab report, Case M091025; retrial testimony, Reporter's Transcript Vols. 13, 16, 34.

217 Fingerprints the Jury Never Got Full Context On

At the 2011 trial, the fingerprint evidence was handled by agreement between the two sides — the examiner never took the stand and was never cross-examined. At the 2025 retrial, Paul's new defense attorney refused to accept that same agreement. That forced the prosecution's fingerprint expert onto the stand for the first time — and what he said stunned the courtroom: 17 identifiable, usable fingerprints had been recovered from the crime scene, including on the stove knob involved in the fire, and none of them belonged to Paul.

The prosecutor tried to downplay the finding, suggesting the prints “could be anything” and floating that some might be from a hookah — a theory the expert himself never offered. For 17 years, the defense had no access to this fingerprint evidence: no chance to view it, test it, or present it to a jury. The original jury that convicted Paul never heard any of this.

17usable fingerprints from the scene, including the stove knob, that did not belong to Paul

17 yearsthe defense went without access to this evidence

Source: retrial testimony of the prosecution's fingerprint examiner, Reporter's Transcript Vol. 16.

3The Cigarette With Someone Else's DNA

Crime lab testing recovered DNA from a cigarette inside the residence — DNA that did not match Paul. Paul does not smoke. The source of that DNA was never identified, and it was never pursued.

When this came up at trial, the prosecution's explanation was that DNA on a cigarette could come from the manufacturing process — from someone at the factory, rather than a person who actually smoked it. That explanation was not offered for any other piece of DNA evidence in the case. Would the same explanation have been offered if the DNA had matched Paul?

UnidentifiedDNA recovered from a cigarette in the residence — not Paul's

Never pursuedthe source of that DNA was not further tested or identified

Source: Santa Clara County DA Crime Lab report, Case M091025; trial testimony describing the manufacturing explanation.

4The Fire Could Not Have Been Caused by Paul

On the day of the fire, Paul wore the same clothes all day — the same clothes police collected. Tested with highly sensitive ATF forensic equipment, those clothes showed no accelerant, no burns, and no other trace evidence.

Experts from the police, ATF, the prosecution, and the defense agreed: the fire described, with gasoline allegedly poured throughout the bedroom, could not have been started by Paul without leaving evidence on his clothing.

Jennifer's body showed signs of a struggle before her death. Yet Paul had no defensive wounds, bruises, or injuries of any kind — and he fully cooperated with investigators throughout.

0accelerant, burns, or trace evidence on Paul's clothing under ATF testing

0defensive wounds, bruises, or injuries on Paul, despite signs of a struggle

Source: trial testimony of police, ATF, prosecution, and defense experts.

5The Threatening Call Wasn't From Paul

One piece of evidence used against Paul at trial was a threatening phone call. Phone records — confirmed in the federal court's own 2020 ruling granting Paul habeas corpus relief — show that call was not made by Paul at all. It was made by a different person, Roy Endemann.

This misattribution was one of the problems the federal court identified when it set aside the original verdict and ordered a new trial.

Source: Zumot v. Borders, federal habeas corpus order (2020).

6The Gas Can Lead Police Never Followed

Police looked everywhere trying to tie the gas can to Paul. They could not.

Meanwhile, a real lead came in from a Palo Alto gas station: two women had gotten a gas can there that same day. Police did not follow up on it. Who those women were, and what they did with that gas can, was never investigated.

0links found between the gas can and Paul, despite an exhaustive search

2 womengot a gas can at a Palo Alto station that day — a lead police never pursued

Part Two — The DA's Story

The story the jury was told about Jennifer — and what it left out

With no physical evidence pointing to Paul, the prosecution built its case on a picture of Jennifer's life. That picture was false.

The DA's false claim

Paul did not cause Jennifer's decline.

The District Attorney told the jury that Jennifer's changing appearance — her clothing and her weight — was proof of what Paul was doing to her. That claim was false.

