Zimmerman Family Values

By Amanda Robb, GQ

02 October 14

Soon after George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin more than two years ago, George's loyal family learned that sharing his name meant sharing the blame. It also meant a surreal new life filled with constant paranoia, get- rich-quick schemes, and lots and lots of guns. Amanda Robb meets the Zimmerman family and finds out what it's like being related to the most hated free man in America

ntil his little brother, George, shot and killed an unarmed black teenager on the sidewalk of a Florida gated community more than two years ago, Robert Zimmerman Jr. was "the family fuckup." He used the phrase with me a lot, but the first time was in October 2012, at a dark back table at the Algonquin Hotel's Blue Bar in Manhattan, six months after what all the Zimmermans call "the incident." He was downing a double gin and soda, and he was wearing a Hugo Boss suit, "diamond" earrings from Kohl's, and the remnants of airbrush concealer from a quick appearance on Fox News's Geraldo at Large. He went on to name all the ways he was a lousy namesake for his father, Bob, a former Army sergeant, and a disappointing son for his mother, Gladys, a fierce, devoutly Catholic first-generation immigrant from Peru. "Unemployed. College dropout. With a DWI and a boyfriend," he said, listing his sins. (The boyfriend was a big problem for Gladys, somewhat less so for Bob.) But then, overnight, George had become "the Wreck-It Ralph of America," and Robert—articulate, sweet-natured, maybe in over his head—was thrust into the role of family savior. "You know what that means?" he said, ordering a second gin and soda. "Zimmerman in charge of rebranding."

So Robert got to work, defending his brother in the media dozens of times over the next year. The circumstances may have been grim, but the small doses of celebrity could be fun. He had both Greta Van Susteren and Sean Hannity in his phone contacts. He braved HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, appearing on the show shortly before the first anniversary of the night that George shot Trayvon Martin. Unlike with the news channels, he got paid this time: $800. It was the only income Robert earned that whole year. He had a great time doing the show and an even better one afterward over drinks with fellow guest Donna Brazile, an African-American political operative who managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. "I miss black people!" he told her.

After George was found not guilty of second-degree murder in July 2013, Robert began thinking about how to accelerate the Zimmerman rebranding project. There had to be a way to capitalize on George's notoriety. A family business, maybe. He and his mother had an idea: George could be the frontman for a home-security company called Z Security Products. "They all start with Z," Robert explained, walking me through an imagined product line. "There's the Z Bar, the Z Rock, and the Z Beam. They're all targeted to women. One is to secure sliding doors. One is to put in the front door. The light is to carry and is designed by George. It has a little alarm—you know, Help me, help me!"

Robert's ultimate goal was to turn George into a reality-TV star. His models were John Walsh, who began hosting America's Most Wanted after his 6-year-old son was abducted and killed, and the Kardashians, whose fame was launched by Kim's leaked sex tape. "I learn a lot from watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians," Robert told me. "Like, use the shit you've got." One idea was for George to be the focus of a Candid Camera-style program. One episode, for example, might feature a professor teaching a class about self-defense, and at the end of the episode it would be revealed—surprise!—that George was one of the students.

Robert knew none of it could happen, though, until George fixed his image, which meant going on TV —"and talking to George about media is like talking to the Pope about gay sex." George hated journalists. He blamed them for turning him into a national villain. There was only one media figure he liked: Hannity. Fortunately, Hannity—and especially Hannity's viewers on Fox News—liked him back. George, whose legal debt was in the seven figures, briefly had a website that accepted PayPal donations, and it lit up every time Hannity mentioned the incident on-air.

Still, George had said no to Hannity before. No media, no matter who it was—that was his rule. But by early 2014, George was nearing the end of his rope. Ever since he and his wife, Shellie, had an ugly split the previous summer, he'd been effectively homeless, couch surfing around the country. TV networks were offering to put him up in four-star hotels, and he was desperate to use the bathroom in peace. Robert was pushing him hard to reconsider Hannity. This time, George said yes.

