Pod Insights DISGRACELAND Mia Zapata: Missed Connections, the Dark End of the Street, and an Uncompromising Voice with No Fear About this episode An uncompromising voice, silenced at the dark end of the street. A city looking for a killer in all the wrong places. And a scene that suddenly made little sense. From Seattle basements to European squat tours to record-label lunches and back again, through memory and justice. Listen to find out how Mia Zapata’s story refused to end where everyone thought it did.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This is exactly right.
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0:41 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wines since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
1:13 Speaker 03 Running a business means keeping pace with the latest tech. You put a lot into building your enterprise software stack, and scrapping it to integrate AI is out of the question. That's why IBM Technology works with all the apps, data, and models you need. It's another way IBM helps you build on the technology you rely on. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Visit ibm.com to learn more.
1:42 Speaker 01 Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.
1:58 Jake Brennan? This is a story about someone who mattered. It's about choosing the long way around and about getting outside your comfort zone. It's a story about basements and rehearsal spaces and about the real scene that beats like a tired heart, just out of sight of the manufactured scene playing out on national television. It's about rat houses, anarchist compounds, and the dark end of the street. This is a story about missed connections as well, about David Bowie peeling off in his gold Jaguar and Mia Zapata left behind, watching the Starman slip away and wondering what her next move was and what she'd have to sacrifice to get there.
2:42 Jake Brennan? And speaking of Mia Zapata, this is a story about the Gits, one of the most underrated bands from the so-called grunge scene of the 1990s, an artist in a band that made great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called "Star Buckingham Nicks MK2." I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "That's the Way Love Goes" by Janet Jackson. And why would I play you that specific slice of pre-nipple gate cheese? Could I afford it?
3:24 Jake Brennan? Because that was the number one song in America on July 7, 1993, and that was the day that Mia Zapata was found brutally murdered on the streets of Seattle in the early hours of the morning. On this episode, the long way around, comfort zones, rat houses, missed connections, so-called grunge, the dark end of the street, and Mia Zapata. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.
4:15 Jake Brennan? July 7th, 1993, Seattle. It was late, around 3:00 in the morning, but for Charity, the workday was only half over. This was her time, the nighttime, the right time. The time when inhibitions dropped to the floor as quickly as a pair of loose jeans. The time when the darkness and shadows obscured the most primal and illicit of human interactions. The time when a girl like Charity could use all these things to her advantage and make that money hand over fist. She'd just left one John in a haze of stone satisfaction, relieving him of his cash on her way out, which now lined the soft inside of her lace bra, as she walked confidently
5:00 Jake Brennan? down 24th Avenue, her heels echoing as she anticipated the next customer. Charity was street smart, unshakable, unflappable, unfuckwithable. She'd seen it all before, and she didn't scare easily. However, there was one thing that gave her pause. The boogeyman, a serial killer who remained at large. The Green River Killer had racked up a terrifying body count around Seattle and Tacoma. He seemed to focus on blue collar sex workers like Charity. He'd been plying his deadly trade for years, always one step ahead of the police, casting this dark cloud over the Pacific Northwest.
5:44 Jake Brennan? People said it rained all the time in Seattle, and that was bullshit, peddled by the same East Coast intellectuals who said that Chicago was windy. It didn't rain all the time in Seattle, but it was cloudy, and those clouds belonged to the Green River Killer.
6:02 Jake Brennan? Charity kept walking, keeping her guard up, while simultaneously trying not to think about the boogeyman or killers.
6:10 Jake Brennan? And that all changed when she got to the intersection of 24th and Yessler Way. Her self-assured strut began to slow, and then she came to a complete stop. Up ahead, near the curb, before 24th dead-ended and gave way to an empty field, there was a body lying flat on the pavement. A streetlight overhead shone down, the dirty glow of the yellow fluorescent like spoiled food. The yellow hue gave shape to the body below, arms outstretched in either direction, like the letter T or a cross. Charity immediately thought of the Green River Killer, and how it was said that he posed his victims' dead bodies. And suddenly, she felt the skin on the back of her neck tingle,
6:55 Jake Brennan? and despite the mild overnight July temperature, she scanned the area looking for someone hiding in Seattle's shadows. The same shadows she knew inside and out like the back of her hand. But there was nothing, nobody, just her and this body in the middle of the road. She called out, her voice breaking the silence of the early morning. There was no response, so she began to walk again, more cautiously this time. And as she got closer, she saw that this was a woman's body. Charity had never seen someone dead before, not like this, not up close and personal in the flesh. "Well," she thought, "I guess you haven't seen it all before."
