Handyman Tortured 82-Year-Old Woman For Hours, Encased Her Dead Body In Concrete: Cops

[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]

A handyman is facing murder charges after an 82-year-old woman in rural Washington was found dead and buried after being encased in concrete — and now cops say he tortured her for hours before killing her.

Jeffrey Zizz (pictured above, left, in his mugshot) is facing multiple charges in Thurston County, Washington including first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, and unlawful disposal of human rights. The cops had previously identified the 47-year-old as a person of interest in the disappearance and death of 82-year-old Marcia Norman (pictured above, right from a sheriff’s department handout). And he’d already been in custody on unrelated charges, per TooFab. But this week, prosecutors filed the murder accusations against him in the case of Norman’s ugly demise.

Zizz, who is currently being held in jail without bail after a Monday hearing on the matter, is said to have struck up a friendship with Norman over the past two years after working his way into her life as a handyman doing odd jobs around her house.

One night a few months back, according to cops, Norman told her family members that she’d been asleep when she woke up to see Zizz standing at the foot of her bed. Per a press release from Thurston County prosecutors, Norman woke up and “told Zizz that it was inappropriate for him to be there and he needed to leave.” Prosecutors added that she later “told her son that she spoke with Zizz and made it clear to him that they were to keep a professional relationship and he was not to cross those boundaries again.”

And yet…

At the very start of this month, on April 4, cops in the small Washington state town of Tenino went to Norman’s home after family members reported not having heard from her for several days. Upon entry, officers found her wallet, her cars, her keys, and a pill organizer that indicated she hadn’t taken any of her medications since at least three days prior, on April 1. However, there was no sign of Norman.

And yet they were able to access Norman’s Apple account. In doing so, they discovered communications she’d had with Zizz in which the two of them had agreed to have dinner on the night of April 1 at her house. Uh-oh.

Investigators immediately went from there to Zizz’s home, where they questioned him on the matter. He confirmed that he did indeed have dinner with Norman on the night of April 1, but that he’d left her place at about 9:00 p.m. There was just one problem with that: an automated license plate reader in the nearby city of Olympia picked up the license of Zizz’s pickup truck going through an intersection at 3:04 a.m. — six hours after he claimed to have gone straight home and gone to bed. Hmmm…

Upon being confronted by that evidence, Zizz copped to lying about going straight home and said that he actually did return to Norman’s house twice later that night after the dinner had ended. In their arrest report, per KOMO News and others, investigators wrote:

“He said he went there at about 12:00 a.m. to collect some tools from the shop for a job he had the next day. He said he went back home after this and maybe slept for a short period of time before he realized he needed his trailer for his job the next day as well.”

Cops also asked Zizz about that previous unsettling nighttime encounter he’d had with Norman — and he admitted to that, too. He said that he’d been having romantic thoughts about the old woman, and on the earlier evening in question, he “went into her room and while she was sleeping, and he rubbed her shoulder, wanting to speak with her.”

Detectives then gave Zizz a lie detector test, which they claimed he failed. And then, they obtained a search warrant for his house. Once inside, per the arrest affidavit, detectives found a five-page typed letter in which the handyman had allegedly written out “a meticulously planned out burglary/sexual assault of an adult woman, identified as a ‘customer.'”

Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders called the letter “extremely disturbing” at a press conference on the matter this week. However, he wouldn’t confirm whether it was identical to the details they have since uncovered about Marcia’s death, opting instead to maintain the integrity of the still-open investigation.

The case took a turn three days later, on April 7, when Zizz’s roommate told police that the handyman had borrowed his truck back on April 1 and then never returned with it. Hours after that reveal, the Idaho State Police called the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office and reported they’d found the truck in question in a remote area near the Idaho-Montana border. The truck was badly damaged, cops said — as if it had struck a large animal. WTF?!

From there, cops started doing some digital digging. While piecing together Zizz’s movements after April 1, they determined that he’d rented an excavator and a trailer. The cops got a lucky break at that point when the rental company confirmed with them that they put GPS tracking equipment on all their rental units. Well, cops tracked where the GPS had shown the excavator to have been taken, and eventually located its destination at another property nearby.

When they got there, cops asked the property owner about Zizz. She told them that she had hired the handyman to dig out a hole and build a big shed for her a few days before on a recommendation from Norman about Zizz’s good work. Two days later, cops returned to the site of that shed with cadaver dogs. And sadly, those canines were able to positively detect the scent of human decomposition. So, they excavated the site of the newly-built shed… and found Norman’s remains encased in cement. Seriously.

In an autopsy conducted days later on the remains, coroners not only confirmed the old woman’s identity, but they were also able to determine that long Velcro straps had been wrapped around her wrists and ankles prior to her death.

To make matters WAY worse, the coroner determined Norman’s cause of death had been blunt force trauma and “penetrating injuries” to her head. Per court docs, those severe head injuries were sustained from a nail gun. Ugh. And even worse, they were “consistent with torture.”

Oh, and not only that, but they were injuries which “were inflicted while Miss Norman was alive.”

Holy f**k…

Chillingly, the coroner’s report further stated:

“Her onset from injury to death was not instant. It was hours. In our line of work, we see and witness many things. And this investigation is one you cannot unsee. I have been with the coroner’s office for nearly 25 years, with 19 years as the coroner, and this is the worst case I’ve witnessed.”

Goodness.

As for Zizz, his next court appearance will be May 6. In the meantime, he continues to be held in jail without bond.

You can see more on this awful case (below):