For a time, Jennifer's lifestyle was supported in part by generous gifts from people in her life. As those relationships ended and the real estate market collapsed, that support and her income fell away together.

By the time of her death, Jennifer was struggling financially. Her home was close to foreclosure, and her car was close to being repossessed. Under that pressure she even considered a desperate step — a false insurance claim to save her car — before a relative talked her out of it. Her appearance changed because her circumstances changed, not because Paul made her miserable.

Jennifer was under real pressure that had nothing to do with Paul: a broken and feuding family, money problems, and the people around her. The DA took the signs of that strain and laid them at Paul's feet, because it fit the story they needed the jury to believe.

The jury was shown a woman in decline and told one man was the cause. They were never shown the rest of her life.

Paul did not control her

Jennifer lived her own life.

The DA portrayed Paul as a man who controlled Jennifer's life. He did not.

Jennifer had male friends.
While she was still with Paul, she dated other men and spent nights with some of them.
Jennifer turned off her phone hundreds of times — every time she was with someone or wanted to sleep.
One of the men close to her — a friend she was also seeing — said that Jennifer had wronged and crossed a lot of people. One of those people told her that the hand of justice is long and it would get to her eventually.

That is not the life of a woman under someone's control. It is the life of a woman making her own choices, and the jury was told otherwise.

The psychologist got it backwards

Paul didn't control Jennifer. The evidence shows she was the one in control.

The psychologist who testified told the jury that Paul controlled how Jennifer acted toward him. The evidence we have shows the opposite.

Jennifer wanted Paul more than he wanted her. Every time Paul told her he was ready to move on, she reacted in desperate and convoluted ways to keep him — by calling the police on him, by making accusations that weren't true, or by spying on him.

That is not a man controlling a woman. It is a woman refusing to let a relationship end.

Her career

Her career was not what the jury was told.

The DA presented Jennifer as a successful realtor. The fuller picture is more complicated.

Not all of Jennifer's sales came through conventional channels, as one of her former boyfriends described — and her own records support his account. When the market turned, her business turned with it.

The police reports

A pattern she learned at home.

Jennifer's abuse claims against Paul, and her calls to the police about him, followed a pattern in her own family: her mother had made the same kinds of claims and police calls against Jennifer's father.

The jury was led to believe Jennifer reached out to police and wasn't taken seriously. That isn't what the record shows. The police did respond — and Jennifer knew how to use them as leverage in a conflict, just as she had seen done at home.

We have evidence that Jennifer herself said Paul never laid a hand on her.

Who really knew her

Jennifer had one friend: Roy.

Other than Roy, Jennifer did not have friends. That matters, because the jury heard from a line of witnesses who were presented as people who knew her life and her relationship.

They didn't. The people who took the stand barely knew Jennifer. Their impressions were treated as insight into her private life and into Paul — and the jury was asked to convict on them.

Her family

A family at war — and none of it was Paul.

The jury was never given an honest picture of where Jennifer came from or what she was carrying.

Her sister ran away from home to escape the problems with their mother. She also wanted nothing to do with the drama in Jennifer's life. Paul had nothing to do with the two sisters being apart.
Her mother had many problems, legal and otherwise, that Jennifer was dealing with.
Her grandmother “hated” her mother and wanted Jennifer to leave her mother.
A threat of murder-suicide hung over her immediate family, and Jennifer was deeply involved in trying to save her mother from her own bad choices.

Jennifer was caught in the middle of all of it. These were the forces pulling at her life — and the jury heard almost none of them.

Her aunt

An aunt obsessed with Jennifer.

Jennifer's aunt had an obsession with her.

That same aunt later killed her boyfriend, set the house on fire, and then took her own life.

This is the family around Jennifer that the jury never heard about. Instead of looking at the whole picture, the investigation looked only at Paul.

The whole picture

Paul was a small part of Jennifer's life.

Put it all in one picture — a family in crisis, a mother she was trying to save, a threat of murder-suicide at home, a business and finances falling apart, and the other people in her life — and Paul was only a small part of it.