7:41 Jake Brennan? She then shifted her gaze from the dead woman to her bleak surroundings. Think, where could she go for help? There were no signs of life in this deserted part of town, especially after 3:00 in the morning. And quickly, she got her bearings, and she remembered a fire station just a few blocks away. She peeled the heels off her feet and took off in a sprint.
8:04 Jake Brennan? Within minutes, she was the last thing a couple firefighters on the late shift ever expected to see stumble onto their doorstep. And the first responders descended on the intersection of 24th Avenue and Yessler Way. At a local hospital, the young woman was tagged as a Jane Doe. And there was no identification on the body. She had been so badly beaten that it was hard to know where to even begin when it came to identification. She'd been sexually assaulted and strangled with the drawstrings from the hoodie she was wearing.
8:36 Jake Brennan? And there was something else, too. A chicken tattoo on her right leg. It was an identifying mark, something unique that the cops could use to figure out exactly who she was. But the cops didn't even have to go public with that particular detail. Because the medical examiner on duty took one look at that chicken tattoo and instantly knew the woman's identity.
9:02 Jake Brennan? Like many people in town, the medical examiner was a big fan of Seattle bands. The so-called grunge scene had only recently turned the city on its head. And Seattle was still the coolest town in the country, but the medical examiner's musical interest was hyper-local. The world could have their Nirvana's and their Pearl Jams and all that. This guy was into the bands and had yet to be co-opted and corrupted by any major label. The ones who had been battling in the trenches for years, making a name for themselves and building up a loyal fanbase. And so, when the medical examiner saw the chicken tattoo on Jane Doe here, he knew he'd seen it before.
9:41 Jake Brennan? Maybe at a show at the Crocodile Cafe over on First or the OK Hotel in Pioneer Square. The owner of this tattoo fronted one of his favorite bands, The Gits. He loved that name. He loved the word "git" ever since he heard Beetle John use it to curse Sir Walter Raleigh on that one song on the White Album. British slang for Americans was a real "if you know, you know" kind of thing. Just like the band The Gits, if you knew, you knew. And this guy knew. So his heart sank.
10:15 Jake Brennan? His moment of joyful recognition shifted painfully into one of unknowable sadness and incredible loss. He felt his eyes well up. He was looking at the body of one of Seattle's most singular and inspiring voices. One for whom commercial success had been just about ready to meet her on her own terms. Twenty-seven-year-old Mia Zapata.
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11:28 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
12:00 Speaker 03 Running a business means keeping pace with the latest tech. You put a lot into building your enterprise software stack, and scrapping it to integrate AI is out of the question. That's why IBM technology works with all the apps, data, and models you need. It's another way IBM helps you build on the technology you rely on. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Visit ibm.com to learn more.
12:33 Jake Brennan? To those who knew her, Mia Zapata was many things. She was a fearless artist and a vulnerable human being. She was incredibly funny and intelligent beyond her years. She was so approachable and honest that there were many people who called her their best friend, and who still believe that to be true to this day. She could be the shyest person in the room, but give her a microphone and a stage and suddenly she was explosive and magnetic. An instant point of focus for the hundreds or thousands of people watching from the crowd. The first time one of her future bandmates in the Gits ever heard her perform, she was singing a cover of Iggy Pop's "The Passenger," accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, and
13:15 Jake Brennan? the sound of her voice alone reduced this future bandmate, Matt Dresner, to tears. Born in Chicago in 1965 and raised in Louisville, Kentucky from a very early age, Mia Zapata made her mind up. She was thankful for the life of privilege and security that her parents had provided her, but she didn't need it. She didn't need the prestige of the all-girls prep school where she was educated. She didn't need money. She didn't need a high-powered, early-morning, button-down gig like her mother, one of the highest-paid TV executives in the country, a woman who had had an apartment overlooking Central Park. Now, New York City had its allure, but for Mia, the allure wasn't a penthouse in the sky.
