Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and this week on Pushing Up Lilies, we’re talking about a heartbreaking and deeply disturbing case out of Washington state. Jeffrey Zizz, a handyman, has been charged with the murder, kidnapping, and unlawful disposal of human remains in connection with the death of 82-year-old Marcia Norman, a woman who was later found partially encased in cement under a shed. This case is as gruesome as it is gut-wrenching. In this episode, I’ll walk you through what investigators have uncovered, how Zizz became a suspect, and the chilling details of what they discovered beneath the surface - literally. We’ll also talk about how crimes like this can go unnoticed until it’s too late, and what red flags might have been missed. This one is tough, y’all, but it’s a reminder that monsters don’t always look like strangers. Sometimes, they’re the ones we hire to help around the house. * Listener discretion is advised.
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00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey guys, it is pouring rain here. It has been raining for the last few days. I thought it was April showers bring May flowers, but it's kind of the opposite here.
00:41
It's like been super rainy. And I think every death investigator kind of dislikes rain or bad weather in general, unless you live in those areas where the weather's bad all the time, like up north. But here I feel like people can't drive when it's raining or slick, or especially when it's icy or snowing.
01:02
We're just not used to it. We don't get it that much. But I know up north, it's like the norm. You see people riding motorcycles when it's icy. And it always scares me. But I mean, I'm the little old lady in the right hand lane, going like 30 miles an hour trying to stay away from everybody hoping that no one hydroplanes and hits me or I mean, I just don't like being in a hurry when the weather's bad.
01:28
But we kind of cringe when we hear that it's going to be nasty outside because we anticipate a busy day, we anticipate accidents, hopefully no fatalities. But the funny time there's a wreck, at least one friend calls me or texts me and asks me what happened.
01:53
And unless there's a death, you know, I don't know. I mean, I don't listen to a scanner. We've had some investigators in the past that do and they'll listen to the scanner and just like almost just wait to pounce on an accident and I don't want that like I don't want to know what's waiting for me like I don't want to know that makes me really anxious I just want to know when I'm needed I don't sit nervously and anticipate my phone ringing and a scene dropping but anyway when the weather's bad we do see a lot of accidents but it just always cracks me up when my phone rings and somebody asks me what happened like I'm a police officer and I've got my radio and I can hear every call that comes in because I can't and literally I don't know what's going on in the county unless there's a fatality and someone calls me I mean I can Google it like everybody else which is what I end up doing to try to answer their question but We used to have a guy that worked for the mortuary that would pick up bodies with us and he listened to the scanner and every time something happened,
03:08
like without fail, every time something happened, he would call me and say, Hey, there's an accident on 380. I wonder if there was a fatality. And so it just made me like on edge and so nervous because I never could relax, you know, it was just, he kept me on edge.
03:28
I couldn't stand it. I was like, dude, don't call me unless you know, I'm going to be needed because I don't like being anxious like that and being on edge. Anyway, it is nasty today. So I hope everyone behaves.
03:42
I did get caught behind an accident yesterday and it wasn't that bad, but I'm just like super careful. Like again, I'm that grandma driver that everybody hates who's over in the right-hand lane, just, you know, hoping that no crazy person that isn't a hurry to get where they're going hits me, but the weather is gross, and water is standing everywhere.
04:09
And some people, you know, fly down the highway going a hundred miles an hour, and then they hit that big puddle of water that they didn't see because they come up on it so quickly. And sometimes that's all she wrote.
04:21
I'm hoping that I can just sit at my office today with my heater on under my desk and my feet in my chair and not have to respond to anything. I mean, that's all of our ideal days and it doesn't mean I won't work.
04:38
We have a lot of work in the office to do. There's always phone calls to be made and funeral homes and family members that call and ask questions. So there's always going to be work to do, but we always hope when the weather's bad that we don't get that scene.
04:53
I still don't understand like up north when it's cold all the time. they deal with that. I mean, I know that their clothing, they have what they need to protect themselves, but I know here when it's like snowing and I get a car accident, I'm outside and literally my fingers are frozen.
