(KRON) — After years of legal delays and an overturned conviction, a man who murdered his ex-girlfriend and ignited her body on fire in their Palo Alto home was found guilty for a second time.
Bulos “Paul” Zumot was convicted by a jury following a retrial this week. On October 15, 2009, Jennifer Schipsi was slain and set on fire inside a Palo Alto cottage on Addison Avenue where she lived with Zumot.
Leading up to the killing and arson fire, Zumot owned a hookah shop and was required to attend domestic violence classes in San Jose. Before one of his classes, he strangled Schipsi because she told him she was leaving their relationship and would be reporting him to police, according to prosecutors.
“After strangling Jennifer to death, Zumot left her body at their cottage while he attended his court-mandated domestic violence class. Zumot then returned and, in an apparent effort to make the death look like an accident, poured gasoline all over Jennifer’s body, turned on the gas in the kitchen, and set fire to the home,” the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office wrote.
Schipsi, 29, had told friends, family, police, and strangers that Zumot had repeatedly threatened to kill her throughout their tumultuous two-year relationship, prosecutors said.
“In a recording Jennifer made seven weeks before her death, she explained in her own words how Zumot persuaded her to stay with him with promises to change and to go to therapy. She told her friends that she knew if she stayed, something bad would happen to her,” the DA’s office wrote.
Neighbors saw the cottage burning and extinguished the blaze with garden hoses before the gas could ignite and cause an explosion. The neighbors’ firefighting efforts left key evidence intact, prosecutors said.
During his first trial in 2011, Zumot was convicted of murder and arson before he was sentenced to serve 33 years to life in prison. In 2020, a federal district court judge reversed the conviction and granted him a new trial. The case stalled in courts for years until a retrial was finally held this October.
A new jury deliberated for two days and found the ex-boyfriend guilty. Zumot will be re-sentenced by a judge on November 21. He is facing a life prison sentence.
“Justice for Jennifer took far too long,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. “Her family, the Palo Alto police officers, my prosecutors, and this community, never forgot her. This week, 16 tragic and frustrating years later, this defendant found out that you can’t play the system forever. You can’t get away with murder in Santa Clara County.”
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