Immediately, though, there were problems. First, Fox News expected the brothers to fly to New York. That would require George to show his ID at the airport, possibly to a black person. No way, Robert said. Even worse, the network wanted them to fly on February 26, the second anniversary of the incident. Robert tried explaining to a Hannity producer why that couldn't work: "It is like 9/11 for my family! We can't travel together that day—it's like having the whole royal family travel together!" Robert had a better, safer plan: He wanted Fox News to pay for the brothers, plus a full security detail, to drive the 1,100 miles from central Florida. About halfway, they'd need three hotel rooms—one for Robert, one for George, one for the security team—at a place with room service so that George wouldn't have to be out in public.

Fox News said no. Rebranding the Zimmermans would have to wait.

It was Grace, the little sister, who first grasped how all their lives were about to change. "We need to get guns!" she screamed when she saw the first news report pop up on her phone. The brief story didn't even have George's name—the shooter was still publicly unidentified—but that was no comfort. It was only a matter of time.

The Zimmermans already owned a lot of guns—at least ten altogether, between Grace and her fiancé, her two brothers, and her parents. Still, Grace bought herself a new Taurus pistol.

They had good reason to believe they might be in danger. Soon after Reuters published George's name on March 7, 2012, the New Black Panthers put out a $10,000 bounty for his "citizen's arrest." #Justice4Trayvon became a popular hashtag, and violent threats came in a flood. "All I can and will say I pray to God that your son geroge [sic] and Robert both choke on a sick dick and the mother and father both choke off a dick," someone posted on Bob and Gladys's website. "[I]t's not over we will have the last lol."

The family decided they could no longer stay put. George and Shellie holed up with a friend who was a federal air marshal, so they were reasonably safe. But for years, George's name had been on the deed to the house where his parents lived. Someone would find them. Bob worried about the large window that faced the street at the front of the house. "That's my mother-in-law's room," he said. Gladys's mother: 87 years old, Alzheimer's-afflicted. "I could just see somebody shooting into the bedroom or throwing a Molotov cocktail or something."

Robert, who bears a strong resemblance to George, was seen as particularly vulnerable. At the time of the shooting, he was living in suburban Washington, D.C., and in March, shortly after his thirty-first birthday, he got a call from a special agent at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who told him, Robert recalls, that "credible yet nonspecific" intelligence had identified him as a "target": "Anyone who wants to harm him will make no distinction between you because of the physical similarity. You need to go, and you need to go now." He left, joining the family on the run in Florida.

At one point, the Zimmermans booked a room at a cheap hotel in Maitland, Florida. But just forty-eight hours later, while her parents were out, Grace heard on the radio that the New Black Panthers were searching for George in that exact suburb. She panicked, waiting in the hotel parking lot for her parents to return, and as soon as they pulled up, she screamed the news: "Don't even go in!" They drove to a Chick-fil-A to figure out their next move.

George still hadn't been charged with a crime, and he was sick of waiting until it was dark outside to walk his dogs. So in early April, the couple snuck out of Florida to a scrubland trailer on a remote island off the coast of Maryland. The rest of the family, meanwhile, hid out in one Orlando-area hotel after another, moving every few days to avoid being seen by the same people. Money was getting tight—their only income was Bob's and Gladys's modest public-service pensions—so they often booked just one room for five adults. They paid in cash to avoid using credit cards. They used false names. They tore up their garbage and threw it into random Dumpsters. They usually declined housekeeping; maids, they told me, could be spies or thieves.

But even then, at the height of the public frenzy, there were peculiar lapses in their vigilance. For a while, the Zimmermans stayed at a Marriott in Sanford, Florida, that was filled with reporters, yet they rarely passed up the complimentary breakfast. "We were probably the only people there that were not media people," Bob says. "There were three CNN trucks in the parking lot and this big satellite. I'd have coffee and drink some orange juice with Gladys, and everybody's talking about us." Amazingly, they were never recognized.

The hotel-hopping went on for nearly two months, until Bob found a 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom house for rent on Craigslist in a nearby subdivision where most of the homes had been lost to foreclosure. In other words: cheap and very few neighbors.

