The Texas Cadet Murder Case

David Graham and Diane Zamora could not go home until they cleaned up the blood on David's clothes and settled their nerves. Diane at 17, like David, who had turned 18 only a month earlier, were panicky after killing the young girl and took the quickest route to I-20. They headed for the house of John Green Jr., a high school chum nicknamed "J." He lived on a quiet residential street in Burleson, Texas, 20 miles south of Fort Worth on I-35. Green at 16, like Graham, was all-military. Both used to taking orders, David knew that J. would let them in, no questions asked.

David Graham's 165-pound, 6-foot-1-inch, ramrod frame, and buzz-cut hairstyle, was perfect for the military. His favorite outfit was camouflage pants and combat boots, and he usually carried a gun. Also part of the military life was his fiancée, Diane, a petite 113-pound, 5-foot-1-inch brunette with large brown eyes. They are an attractive looking couple.

Arriving at J.'s house around two or three in the morning, David was used to the routine of knocking on the window, popping out the screen, climbing into J.'s bedroom, and then placing back the screen. J.'s parents didn't mind this odd "front door" policy, as long as the screen was put back.

Waking from a sound sleep, John Green Jr. finally heard the rapping on the window, popped the screen, letting in the young couple. Seeing the expectant look on J.'s face, Graham says, "You're my best friend we were never here and you don't want to know."

The couple spent over 30 minutes in the bathroom with the water running while Diane cleaned the blood from David's clothes. "I think we were afraid to look at each other," Diane later wrote in her police statement, "and in some ways I think we were really afraid of each other." At some point J. gave Graham a pair of shorts to wear. He never did notice any blood, although he did remember that Diane's bandage on her left hand, from a recent car accident, was unfurled.

When the couple finally came out of the bathroom, they stood in J.'s bedroom just looking at each other. Fearful, they held each other, praying that God would forgive them for what they had done.

A short while later, on their way back to Diane's family home on the outskirts of Crowley-on-Gatlinburg, they disposed of the bloody clothes in a nearby dumpster, and then parked the bloodied car in the garage so that they could clean it undetected. Diane's father, Carlos Zamora, would be using the car in a few hours to drive the children to school. According to Diane, "David was too sick to clean up anything, he was really pale and sick to his stomach. He wouldn't even step back into that car for months because it was too horrible of a memory. So I cleaned it up while he was in my bedroom asleep. I told him just to go to sleep because he had gone into the bathroom to vomit. He said he was pretty sick to his stomach."

After cleaning the blood evidence from the car, they slept by the fire for a couple of hours, fearful that at any moment the police would come to the door and arrest them. Some time later, David hid the murder weapons---a 9mm pistol and two 25-pound barbell weights---in the attic of his father's house.

At some point after the killing, in their date books they noted that their mission was accomplished for their new pure relationship, putting finality on their actions. Ingrained military routine had encouraged them to note important events, such as notations of school exams, birthdays, and defensive-driving classes. Diane even wrote down insignificant things such as names of restaurants they visited.

Included in their date books were several highlighted key dates linked to the slaying. In Diane's, on a small 1995 calendar, she had circled November 4th with the notation "Lubbock" and December 1st with the notation "David told me." David wrote in his date book the approximate time police estimated that Adrianne was bludgeoned and shot to death, "1:38 a.m." Diane also circled December 4th with an arrow pointing to the notation "1:38 a.m. Adrianne," the name she had found so difficult to get out of her head.