05:14
I cannot write what I need to write down. It's super cold. I'm so uncomfortable and I don't know how y'all death investigators that work up north that have to deal with that all the time handle that on a daily basis.
05:28
I mean, I know that you're probably from there and you're used to it, but here, oh my god, it drives me crazy. Anyway, enough about the weather. I'm not a weatherman. It does impact our job a lot and of course in the summer months impacts the number of decomposed decedents that we have because in Texas it gets so so hot.
05:52
But today we're just going to hope for the best we don't. anticipate anything happening. We anticipate everyone behaving. Tomorrow, our county is having a big employee appreciation event. It's always so nice when they do this for us.
06:05
Every department has its own kind of booth and most will give away items, which is kind of cool. Notepads, pins, different things like that. Just kind of fun stuff. And I always hand out something for the podcast to try to get county employees to follow me and make them aware that the podcast exists.
06:26
And so I've made these little plastic bags that have a sticker, a Pushing Up Lily sticker, and then one of my cards with a QR code that will take you to my website and then also a little chocolate skull.
06:43
I think they're cute. I figure if I put a piece of candy in there, it'll increase the odds of someone actually opening the plastic. Because I know if I put things in there that don't draw attention, nobody's going to want it.
06:55
They're just going to throw it away. We spend a lot of money on little giveaways like that. So I have applied for CrimeCon this year, so I haven't heard from them yet. I think it's in October or November, so I still have plenty of time.
07:08
But I'm hoping that I can get on podcast row there to kind of raise awareness as well. And I think I told y'all that I was on Good Morning Texas here on WFAA Channel A a couple of weeks ago, promoting the podcast and showing a sample of the True Crime cereal box.
07:28
Again, that is available for purchase on my website now. So if y'all get a chance, go on there. I would love for you to be one of the first ones to get that box. It's going to be amazing. Super excited about that.
07:42
So anyway, this week we're going to talk about it's a very recent case. So it just happened in April and this happened in Dunbar Olympia, Washington. And the case is on Marsha Norman. Was 82 years old and Jeffrey Zizz who was a Convicted child molester was actually linked to her case when she went missing So no one had seen or heard from her since April 1st.
08:11
And again, this happened this year. It's on 2025 this was Norman's handyman, and he was the last person to see her so I'm sure that they had what they called a friendship She was 82 and there were probably a lot of things that she needed help doing So Zizz was her handyman and I don't know if she knew about his past or not.
08:34
My guess would be I don't know I mean, it makes you wonder most elderly women are not going to hire a child molester I feel like maybe she didn't know about his past but nonetheless she hired him He was arrested in Missoula, Montana eventually for violating his probation in connection to his child abuse convictions.
08:58
Zizz was 47, and when he was arrested, he was held without bail for counts of murder, kidnapping, and unlawful disposal of human remains. So he worked as a handyman for her and to Nino for about two years.
09:14
And earlier this year, Norman told her family members about kind of a disturbing encounter with Zizz because she woke up in the middle of the night and he was standing at the foot of her bed. So that's kind of an eerie feeling.
09:30
I know that many of us have sat there before and felt like we were being stared at and turns out we were. In this case, she's asleep in her own home in a dark room and she wakes up and he's just standing there.
09:44
So that's super awkward. So she called him out. She told him it was inappropriate to be there. She told him that he needed to leave. And then she told her son that this happened and she told her son that she made it clear to him that their relationship was only professional and that he did not need to cross that boundary.
10:06
And so I don't know what his intentions were when he was standing there, but that would have given me the creeps. That probably would have been enough to push me over the edge to tell him that I didn't need him anymore.
10:17
But you know, if he's a criminal, we all know that doesn't necessarily get rid of somebody just because you told them that. She did not report it to law enforcement. It just seemed like it wasn't that big of a deal at the time to her because they were friends and she was able to verbalize to him, hey, don't let this happen again.
10:40
There was not really a crime committed, so it wasn't reported. And I don't think I would have reported it either. But on April 4th, again, this is this year, after no one had heard from her in days, keep in mind she was last seen on the first, several family members went to her home and they found her phone, her wallet, her vehicles, her pill organizer, a lot of different things.
