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, disappeared after having dinner with her handyman, 47-year-old Jeffrey Zizz, on April 1. Her family last saw her on that day and reported her missing a few days later, as revealed by the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office.
Upon visiting Norman’s residence in Tenino, located about 75 miles southwest of Seattle, law enforcement officers concluded that she had left abruptly due to the state of the home. Shortly after Norman’s disappearance, Zizz left Washington state in a friend’s pickup truck and was taken into custody on April 6 for violating a previous sentence.
Before departing from the area, Zizz was observed by neighbors while constructing a shed on a property in Olympia – just one day after Norman was declared 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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