A hint of things to come in this look by Shellie Zimmerman
at her husband during his murder trial.
Since the second-degree murder trial of George Zimmerman in the slaying of Trayvon Martin ended in his acquittal in July, his wife Shellie has made public comments about his temperament and behavior that had long since crossed the minds of many observers. She filed for divorce on Sept. 5.
On the Today show Thursday, in her first interview since a domestic dispute on Sept. 9 escalated into brief violence involving her father and husband, she told Matt Lauer that she now questions George's innocence:
Matt Lauer: Through all of this, with all you are now going through—and I mean with the divorce and this altercation, has it changed your perspective at all on what he’s told you happened the night that Trayvon Martin was shot and killed? Do you still believe the story that we have all heard from him?
Shellie Zimmerman: I’m conflicted on that. I believe the evidence, but this revelation in my life has really helped me to take the blinders off and start to see things differently.
Lauer: I want to make sure I understand. So you now doubt his innocence, at least the fact that he was acting in self-defense on the night that Trayvon Martin was killed?
Zimmerman: I think anyone would doubt that innocence because I don’t know the person that I’ve been married to.
Lauer: That’s a dramatic change. I mean, you didn’t seem to doubt his innocence during the entire trial. You stood right there by his side. You went into hiding with him. You faced death threats with him. You lied under oath for him. And now you’re saying you have doubts?
Zimmerman: I have doubts.
But she also said she does not believe her husband profiled Martin before the shooting.
The hurt in her voice was evident throughout the Today interview. At one point she said:
He just kind of treated me like I was disposable. After standing by him, he kind of left and kind of went on a victory tour without me. I thought that I was living a life with him and that we were going to kind of rebuild after all this, and he had other plans for me."
When she appeared in court in early September to answer perjury charges for lying in a bail hearing about how much money the couple had available, George was not with her. In fact, no Zimmerman showed up for that hearing.
In the Sept. 9 altercation that sparked a 911 call and brought the cops to the house that the Zimmermans once rented from Shellie's father in Lake Mary, Florida, she said George had threatened her and her father with what she thought was a gun under his shirt. George was also said to have punched Shellie's father, David Dean, in the nose and cut up her iPad. But witnesses gave conflicting reports of the incident and no gun was found on George at the scene. At any rate, neither side filed charges.
"In hindsight," Shellie Zimmerman told Lauer, "I should've, and I really regret that, but I'm on probation and the officers made it very clear that day if I pressed charges we were all going to go to jail and I would've been the only one to stay there."