It wasn’t a trip back to the borough that Roberta Cambria was looking forward to.
During the half-day flight from her new home in Nevada to the East Coast this past June, the 63-year-old woman had two anxiety attacks in the air, but not for fear of flying.
Once again, she was going to see 42-year-old Guy Zappulla, the man who took her daughter’s life 10 years earlier.
“Every time I walked into that courtroom, I felt nauseous,” Cambria said. “I would look at him and think that he can still put his head on a pillow after killing someone so loved by her family.”
Back in 1998, Zappulla, a mob turncoat, strangled 28-year-old Jennifer Scarpati to death during a stay at the Golden Gate Inn in Sheepshead Bay.
Zappulla was convicted for the killing back in 1999, but managed to escape a conviction on appeal. After fleeing police custody and being hit by a car, investigators never re-Mirandized him – which gave his attorney just enough leverage to demand a mistrial.
A new trial – the third (the first trial, held a month earlier, ended in a hung jury after three days of deliberation) — was put on the docket last month.
Word was sent to the west coast that Cambria would need to speak for her fallen daughter once again.
Just before her death, Jennifer, a pretty Sheepshead Bay native known as “JJ” to her friends and family, was struggling with a drug addition.
When Zappulla discovered that she had pocketed some of his jewelry – jewelry that he had reportedly stolen from another girlfriend to fuel his own drug habit – he choked the life out of her and stuffed her under a hotel’s captain’s bed as one would a used pair of sneakers.
Her body, clad in a red sweater, was found by detectives right where Zappulla had entombed her.
For the second time in 10 years, Cambria had to take the stand, and identify the broken woman in the red sweater as her beloved JJ.
“That’s the picture that’s remained in my head for the nine years, the one with the red sweater, no matter how many pictures I have of her in my house,” she said. “That’s the picture in my head every day.”
Following a two-week trial, it took a jury only an hour and a half to convict him. Again he was found guilty of murder. And this time, the conviction would stick — Zappulla will be looking at prison bars sometime between 25 years and the day he stops breathing.
The long road to justice was finally at an end for Roberta Cambria.
“I understand that the justice system is designed to protect innocent people from becoming prisoners, but I became a prisoner as I waited for this trial,” she said. “I was very emotional [at every trial] and every time it became harder and harder to hold back my feelings.”
During the summations, when the attorneys recounted all of the evidence and testimony in painful detail, the dam finally broke. Cambria wept openly.
“There was a pool of tears at my feet,” she said. “My friends couldn’t get me up.”
Once the verdict was read, she managed to muster enough courage to tell Zappulla something that she’s wanted to say for a decade, ever since she heard that JJ had been killed.
Since she wouldn’t be back for sentencing – which was finally held last Monday – Justice Deborah Dowling allowed her to make her statement once the verdict was read.
But Roberta couldn’t bring herself to look at the man who killed her baby.
Instead, she expressed her thoughts through Kings County Assistant District Attorney Julie Rendelman. Her words were simple, yet profoundly to the point:
“You took a child from her mother,” she said. “You took a sister from a sister, a mother from her children, a granddaughter from a grandmother, a cousin from her cousins and a friend from her friends. May you rot in hell and never see the light of day as long as you live.”
Zappulla said nothing, nor did he wish to make a statement during his sentencing on July 21.
Speaking for him, his attorney asked Judge Dowling to consider the minimum sentence of 15 years, since the killing was the “result of two people who had drugs involved in their lives that got out of hand.”
Yet Cambria’s words still echoed in Judge Dowling’s head.
While she admitted that she believed that “drugs played a prominent part” in the killing, that “doesn’t excuse the conduct.”
“Nothing would justify the taking of a human life,” Justice Dowling said. “No one deserves to be treated less than a human being.”
Back in Nevada, Cambria can’t thank ADA Rendelman and the entire prosecutorial team enough.
She is already preparing the letter she wants read at Zappulla’s parole hearing if he survives prison.
Roberta doesn’t know if she’ll be around to see that day. But she wants to make sure her feelings are made clear.
“There’s not a day that goes by when the tears do not come,” she said.
The tears are mixed: Sweet for the good memories — the day JJ first started kindergarten, all the times they laughed together as she grew up and played – and bitter for the anger she still feels toward her murderer.
“My daughter was a good, loving person who was steered on the wrong path,” she said, trying to vocalize her feelings. “I’m just hoping with all my heart that her soul is at rest.”
But, even with that hope driving her, the tears still come.
“I went home to Nevada with a lighter heart and good news for my family, but there’s no such thing as closure,” she said.