11:04
You know, her pill organizer indicated that she hadn't taken her meds since the first and it was the fourth, so that was not normal for her. She normally took her cell phone with her no matter where she went because she used it frequently.
11:16
She normally had her wallet and so these, you know, obviously were clues to the family that something was awry. So, her family members were actually able to get into her Apple ID and found messages that Zizz and Norman had planned to have dinner on April 1st.
11:36
Police questioned Zizz about Norman's disappearance because it was found that he was the last one to see her. He did admit, yes, they did have dinner together at her house. He originally said that The two ate and then he went home at around nine after dinner and one.
11:57
And he said he went to bed and he didn't leave the house again till the next day. But records from an automated license plate reader, camera actually showed this in Olympia around 3 AM and then again around 7 AM.
12:15
Again, we've talked about cameras, y'all. We've talked about the importance of having cameras outside your home and outside your business and how cameras have really helped with cases in the past. These are cameras.
12:30
I would think that it's very similar to the text doc cameras that are on our roadways, but they're like automated license plate things in Washington. Later, Zizz actually admitted lying and said that he did return to Norman's house twice after dinner.
12:48
He said he went at 12 AM to collect tools and then he went home for a short while after that and then went back to get his trailer for a job that he had scheduled for the next day. So he lied to the police at first and said, I came home at nine and didn't leave again and then he came back and said, yeah, I did go there twice because you caught me and I need an explanation.
13:14
Zizz admitted to the bedroom encounter how Norman had found him standing at the end of her bed when the police questioned him about it. And he said that he was, this is weird, he said that he was rubbing her shoulder while she slipped and wanted to speak with her.
13:33
I don't know if that means he was trying to wake her up by rubbing her shoulder or what was going on there, but that's even more creepy. Detectives actually also found a five page letter that meticulously planned out the sexual assault of an older woman referred to as as one of his customers.
13:53
That is super creepy too, five page letter. Like he sat down and wrote a five-page letter about what he was going to do to her because he said that it was one of his customers and he was going to sexually assault her.
14:05
Yeah, that's super creepy. And just his past, I mean, I would guess, like I said, that she did not know anything about his past. But both of her vehicles were still parked at her home near McIntosh Lake when she went missing.
14:21
And they said that her house looked like she left abruptly. Like there were a lot of things left half done. Her dishes were half done. It looked like she left fast. And usually you can tell because you kind of know people and a lot of older people will completely clean up.
14:40
They like their house to be in order before they leave. It's kind of like when you go on a vacation, you go clean your house, get all your laundry done. your sink is empty and you can go on vacation and relax and come home to a nice clean house.
14:56
So my guess would be that that's the kind of person she was and they knew it was abnormal because it looked like she lived quickly. His vehicle was seized and he willingly gave the investigators his keys, which doesn't always mean anything because he probably knew ultimately that he was going to get caught.
15:15
But ironically, as happens frequently, Zizz left the state in a friend's vehicle on April 6th. So he didn't have his vehicle, right? He gave it to investigators. So he got a friend's vehicle and just completely left the state.
15:30
But in 2022, Zizz had pled guilty to charges of child molestation and immoral communication with the online saying things he shouldn't been saying and eventually doing things he shouldn't be doing. And so that's why in 2022 he had those charges against him.
15:51
But even back as far as 2021, he admitted to numerous sexual assaults he committed involving children connected to his family. So like I said, I'm pretty sure she did not. I don't know her and I don't know what her thoughts and feelings would have been on hiring a child molester, but my guess would be most 82-year-old women are not going to do that.
16:18
Zizz ironically was a father of five. Norman was recorded missing by her family again on April 4th. And then she was found five days later buried under a ramshackle shed on a property in Olympia, Washington, a property that had a little like building on it that had recently been built by Zizz.
16:43
So he was arrested in Missoula, Montana, which is, you know, we said he left the state on the 7th. it and then he was extradited back to Washington. So he was interviewed initially and then he became a suspect when he lied about being home that night, when he lied about going straight home after he left her house after dinner and not getting back out until the next day.
17:07
So that, again, I mean, why would you lie if you're not guilty? And so that's when he kind of became a person of interest. Norman was found bound with velcro straps, beaten to death, and had apparent injuries that were caused by a pneumatic nailer.