There, the family formalized new security protocols. They watched the movie Argo to learn how to live like CIA. Code names for everyone. No mail delivered to the house. No visitors. No talking to the few neighbors they had. No long phone conversations—keep it short and vague to outwit surveillance. Never discuss your whereabouts via phone or text. Keep a weapon close by at all times. Robert slept with his gun. Still does.

And in case someone—or multiple someones—decided to mount an attack on the house, the Zimmermans pre-packed their own "go-bags" filled with everything they would need to flee in a rush, as well as what they called "footballs"—like the one President Obama has with the nuclear codes—that contained laptops, cell phones, and other essential electronics.

They also memorized a color-coded threat-ID system. Code blue: Law enforcement at the door. Code brown: Draw your weapons. Code black: Come out guns blazing.

Two years later, #Justice4Trayvon is down to about three tweets a day, but the Zimmermans nonetheless say they expect to be in fear for the rest of their lives. They're still in that house Bob found on Craigslist, but no one outside the immediate family knows where it is, not even close relatives. Two of Gladys's brothers, an insurance salesman and a retired deputy sheriff, live in the Orlando area. "We certainly trust both of these individuals," Bob wrote to me in an e-mail this spring. "However, we have never informed either where we live. The potential risks are simply too great."

At the time of that e-mail exchange, the family were considering letting me visit their safe house to witness how they live now. They were eager for the world to see them as they see themselves: ignored, unmourned victims. Collateral damage of an incident for which—to be clear—they still do not consider George responsible. We even got so far as to negotiate terms of my visit in order to preserve their security. I would have to wear a hood while they drove me from my hotel to their house, and I would have to leave my cell phone behind. Grace, in particular, was alarmed about my phone's GPS capabilities, which I could use to pinpoint their location.

I agreed to all of their conditions—I did tell them that I thought the hood seemed a little Abu Ghraib-y, so we compromised on a blindfold. Ultimately, though, none of it mattered. Robert, who is always the one pushing the family to step out of the shadows for the right promotional opportunity, wanted me to come. He worked hard to persuade his parents. But after a few days of deliberating, they gave me their answer.

"I understand you may consider us uncooperative or somewhat paranoid," Bob wrote. "However, we live with a situation that can not easily be imagined. We have known the results when various individuals have realized one of us is a Zimmerman."

"We have known the results." It's not clear to me what he's referring to. The New Black Panthers? They never came knocking. The Internet threats? Just empty words, lobbed from a distance. That time a Publix employee recognized George and refused to make him a sandwich? The time Robert was almost beaten up in a Starbucks? Nothing actually happened, so it's hard to know if the threat was real or imagined.

This much is certain: The Zimmermans rarely venture out of that small house in central Florida. They are isolated and bored. They pass the time caring for Gladys's mom and watching Spanish-language telenovelas and Duck Dynasty and Real Housewives and Fox News. George, unbelievably, seems to be back in neighborhood-watchman mode; this summer the police found him sitting in his truck outside a friend's motorcycle shop in the middle of the night. For a few concentrated months, the Zimmermans were a twenty-four-seven cable-news fascination, which can be intoxicating and terrifying all at once. But that's over now. The country has mostly moved on, to Ferguson, to Michael Brown, to the next shooting death of a teenage kid, the next Trayvon Martin, the next George Zimmerman.

Maybe George's relatives are right about the risk to their lives—maybe it still exists as much as it ever did. Or maybe it's just a way for the Zimmermans to feel as if they still matter. Maybe their paranoia, and all the rules and routines that it requires, just gives them something to do.

Eventually, Bob and Gladys agree to meet me in person at the Westin in Lake Mary, Florida, which I'm told is not too far from their secret home. We meet for dinner, and before they scoot into the booth, they both check over the seatbacks to make sure no one is eavesdropping.

