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Background: News footage of Jeffrey Zizz appearing in court on an unrelated charge (KOMO). Inset: Marcia Norman (Thurston County Sheriff’s Office).
A Washington woman who went missing after reportedly having dinner with her handyman was found underneath a shed in another town.
Marcia Norman, 82, was last seen by her family on April 1 and reported missing a few days later, according to the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office. Police said that Norman reportedly had dinner with her handyman, 47-year-old Jeffrey Zizz, on April 1 and was not heard from again.
When police arrived at Norman’s home in Tenino, a city some 75 miles southwest of Seattle, the state of the home led them to believe that she had “left abruptly.” Meanwhile, Zizz reportedly left Washington state in a friend’s pickup truck, but was arrested on April 6 on a previous sentencing violation.
But before he left, Zizz’s neighbors apparently noticed that he had built a shed on a property in Olympia — the day after Norman was reported missing.
In an update, the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office announced that on April 9, detectives had the area under the shed excavated. Underneath the shed, they found human remains “partially encased in concrete.” They identified them the next day — it was Marcia Norman.
After Zizz was arrested in Montana, he was extradited back to Washington to appear in court for a child molestation sentencing violation warrant. He remains in custody without bond at Thurston County Jail on those charges. In the meantime, police named Zizz as a person of interest in Norman’s case.
Zizz has not been charged with any crimes related to the disappearance or death of Norman. Lieutenant Mike Brooks of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office told KIRO, a local CBS affiliate, that Zizz was well-known to Norman’s family, saying, “He’s not the average handyman to this family. He’s a good family friend, so it doesn’t necessarily seem like having dinner together would be uncommon.”
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