Justice for Zuzu

A grand jury has finally indicted Robert Fabian for the murder of Zuzu Verk.  Well it’s about time.  If you aren’t familiar with the story it goes like this, Zuzu Verk went missing from the town of Alpine, TX where she attended Sul Ross State. She was last seen in public going to the movies with some friends and her on again/off-again boyfriend Robert Fabian on October 11, 2016.  That evening Robert Fabians downstairs neighbors say they could hear Fabian moving stuff around, playing music and then Zuzu shows up and around 9 pm or 10 pm they make dinner (they could smell the food cooking).  Franco (the downstairs neighbor) and his girlfriend who was with him at the time said they could hear them laugh at little bit during dinner but it got quite around 11 pm.  That’s when the neighbors say they could hear the couple fighting, the last of what they heard from the upstairs apartment was Fabian saying “shut the fuck up”.  The couple then says right before 3 am they heard a thump from the stairs, Franco's girlfriend woke him up because she thought what she heard was someone trying to break in.  When Franco got up to investigate he says he see’s Fabian leave the  apartment complex without Zuzu sometime between 3 am and 4 am.

The story Fabian tells investigators doesn’t match and he changes it.  At first Fabian says he escorted Verk out of his apartment and watched her leave in her car between 2am and 3am, then when he is confronted with what the neighbor says he saw he changes his story and says he left his apartment around 3am to drive over to the local Dairy Queen to think about his relationship with Verk.  He says when he comes back that’s when he escorts her out and watches her leave in her car.  The neighbor say’s he saw Zuzu’s car sitting in the parking lot when he watched Fabian leave in his jeep and then again in the same spot at 10:25am.  He tells investigators he thought it was unusual because Verk normally left in the morning when she stayed with Fabian.

Fabian, who says he had a romantic dinner planner for them, was the last person to see her alive has made the claim that she left in her car that morning between 3am and 4am to go home.  Eye witnesses say otherwise.

She had an exam the next day she didn’t show up for and she wasn’t at work that day either.  According to a warrant for AT&T records, Fabian made two calls to his friend Chris Estrada at 3:15 that morning of October 12^th and contacted him through Snapchat.  Fabian borrowed a truck from his brother in-law early that  morning of October 12^th, the day Zuzu went missing.  Estrada told investigators that he picked Robert Fabian up from his sister’s house (remember Fabian borrowed his brother in-laws truck early that morning) around 9pm to drive around in his new Mustang, he says they stopped to get a drink at Guzzi Up and then went to Fabians apartment to paint a table but didn’t because they had started drinking instead.

Investigators found out that Estrada left something out of his narrative from the night Zuzu went missing.  According to records from Estrada’s phone he did pick Fabian up at his sister’s house just like he said, he also did in fact go to Guzzi Up for a drink, what Estrada didn’t tell them was that he also took Fabian to the local Dollar General store where he let Fabian borrow his bank card to purchase some plastic drop clothes, like the kind a painter would use and they also went to some commercial dumpsters around the area between midnight and 12:20am.  Thursday, October 13^th  (really it’s still Wednesday October 12^th the day Zuzu went missing it’s just past midnight now), anyway so the same night Zuzu goes missing Fabian shows up at his friend Brittney Gasca’s house.  She tells investigators that her friend was acting so strange that she told him he was scaring her and his response was “I don’t want to get you involved. Don’t ask questions”.

Josh Cobos, friend of Fabian’s, says Chris Estrada tried on three separate occasions to get his car cleaned and detailed at the gas station Cobos managed on October 14^th, the same day Zuzu was officially reported missing.

Zuzu’s body was found February 3^rd and positively identified February 6^th in a shallow grave in Canyon Texas.  Now, a month later Robert Fabian is finally indicted for the murder of a girl, the town says, perfectly embodied what their small town was all about.

I’ve been following this story since day one and I can’t tell you how glad I am to see that the man who most thought all along was responsible for the death of this beautiful, promising, energetic 22 year old university student, will finally be forced to answer for what he’s done.

I hope Zuzu’s parents, who have permanently moved into to Zuzu’s apartment, can at the very least find some sort of closure now that they are finally able to bring their girl home.