17:29
Now we've all seen that horror movie where somebody is chased with a nail gun. Can you imagine the torture and the pain that she failed with somebody using this pneumatic nailer on her? I can't even imagine.
17:48
So she was tortured with the nail gun. And based on her injuries, the medical examiner determined that she did suffer a painful hours long death. This always, I mean, death in general, we always want to be the one that goes in our sleep, you know, goes to bed, dies in our sleep, doesn't wake up, you know, that's like the ideal way to go, right?
18:12
I mean, I don't know if you've ever sat and thought, Oh, you know, hope I don't have an accident. I hope I'm not mangled and don't look terrible. And I mean, I don't know, you just think about stuff like that.
18:22
And then you always want to hope that you don't suffer that there's not a lot of pain involved. And that's one thing that a lot of family members asked me, like after a car accident, did she suffer? Does it look like she went quickly?
18:37
Because I mean, suffering, it's not anything any of us want to do. And we definitely don't want our family members and our loved ones to suffer in any way. And so I get asked that question a lot. And sometimes I know, in the back of my mind, yes, they did suffer.
18:53
This was not quick. But I can't tell the family that. And I think they know in the back of their head, they just kind of want me to tell them that they didn't suffer. I mean, I'm not going to say, Oh, yes, you know, she struggled for an hour.
19:09
This was a terrible, terrible debt. I can't tell a family member that. I don't know 100% whether they did or not. But I'm going to say they didn't. And that's kind of my answer. I mean, I don't know, I wasn't there.
19:24
But based on the injuries, and based on my experience, I would think that she passed pretty quickly, and that there was not a lot of suffering. And that's kind of my answer across the board. But this lady was tortured.
19:40
I mean, tortured with this nail gun, and based on her injuries, did suffer painful hours long death. That's something again that none of us want to do. We don't want that for ourselves. We don't want that for our friends We don't want that for our family members But she was buried in concrete now this and Norman had known each other for a year or two and I think she considered him a friend and So she allowed him to use a portion of this shop that was detached from her home To work on projects and store some of his equipment.
20:17
So she was sweet to him. It sounds like she thought he was a friend She thought she could trust him Norman Normally again, you know the family knew something was up because she always has her phone with her and the fact that her phone was at home when she disappeared also led them to know that you know, there was some foul play an Emergency peeing revealed her last known location was on April 2nd at 1.35 AM within a four mile radius of her home.
20:51
Again, what would we do without cell phones, y'all? I mean, she apparently had her phone with her when he murdered her and then he took it back to the house because her phone pinged on the second in this four mile radius.
21:06
So, Zizz had also, they found, rented an excavator to tear down this old shed and load debris onto a dump trailer. And they started building the new shed in the same spot where the old one was. Now canines that were with the police department smelled the owner of human decomposition in the bed of his truck and also on the tailgate of his truck.
21:33
And then they also detected the same smell in and around the base of the concrete slab where this new shed was built. So she was actually in the concrete. Her wrists and ankles, again, wrapped with long velcro straps and her cause of death was blunt force trauma and penetrating injuries to her head.
21:59
Jeffrey Zizz does face charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and unlawful disposal of human remains. Okay, so Zizz is expected to be back in court and his arraignment is scheduled for today. So this is interesting.
22:17
I also found that those cameras that they said actually picked up him driving back to her home. He had also, I guess, climbed in the window of his home when he got home because he didn't want the ring cameras to detect him being home.
22:34
He was shady from the get go. But you know, that's the thing. I think I had a case in Houston where someone buried somebody under a concrete slab. as a contractor and you've been doing work like that.
22:47
And it's like the first thing I'm going to suspect if someone's missing. It's just a terrible way to die. And I hate that she suffered, but at the same time, part of me is like really glad she wasn't still alive when he buried her because to me that is horrifying.
23:03
And that's so weird. I know that I was thinking, I was thinking about this last night, and I was like, you know, a lot of people talk about, do they want to be buried, or do they want to be cremated? And I, ooh, I mean, do I want to be cremated?
