Zarate guilty

Zarate found guilty of murder; jury rejects ‘psychotic state’ defense:

It’s a word that the parents of Jennifer Parks have been waiting over three years to hear. Guilty.

After three years and many delays, a jury has finally found Jonathan Zarate guilty in the murder of Jennifer Parks. The jury only took two hours to reach their verdict.

In July of 2005 a then 18-year-old Zarate of Randolph, NJ invited his 16-year-old neighbor, Jennifer Parks, to come over and watch TV. At some point, she said something about Zarate’s brother James. Jennifer had previously had the younger Zarate brother removed from school because he was bullying her. whatever she said sent Jonathan Zarate into a rage. He beat her with a metal pole until she choked on her own vomit then stabbed her repeatedly. To hide what he did he dismembered her body and hid it in a footlocker. He then hid the footlocker in his family’s Jeep for 24 hours while he attended a birthday party for a relative.

The next day Zarate, his brother, and a friend were caught by police trying to dump the footlocker that contained Jennifer’s body into the Passaic River.

Zarate was far from what you would call a model prisoner. He had to be transferred out of the Morris County prison for assaulting a guard. While in his new prison he inquired to other inmates on how to fake an insanity defense.

During the trial, Zarate’s attorney tried arguing that Zarate was in a ‘psychotic state’ when he killed Jennifer Parks. A psychologist even testified to that. Luckily today the jury had no part of that and did the right thing by sending a brutal killer to prison.

Zarate’s brother will be tried separately for his part in the murder.

This was one of the first stories I started following when I first opened the News of Doom site. NoD opened officially on July 31st, 2005, the day after Jennifer was killed. I have been in contact with Jennifer Parks family and I have exchanged e-mails with Laurie Parks. Even though I can’t even imagine how Mrs. Parks’ emotions have been since her daughter’s murder I actually felt butterflies in my stomach when I read the headline that Zarate had been convicted.

My prayers and thoughts constantly go out to the Parks family.

Speaking of which I wanted to post this comment Jennifer’s father, David Parks, gave to The Daily Record about Zarate’s alleged psychotic state of mind…

“I don’t care what his state of mind was, it will never bring my daughter back,” father David Parks said. “Conversations at the grave suck. It’s one-sided.”

I’m glad that was remembered by the jury that Jennifer Parks was the real victim in all of this.

No word on sentencing yet. Anything less than life without parole would be a travesty.

Thanks to Helen and Keb for the tip.