Video Shows Murder Victim Before He's Killed

Neal Augenstein, WTOP Radio

ARLINGTON, Va. - In the hope that someone will come forward with information, Arlington Police released two short videos of a murder victim, just before he was killed.

Paul Matthew Zeller, an Iraq war veteran, was murdered near the Pentagon Row Shopping Center in Arlington on June 30, 2006.

The surveillance videos, which WTOP has combined into one 18-second video on the right, show Zeller, 24, walking into a Harris Teeter grocery store around midnight. He left the store a few minutes later and continued walking toward his home in the Aurora Highlands neighborhood. He was shot on a sidewalk in the 1300 block of South Joyce Street.

Zeller's sister, Lydia Robertson, has seen the video.

"It was very difficult," Robertson says. "For a couple of days after I watched it, it was very hard because you realize that was the very last time he was alive, and just a few minutes later, that was when his horrible death happened. "

She says that her brother's death has reminded her of the fragility of life.

"It's a real sobering thought, especially when you have young children. Nobody thinks they're going to have to tell their 6-year-old about something like this, and every time you drive passed the cemetery or pass where it happened, they still ask about it, they still talk about it."

Zeller was honorably discharged from the Army in September 2004 after serving in Iraq as a mortar man with the 82nd Airborne Division. He worked at a car dealership in College Park, Md., and often commuted by Metro between Arlington and Prince George's County.

He was walking home from the Pentagon City Station when he was killed.

"You hope that by finding the person or the people responsible for this death -- you can save another family from having to go through a horrible trauma like this," Robertson says.

Family, friends and neighbors are offering a $5,000 reward. Anyone with information is being urged to call Arlington Police at 703-228-4242 or Crime Solvers at 1-866-411-TIPS.

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