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More than a month has passed since Robert Fabian was arrested for trying to conceal his girlfriend Zuzu Verk’s remains in a shallow grave in Brewster County. Now a Brewster County grand jury has indicted him for Verk’s murder, setting a bond of $750,000.
The announcement was made on the Alpine Police Department’s Facebook page on Friday afternoon with many commenters breathing a sigh of relief. “Yes, finally. #justiceforzuzu,” wrote one. “I hope he gets sent away for life, and his little friend, too!” wrote another.
No announcement has been made regarding Fabian’s friend Chris Estrada, who was also arrested in early February for concealing a human corpse, a second degree felony in Texas.
Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson told reporters at a press conference in early February, “The big [unanswered question] is why. Why was she killed? And exactly how? Those are the big questions.”
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In February, a U.S. Border Patrol agent found Verk’s skeletal remains within thin plastic sheets painters would use as drop cloths. Law enforcement investigators discovered that Fabian and Estrada and bought similar plastic painter’s drop cloths at the Dollar General store during the time Verk had disappeared. Verk, a 22-year-old Coppell woman attending Sul Ross State University in Alpine, was last seen alive in October.
In the search warrant affidavit, investigators pointed out that witnesses claim Verk and Fabian had been fighting in the early morning hours of her murder.
When investigators arrived to collect evidence from the shallow grave, it didn’t take them long to piece together what they had found.
“You can imagine in the middle of the night what kind of hurry [her killers] were in to bury someone like they did,” Dodson said. “I mean, for one, it’s a disgrace. And to think in a shallow grave that the animals wouldn’t have dug the body up, they weren’t thinking. I guess they aren’t as smart as they think they are.”