13:59 Jake Brennan? Her platonic ideal was rougher around the edges: less Sinatra and more Billie Holiday. It was Warhol, Basquiat, down on the dirty streets. It was the Ramones, Jim Carroll, Patti Smith, Lou Reed. Like Graham Parsons and Townes Van Zant, fellow singers from wealthy families who'd made their mark years before her, Mia Zapata wasn't interested in the charmed life she was born into. She heard the call of discomfort and risk, and she answered it. But let me be clear: Mia Zapata was not escaping something. She was pursuing something, and that something fell far beyond the cozy confines of Louisville or New York. First, it was in the Midwest, at Antioch College in Ohio.
14:44 Jake Brennan? A place that had no sports teams and no letter grades. A place where defiance of an otherwise typical higher education experience was undeniably seductive for someone like Mia. At Antioch, Mia had her mind blown. Not so much by her classes, but by witnessing performances by bands like the Dead Kennedys, who played the college as part of a US tour. Watching Jell-O Biafra stalk around stage like a madman was liberating. It was also accessible. She could do that. It didn't matter that her creative inspiration came less from punk and more from the likes of blues singer Bessie Smith. She could be both at the same time. This was the brilliance of Mia Zapata.
15:26 Jake Brennan? As a journalist, Martin Douglas once wrote, "To hear Mia sing was to hear her puking the blues." At Antioch, she puked the blues as the lead singer for a loud and fast band called the Sniveling Little Rat-Face Gitz. They took their name from a Monty Python sketch, but soon shortened it simply to "The Gitz," since "Sniveling Little Rat-Face Gitz" was just too long to fit on the spine of their demo tape. Along with Matt Dresner on bass, Steve Moriarty on drums, and Andrew Kessler, aka Joe Spleen on guitar, Mia and the Gitz caught wind of an exciting music scene brewing out in Seattle. In 1989, they pulled up stakes in Ohio and headed west.
16:09 Jake Brennan? But when they arrived, me and the guys discovered that the Seattle scene, while exciting as advertised, was closed off to outsiders. Bands such as Mud Honey, Mother Love Bone, and Soundgarden had all known each other for years, and they had developed a brotherhood that was not only suspicious of others, it was an "actual brotherhood," meaning it was comprised entirely of dudes. Women were rarely in a band, and if they were, they definitely weren't the lead singer.
16:36 Jake Brennan? So the Gitz, down and out and low on cash, rented a four-bedroom house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, which at the time was cheap but dangerous. The place was crawling with junkies, dealers, thieves. Not unlike the clientele, Mia served at her day job waiting tables at a dive bar called the Frontier Room. The band kept their heads down, blocked out the seedy bullshit passing them by and focused on their songs. Joe Spleen wrote the music and Mia wrote the lyrics. They worked tirelessly. And soon they found their people. Not the bands with long beards and longer hair, those already entrenched on the scene, but upstarts like the Gitz themselves. Bands like DC Beggars and Seven Year Bitch,
17:20 Jake Brennan? who shared the rehearsal space the Gitz had carved out in the basement of their rental house. They called the place "The Rat House", and for good reason. It was a dilapidated abode owned by an odd man. And the neighbors swore he was either a warlock or a demon. He said he once rid the place of cockroaches by capturing a bunch of them, making a stew from their carcasses, and then ceremoniously eating that stew. The Rat House was a shithole with a gnarly backstory and a super whose own sanity was in question. In other words, it was punk as fuck. The Gitz performed marathon rehearsals in the basement, becoming thick as thieves with DC Beggars and Seven Year Bitch.
18:03 Jake Brennan? In particular, Seven Year Bitch's lead guitarist Stephanie Sargent became one of Mia's closest confidants. Stephanie was trying to stay off dope and go astray, and Mia, being a few years older, took Stephanie under her wing. Just as Kurt Cobain and Nirvana soon took the Gitz under their wing.
18:23 Jake Brennan? Kurt knew a good thing when he saw it. To Kurt, the Gitz were everything he loved about music. They had vigor for days, they had punk energy and pop hooks, just like his band did. Watching them perform was like running headfirst into an oncoming locomotive. And at the center of it all was Mia, now Seattle's most enigmatic and charismatic lead singer. Her trademark dread swirling around her head as she puked the blues. Kurt handpicked the Gits to open a now legendary show in January 1990, where the two bands, along with TAD, the third band on the bill, were permanently banned from the University of Washington for trashing a makeshift dressing room, which happened to be one of the university professors' classrooms.
