Mia Zapata

Mia Zapata grew up listening to Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles and Hank Williams. She was also a gifted poet and artist. In the fall of 1986, she formed a rock band called The Gits with three classmates at Antioch College in Ohio. In 1989, they relocated to Seattle, where grunge rock and street punk was burgeoning. The Gits quickly gained popularity in the Seattle music scene of the early 1990s, and major record labels took notice. But just as The Gits were poised to explode onto the national music scene, tragedy struck. On July 7, 1993, Mia was raped and murdered while walking home. Her murder remained unsolved for a decade, prompting numerous conspiracy theories, including that she was killed by a rival band, stalked by a rabid fan, or that a Satanic cult was involved. Finally, using old DNA evidence, a Cuban drifter was convicted in 2004 of Mia's murder and is serving a 37-year sentence. The Seattle music community had been shattered by death many times in the early 1990s. In 1990, Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood died of a heroin overdose. In 1991, local poet Jesse Bernstein shot himself. Stefanie Sargent of 7 Year Bitch overdosed in 1992. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana committed suicide in 1994. All of these deaths altered the local music scene, but because Mia's death was a homicide, her memory in particular haunted the community. Many bands broke up after her murder, and her posters still hang in clubs and cafés. In response to her murder, friends created a women's self-defense group called Home Alive, which produces fundraising concerts and CDs with the participation of Seattle's music elite, including Pearl Jam, Heart, and the Presidents of the United States. Joan Jett recorded an album with the surviving members of The Gits.