GILROY
– Maria Zapian and Santa Clara County have made good on their
plea bargain.
On Friday, Superior Court Judge Robert Ambrose sentenced Zapian,
29, to 11-year in state prison.
GILROY – Maria Zapian and Santa Clara County have made good on their plea bargain.
On Friday, Superior Court Judge Robert Ambrose sentenced Zapian, 29, to 11-year in state prison. She pleaded guilty on March 17 to voluntary manslaughter. By doing so, she avoided a murder trial for her role as messenger to a killer in the disappearance and alleged death of Gilroy restaurateur Young Kim in November 1998.
Zapian has earned 40 months for time served in county jail, according to prosecutor Peter Waite, so her sentence would end in January 2012. She will be eligible for parole in December 2010.
Judge Ambrose also ordered Zapian to pay restitution: $2,000 to the state’s restitution fund and an unnamed amount to Young Kim’s family. Waite doubted Zapian would ever be able to pay.
“She doesn’t have any money, so it’s a useless gesture,” he said of the restitution order.
Had Zapian gone to trial and been found guilty of first-degree murder, she might have gotten life in prison without parole, the sentence her ex-husband Gustavo Covian is now serving at Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad.
Kim’s body was never found, but a jury nevertheless found Covian guilty of killing him. Waite claims Covian was a hit man, paid by Kim’s wife, Kyung, to kill her husband. Kyung Kim is also on trial for murder; jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday.
Waite claimed Zapian brokered the deal between Kyung Kim and her then-husband. Zapian’s lawyer, Jim Leininger, has admitted his client “relayed messages back and forth” between Kyung Kim and Covian but said she did so only out of fear of him.
Leininger has claimed Covian was a “monster” who beat Zapian and their three daughters and threatened them with gruesome deaths throughout their marriage. The couple lived in Hollister until their July 2001 arrest.
Peter Crowley covers public safety for The Dispatch. He can be reached at pc******@gi************.com or 847-7216.