19:08 Jake Brennan? And then, everything changed.
19:15 Jake Brennan? In 1991, Nirvana signed to Geffen Records and released their major label debut, Nevermind. It was as if tectonic plates had shifted. The musical landscape, not only of Seattle, but of the world, was completely rearranged. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, they all strapped in for an upwards trajectory of G-force strength, while the Gits stayed put as one of Seattle's best-kept secrets. And as Nevermind was on its way to the first of 13 platinum certifications, the Gits were getting on a plane en route to Amsterdam. Kurt's face was all over MTV, while Mia and the boys embarked on their little European tour.
19:59 Jake Brennan? The tour had been booked for them, not by an agent or a manager, neither of which they had, but by a couple of Dutch squatters who happened to be big fans. And so while Nirvana played Axis in Boston, Tower Records in New York, The 930 Club in DC, and First Avenue in Minneapolis, the Gits were playing barely-attended shows at European youth centers, government buildings, and even in Anarchist Compound, whatever the hell that was. The Gits drummer, Steve Moriarty, later wrote in his memoir that, "It felt as if our peers were flying by us in the fast lane and we were stuck in first gear without gas money." Mia tried hard to push through, and she encouraged the others to do the same. After all, she was in pursuit of this life. She was driving it.
20:44 Jake Brennan? And that drive, that pursuit, it wasn't easy. It wasn't meant to be. What was that stupid cliche? If it was easy, everyone would do it. The Rathaus, it wasn't an apartment overlooking Central Park, and that was the whole point: to push through the hard stuff so that you could grasp what was waiting on the other side. Something that very few in this life had access to. So Mia and the Gits pressed on into 1992, preparing songs for what would become their debut studio album. But before the album was even released, tragedy struck.
21:20 Jake Brennan? This drive, this pursuit, this life, it took the life of Stephanie Sargent, Mia's close friend from Seven Year Bitch.
21:30 Jake Brennan? In June of that year, 92, Stephanie had fallen back into old habits, using again and drinking on top of it. And the combination caused her to asphyxiate on her own vomit. Stephanie Sargent was dead at the age of 24. And Mia Zapata suddenly felt the pain of her chosen life. The pain of losing a good friend. The pain of losing the Seattle rock band lottery. She began to miss band rehearsals. And she fought often with her boyfriend. She began to rely a little too much on alcohol. And she did the things she'd never intended to do when she first chose to pursue this life. She looked for an escape.
22:17 Speaker 04 We'll be right back after this.
22:19 Speaker 01 Word, word, word.
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22:54 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
23:24 Speaker 05 I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment.
23:37 Speaker 06 The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.
24:12 Speaker 05 Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.
24:29 Jake Brennan? The voice coming from the gold Jaguar convertible parked alongside the West Hollywood Texaco gas pump was very English and very posh. "Excuse me, love, would you mind getting my window next?" Mia Zapata stopped what she was doing, which at the moment was squeegeeing the windshield of the Getz Tour van, and turned to face the owner of the condescending request. Get his window next? The fuck did he think she was? Just because she was wearing some old gas jockey jacket didn't mean she was a gas jockey. She decided to take the high road, so she turned around to walk away and forget all about it. As she did so, however, she heard the English voice call out to her again. "Oh, and love, how about a pack of fags as well?"
25:14 Jake Brennan? That did it. The ball's on this guy. Mia spun around. "Get your own damn fags, you British prick, and fuck you for thinking I work here. Get fucked."
25:24 Jake Brennan? Mia jumped back in the Tour van, slamming the door behind her in anger and frustration. There was an awkward silence among the rest of her bandmates. Outside, the sound of the Jaguar purring as the engine came to life. And finally, one of Mia's bandmates spoke up. "Uh, Mia? Do you know who that was? The guy you just told to get fucked? That was, uh, David Bowie."
