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48 Hours

Into Thin Air

48 Hours

CBS News

True Crime, News, News Commentary, Tv & Film

3.97K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Jean Zapata vanished from her Wisconsin home in 1976, her husband Eugene had a stunning explanation for their children and friends: she’d simply abandoned them to start a new life. But there were disturbing signs that what actually happened was much more sinister. “48 Hours" Correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 6/20/2009. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is Gordon Harris, 81 degrees in Madison, partly sunny and warm this afternoon.

0:16.0

It's starting to sink in now, what I've missed. Did I even have a mom? Do you know that for the last

0:23.2

30 years I've been waiting and watching every day waiting for mom to come home? I know

0:33.2

people always tell me she's you know strong and independent pioneer, but for me, she was just mom.

0:43.1

I remember flying with her.

0:49.5

Well, she taught people how to fly.

0:58.0

Her smile, I remember, a big, big, big smile.

1:04.0

I was a baby of the family, so I always got spoiled and just fun to be with.

1:11.6

As I got older, I would go with her to the air races with my dad.

1:18.6

The last time anyone had seen her, she was sitting there having coffee in the dining room,

1:22.6

sending the kids off to school.

1:25.6

And then, according to Eugene, half an hour later,

1:28.8

he gets to the house and she's not there.

1:34.5

I remember that she wasn't home, but that was typical.

1:38.0

I mean, she was off at work.

1:40.6

And my next memory is the three of us kids together saying,

1:48.0

you know, where's mom? It's getting late.

1:54.0

The very fact that somebody called 28 years after she went missing, and her best friend

2:05.9

still wanted answers and had the guts to call the police department, say, what are you

2:11.6

doing here? Anything happening?

2:14.6

I had the feeling that nobody else had ever asked the police department to do it. And I think

2:20.3

the only reason it got reopened was because it landed on the desk of Detective Mary Ann.

...

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