Posted by Fleur de Lis, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Feb 10, 2011 at 11:24 am
Fleur de Lis is a member (registered user) of Palo Alto Online

I find it hard to believe that Zumot would leave his cottage and head down Fife St. to Lincoln speeding by where Scholpp lives to get to downtown, since that would be going out of his way and the opposite direction of downtown. Zumot would hardly have reason to go by this witness' residence, since Scholpp lives on the section of Lincoln directly parallel to the Zumot cottage on Addison. Anyone who knows this neighborhood and where the two residences are would doubt that Zumot would ever go around the block and go past the Scholpp place from any direction he would take to go to or away from his cottage on Addison, since one would turn off of Lincoln at Fife to go to Addison if one were coming from University Ave. or one would go from Channing to Addison, and never have reason to drive the section of Lincoln where this witness lives.

Also, that she held his eyes for several seconds as he sped by sounds improbable to me, since one wouldn't go speeding by looking at someone like that if they were trying to get away from somewhere quickly, and speeders wouldn't have much time to hold a glance for very long, and that business about holding the gaze for several seconds sounds unlikely if one were to go past where she lives and count one-one thousand, two-one thousand, etc. and see how long one could look at someone if they were speeding. Sorry, this doesn't seem to make much sense and appears unlikely.

The last bit of this testimony that seems odd to me is that this witness says she didn't know about the murder in the cottage until reading about it three months later when seeing his picture in the paper. Wouldn't it be basic human nature for a person (who saw the burnt cottage and firemen at the scene while she said she was going to her pet sitting job right there) to look for what happened there in the papers? I knew about it right away as I heard the sirens that day and looked for it in the paper to see what had happened, as I am sure a lot of other neighbors would have. When I look up her name in this publication I see that she has made comments before, including one about not liking the "drug paraphernalia" at Mac's Smoke Shop, so I see that this person does read what is published in this paper, so how could she not know about the incident until three months later?