25:49 Jake Brennan? It was like the weight of Mia's jaw dropping to the floor pulled her eyes wide open. And she looked out the van's window, really looked this time. And there he was, the Starman, sitting behind the wheel of the Jag, slowly pulling away from the pump. Fuck. Mia grabbed a handful of the Gitz seven-inch records from a box on the floor, threw the door of the van wide open and jumped out. She chased after Bowie, but it was too late. He was now peeling off onto the main road, far away from the crazy American woman who refused to wash his windshield or get him a pack of smokes. But, as they say, "We're one door closes," and all that.
26:32 Jake Brennan? Soon, the missed opportunity with David Bowie was something to look back at and laugh about. Because just months later, in the summer of 1993, the Gitz were at long last picking up speed. After a period in which she spiraled into alcohol addiction and self-destruction, Mia had gotten her shit together and was back to her original goal: to pursue a life unlike any other. She didn't quit drinking altogether, but enough so that she was no longer dropping her pants in the middle of the street to moon passing cops who were harassing her. She cut her dread short to signify a moment of real change. The Gitz debut LP, "Frenching the Bully," released by Seattle indie label CZ Records,
27:14 Jake Brennan? was getting good reviews, and they were already working on album number two. And they were doing so while talking not with David Bowie, but the next best thing, I guess, Atlantic Records. And the iconic label was keen to sign the Gitz as they were told at a lunch in LA where they were wined and dined by an Atlantic exec. Next up was a meeting with the legal team that represented not only Nirvana, but some of Mia's heroes, such as Lou Reed.
27:41 Jake Brennan? Mia was on cloud nine, but she remained grounded. When Atlantic asked her what she wanted out of the deal, she said all she needed was a cabin in the woods, an English sheepdog, a Jeep, and the freedom to write and record music. Days later, after the band wrapped up their west coast tour at a show in Washington State, Mia didn't let these latest developments go to her head. She didn't book a fancy room at a five-star hotel. She crashed on the couch at the house of some kid right there in the Tri-Cities. The next day, July 4th, she was back in Seattle. She had a few days to lay down some vocals for the Gits' second album, and then it was off to the east coast where the band's tour would resume.
28:22 Jake Brennan? The tour, the new album, the overtures by Atlantic, the Ace legal team, it was almost too much. It was happening fast, all at once, but Mia being Mia, she didn't allow herself to get swept up by it. Because there are other things on her mind keeping her tethered to Planet Earth, to the here and the now. And one of those things was the memory of Stephanie Sargent, who had passed away just one year ago around this time. And it only seemed right to memorialize the occasion, to commit to never forgetting the sacrifices of this life. So on the evening of July 6th, the night before she was set to hit the road again, Mia Zapata headed over to the Comet Tavern in Capitol Hill to do just that.
29:07 Jake Brennan? Her boots hit the pavement. Directly above them, her jeans were rolled up at the ankle. Her black hoodie with "Gits" printed on the back was pulled up over her head, obscuring the pair of headphones strapped around her ears. The Walkman bobbed in her pocket each time her foot came down on the sidewalk, and the cassette tape playing inside warbled every single time. She enjoyed the music nonetheless. It propelled her forward, it kept her moving, it gave her purpose. Mia didn't have a driver's license. Often, she took taxis. But tonight, it felt good to walk all over the streets of her adopted home, and take it all in before leaving again in the morning.
29:49 Jake Brennan? The sights and smells of East Pike Street washed over her until at last she reached number 922, the Comet. Mia stepped inside, pulling the hoodie from her head and the soft headphones from her ears. She could see the girls from Seven Year Bitch waiting for her at the bar. It was loud and smoky, exactly the way a bar should be. Mia bellied up, hugs all around, and they ordered a round of drinks that held them high in the air. "To Stephanie," they said, "may her memory be a blessing." Then the clinking of glasses and the knocking back of ice cold pints. They told stories, they laughed and cried and drank some more.
30:30 Jake Brennan? It was around midnight when Mia stumbled out the Comet's front door and back onto East Pike Street. She put her headphones on once again and hit play on the Walkman. She pulled the hoodie over her head and began to walk. This time, she went to a three-story building about a block away called Winston Apartments, where her boyfriend's band, Hell's Smells, had a rehearsal space. She found the space empty, so instead, she ascended the central staircase to the second floor and knocked on the apartment door of another friend, the singer in her boyfriend's band, a woman named Tracy Victoria Kenley. Everyone called Tracy TV. The door opened, and TV was happy to see her.
