Nine years passed with few new leads in the case, until a random DNA check conducted by the Seattle PD's Cold Case Unit and the Washington State Crime Lab led to the arrest of Jesus Mezquia. Mezquia, who briefly lived in Seattle during the time of Zapata's murder, was linked to the crime in 2003 when a DNA profile was extracted from a saliva sample left on Zapata's body; Mezquia had bitten her breast. The saliva sample had been kept in cold storage until the STR technology was developed for full extraction. An original entry in 2001 failed to generate a positive result, but Mezquia's DNA entered the national data bank after he was arrested for burglary in Florida in 2002.