23:16
I'm not, I'm not 100% sure. I don't really want to be, I know I'm not going to come back alive and end up buried alive, but I don't know. It's just, I'm claustrophobic, y'all. I think about that too. I'm just like, I don't know.
23:31
I don't like either option. I want another option. And then I thought about how do those people that do the… I don't want to go to the body farm. I don't want to be buried. And. allowed to decompose and have photos taken of me and bugs all over me, I know I don't want that.
23:48
Don't necessarily want to be dissected at the medical school and donate my body, I don't know that's probably selfish of me but ick, I don't want that either. I think it would be neat to be a part of the display where they show sections of bodies and people can actually see like what does a healthy liver look like, what a healthy lungs look like, you know, this is the lung of a non-smoker versus the lung of a smoker.
24:18
I think that that would be kind of cool but again being on display is kind of creepy but nobody really knows it's you so I don't know but I just know that she was deceased before he buried her and I'm glad of that.
24:34
I hate that she had to suffer but also just being buried alive especially in concrete is horrifying to me. I mean I can't say that it's any worse than being tortured with a nail gun but it's just horrifying.
24:47
I'm glad that we found out that today is his arraignment. I am going to keep an eye on that and keep you informed on exactly what happened but this was planned out. He had planned on sexually assaulting her according to a lot of the court documents.
25:05
This sweet little lady was a grandmother. I mean she trusted him and hired him and probably did a lot of things for him. This sweet little lady loved music, art, and traveling and they just said she was a very vibrant person so it's just super sad that she trusted him.
25:24
I always hate to hear stories like this. It's like you know she was 82. My wish for her would have been that she just died in her sleep if she was going to die and not be murdered by someone that she trusted.
25:37
We're going to hope that today is a good day at the county. Again tomorrow is our our big county employee appreciation event. And it's always so fun. They bring food trucks in. We all get to kind of pick where we want to eat and we just get to visit each other.
25:52
I mean, many times we don't see people in other departments that we know. We email each other with questions and we don't actually get to see and visit with each other. It's always a lot of fun. It's like a full day event and it's a good chance to just have a good time and relax a little bit.
26:10
Hopefully our phones won't ring because of course we're still on call. We don't ever get to quote unquote close, but it ought to be all kinds of fun. So y'all have a great day. Try to stay safe if you're in Texas or anywhere where the weather's bad and it's raining.
26:25
Try to stay dry and warm and all the things. I again encourage you to go onto my Patreon. You can join my Patreon. You can do that for free. You can get a membership, which I would love. There are different.
26:41
Costs for different stages of membership based on what you get and so I encourage you to go onto my patreon and look at that Again, also, I'm trying to get my YouTube channel up and going. I've done a couple of videos Grains body bags in bedside manner is my YouTube channel Also on my website again.
26:59
There is an option at the very top to go ahead and order the Serial box. I also want to tell y'all something kind of exciting, I have decided to do an annual murder mystery dinner and that's going to be local at a restaurant here in Denton I'm looking at a couple of different restaurants.
27:18
It'll be a murder mystery. There'll be a limited number of tickets sold, it's going to be a dinner and a murder mystery show. It's going to be put on by Pushing Up Lilies. There will also be giveaways. There will be contests There will be a lot of fun.
27:35
It's going to be around Halloween. I haven't chosen a date yet, but it's going to be a Saturday night sometime around Halloween I'm trying to again pinpoint the restaurant pinpoint the date so that I can get the acting crew together for the murder mystery.
27:52
It's going to be super exciting, so reach out to me if you plan on coming if you're interested If you'd like to come because I need to make sure that I have a room big enough and again This will be the first one.
28:04
I'd love for you to be a part of it. I'm planning on having it annually. Reach out to me Julie at pushinguplilies.com again. Don't forget my YouTube channel brains body bags and bedside manner and Follow me on TikTok Instagram and Facebook Alright, love y'all so much.
28:22
Have a great week and I look forward to next week. Bye y'all Thank you so much for joining me today on pushing up lilies if you like this podcast and would like to share with others Please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple podcast This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushing up lilies calm for merchandise and past episodes.