31:11 Jake Brennan? And Mia pulled the headphones off, as TV welcomed her inside. In TV's apartment, the actual television played. Nearly two hours later, an old rerun of Get Smart was about to start when Mia decided it was time to push on. She said goodnight to TV, threw her headphones back on, and made her way back down the central staircase and outside. Seattle slept, Seattle breathed, Seattle tossed and turned. And Mia kept walking, tired but wired, thinking about the impending tour, thinking about the new record, thinking about Atlantic Records, and thinking about Stephanie.
31:52 Jake Brennan? She reached into her pocket and put her thumb on the Walkman's volume wheel and turned it up. The music made the long walk worth it. The music made the night. The music was the night. The music was the life.
32:08 Jake Brennan? She kept walking. She thought about the name of the device she was listening to, the Walkman, as in Walkman. It made her laugh. She was aimless. She had a purpose. Which was it? Did it matter? Her heart rate was getting higher, her own breathing getting louder, now nearly as loud as the music in her headphones. Each breath louder now than the last. And then the breathing was suddenly arrhythmic. It was offbeat, offrhythm, not in sync with how she was inhaling and exhaling. And by the time she realized that the heavy breathing was coming from behind her, it was too late.
33:03 Jake Brennan? Hey guys, earlier in this episode, I mentioned a wacky European tour in which the Gitz played a lot of unorthodox venues. I guess that's what you could call them. This is the tour they embarked on, still unknown outside of Seattle, while a bunch of their contemporaries like Nirvana were blowing up. I don't get into much detail about the tour because we just didn't have the time here in the full episode, but there is a crazy story from this tour about how a late, late, late night meal at a Swiss restaurant nearly got the band busted and the tour canceled. And you can hear this wild story in a brand new mini episode of Disgrace Land, available right now. Become a member at disgracelandpod.com. All right, back to this story now about Mia Zapata and the Gitz rock and roll.
33:50 Jake Brennan? From 2:00 AM on the morning of July 7th, 1993, when she left the East Pike Street apartment of her friend Tracy Victoria Kemley, AKA TV, to 3:20 AM when her body was discovered a little over a mile and a half away at the intersection of 24th and Yesler, Mia Zapata's whereabouts were unknown. For 80 minutes, no one saw her. It was like she was a ghost wandering the city. Had she been walking that entire time? Did she hail a cab? How long was she on her own before her killer got hold of her? And just who could have sexually assaulted her, strangled her, and then taken her life in cold blood? The suspect list was endless.
34:32 Jake Brennan? In fact, there was an entire music scene of suspects. Not only Mia’s boyfriend, the one she had tried to see earlier in the evening, and not only every single guy in Mia’s band, but every single guy in every band in Seattle. There was potential motive, too. Just one year prior, one of Mia’s coworkers at the Frontier Room Bar had privately confided to Mia that a guy from a local band had sexually assaulted her in an alley. It turned out that the Gits were supposed to record a split seven-inch with this guy and his band, and so Mia immediately wrote a new song specifically for this single called “Spear in Magic Helmet.” In the song, she described the assault and then laid out very clearly how she was her
35:15 Jake Brennan? friend’s rage-filled retribution. The song, in Mia’s take-no-shit approach to defending her people, scared the guy off. His band dropped from the seven-inch project, and he skipped town. But for Seattle PD, the motive didn’t have to be so complicated. The killer could be hiding in plain sight. Someone who maybe didn’t hold a grudge against Mia. They could be playing a gig that very night in town. So the cops hauled every man from every band that had shared a stage with the Gits into the station. Musicians, roadies, promoters. Paranoia was high. A subtext of suspicion undercut every sound check. Some bands stopped rehearsing, others broke up entirely.
35:59 Jake Brennan? But after the police had collected an abundance of interviews, fingerprints, and DNA samples, they were no closer to finding Mia Zapata’s killer than they’d been on day one. All they had to go on was some saliva found on Mia’s body. But the sample was tiny, too small for the DNA testing methods available to law enforcement in 1993. So the King County Medical Examiner filed the saliva sample in storage, as was protocol, in hopes that it could be used in the future when the technology caught up.
