At age 15 in 1977, Miami teenager Ronny Zamora and his friend Darrell Agrella broke into an elderly neighbor's home to burglarize it, and when the 83-year-old woman returned home and found them there, Zamora shot her to death.
The boys found a few hundred dollars, stole their victim's car, and took off for Disney World.
The Zamora murder case was made memorable by the inventive, if ridiculous defense Zamora's attorney mounted: that his client should not be found guilty because he had been temporarily deprived of his sanity due to "television intoxication."
Lawyer Ellis Rubin, known for using flamboyant, offbeat defenses, tried to convince the jury that Zamora had developed "TV intoxication" by watching a steady diet of violent detective shows, especially his favorite, "Kojak."
Agrella made a plea deal and was out of prison by 1986. Zamora was released in 2004 after having served 27 years. He was immediately deported to Costa Rica, where he had been born.
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