36:30 Jake Brennan? The remaining members of the Gits meanwhile, were getting frustrated with the cops' sit around and wait strategy. Mia was all anyone was talking about. Posters of her face were plastered all over town. But the case was quickly growing cold. So just weeks after her murder, Mia's bandmates hired a private investigator on their own. And they organized a benefit concert in early August at the King Performance Center to pay the P.I.'s fee. A show headlined at the last minute by none other than one of Mia's earliest advocates in town and one of the biggest bands on the planet, Nirvana. Future benefit shows and compilation albums featuring Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Joan Jett helped fund the private investigator for three years. Despite all this, there were few leads to go on.
37:15 Jake Brennan? And there were no easy answers. And soon, there was no money left either. Still, Mia was remembered every single day by the thousands who loved her. From her family and her closest friends and bandmates to the diehard fans of the Gits. But as the years dragged on, the deaths of more famous Seattle artists like Kurt Cobain and Lane Staley, they seized control of the global narrative. While Mia's still unsolved story threatened to shrink to a footnote in the annals of history. But Steve Moriarty, Matt Dresser, Joe Spleen, Seven Year Bitch, DC Beggars, they all refused to allow Mia to be reduced in that way. They kept her memory and their mission alive.
38:00 Jake Brennan? All the while, the laborious processes of law enforcement continued to evolve, however slowly. And so, eight long years after her murder, with advances in forensic science now making the once impossible possible, Seattle P.D. was finally able to send that saliva sample they kept to the Washington State Crime Lab for analysis. The results were two DNA profiles. One was Mia's, and the other was an unidentified male. In 2002, the male profile was added to the FBI's database of 2 million DNA profiles. And just six months later, in January of 2003, they got a hit.
38:43 Jake Brennan? But the suspect at the end of that hit came as a complete shock.
38:50 Jake Brennan? Mia's killer, it turns out, wasn't someone she knew. It wasn't a member of a Seattle band, someone embedded in the so-called grunge scene as the cops had been so sure about it first. In fact, it was the exact opposite.
39:05 Jake Brennan? It was a transient who had been in town at the time, temporarily shacked up a mile and a half from where Mia's body was found, and had since been living thousands of miles away in Florida. Forty-eight-year-old Jesus Mesquita was arrested in Miami-Dade County, where he is out on probation for a recent felony conviction.
39:25 Jake Brennan? One of his parole conditions involved routine cheek swab samples, which had been checked against the FBI's database, and that yielded the match. This career criminal had a long rap sheet across multiple states: aggravated battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment, robbery, indecent exposure, battery, and now first-degree murder, which he was found guilty of the following year, 2004, and sentenced to 36 years in prison. Jesus Mesquita could run from justice no longer. Mia Zapata, on the other hand, was never running from anything: not Louisville, not privilege, not comfort, and certainly not from fear.
40:10 Jake Brennan? Instead, she was running towards something: a life lived loudly, honestly, and on her own terms. And that walk through the dark streets of Seattle in the early morning hours of July 7th wasn't an escape, it was another step forward.
40:28 Jake Brennan? Her killer was eventually named, catalogued, and filed away by the system, where he spent the rest of his days in a cell.
40:36 Jake Brennan? But Mia's story doesn't end, not in 1993 and not in 2021, when Jesus Mesquita died behind bars. Mia's story rings out every time someone chooses risk over safety or truth over comfort. It's there in every voice that refuses to be silent and every artist who isn't going to wait their turn. Mia Zapata kept walking, kept pursuing, and that motion carries on, carrying everyone who follows it towards something that feels like grace.
41:13 Jake Brennan? I'm Jake Brennan and this is DisgraceLand.
41:30 Jake Brennan? All right, guys. Thanks for listening to another episode of DisgraceLand. This one on Mia Zapata and the Gits. Appreciate y'all. Question of the week this week. Which artists are you aware of? Which musicians who died before they got their due, died before their time, died before their career really took off? There are tons of examples. 617-906-6638. Leave me a voicemail. Send me a text. Hit me up at @disgracelandpod on the socials. [email protected] . Make sure you guys got auto downloads turned on. If you're an Apple Podcast listener, leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and you might win some free merch. Here comes some credits.
42:09 Jake Brennan? DisgraceLand was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod and on YouTube at youtube.com slash @disgracelandpod. Rockerola.
42:34 Speaker 07 He's a bad, bad man.
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