Gladys is darker-skinned than she appeared on TV during the trial, beautiful and indigenously featured. She wears a little white cardigan over her shoulders, like a country-club matron, but in conversation she is fierce and brassy and speaks heavily accented English. It infuriates her that George is often described as a white man, which she considers an affront to her Peruvian heritage. She can be startlingly callous about Trayvon Martin's family, about the help they've received, financial and otherwise, which she feels her family has been unfairly denied. It often seems as if she believes the Zimmermans have suffered equally, as if they have lost a son as well.

Bob is more sorrowful, more measured, but just as tin-eared regarding the Martins, albeit more benevolently. Shortly after the incident, he heard that Trayvon was chronically truant in high school. "So I thought, well, maybe at some point we can get with his parents," he told me, "and have some kind of thing where we reward kids that improve their attendance."

One of Bob's sayings is an old military line: "Stop bleeding, keep marching." It's the story of his life. His singular goal was not to be like his own father, a vicious drunk who used to beat him ruthlessly. By age 14, Bob was a ward of the state of California; he spent the next decade incarcerated or homeless. He turned his life around by joining the Army. He got his college degree at 50 and had a long military career that ended at the Pentagon. Because of his job, he always owned a gun, but he taught all his kids to stay away from firearms. "If we ever touched or handled a gun," Robert told me at one point, "Dad was gonna beat the shit out of us. Period. He made it absolutely clear, like bare bottoms, you're gonna get the shit beaten out of you. He was always saying, 'Guns will get you into more trouble than they will ever get you out of.' "

But now, sitting across from me, picking at a burger and sipping iced tea, Bob talks as if the cycle of violence has become an inescapable fact of life. His face is a ringer for Bryan Cranston's on Breaking Bad—the early seasons, when Walter White has the defeated look of a man kicked in the teeth by life. "I am sure there are people, you know, some young kid that has nothing going for him, but he's able to get a pistol, wants to make a name for himself. 'Maybe I'll kill one of the Zimmermans. Maybe George, maybe one of his family members. I'll be famous.' You know? That happens," he says. "And that's what worries me."

George has arranged for Gladys and Robert to take a concealed-weapons-certification class the next evening. (George already has a permit; Bob refuses to say if he has one.) It's a three-hour course, required in order to carry a weapon in Florida. The class is held at an Orlando gun store called the Arms Room, where George did a meet-and-greet back in March. Gladys invites me to come along with her and Robert.

Almost immediately, things get weird. The class's instructor, a police officer in Belle Isle, repeatedly recommends "accessorizing your gun," which he illustrates by lisping and wagging his wrist like a stereotypical "queen." The instructor keeps up the act until he finds out I live in New York City. Then he veers into Colonel Klink from the 1960s TV series Hogan's Heroes. "Welcome to Germany," he says. "Everyone on the train!"

We don't actually learn to fire our weapons in this concealed-weapons class, so eventually I tell the instructor, "I have no idea how to load, aim, or shoot a gun." He recommends I get a .38. "It's a good baby gun," he says. "Yes!" Gladys exclaims. "Personally, I love my .45!" Then she does this kind of Angie Dickinson draw-and-aim move from the TV show Police Woman.

Ever since the shooting, George has been like a bogeyman in the lives of the other Zimmermans—always in their thoughts, but mostly a spectral presence, rarely seen. The unraveling of his six-year marriage to Shellie, just weeks after the verdict, took them all by surprise. They found out from the media. After Shellie asked for a divorce, she and George got into such a huge fight that she called 911 to report that George had punched her father in the nose, smashed her iPad, and threatened them both with a gun. Eight police units, some with tactical gear and ballistic shields, took George into custody. (Shellie never pressed charges.)

Another surprise: George almost immediately took up with a new girl, a busty blonde former neighbor named Samantha Scheibe. But just ten weeks after Shellie called 911 on George, another domestic spat led Samantha to do the same. (The charges were eventually dropped.)

Robert told me often that he believes George is suffering from PTSD. On the rare occasions when they talk, George often loses the thread of the conversation. He has also developed a very short fuse, especially when he thinks someone is trying to tell him what to do. "What is your point?" he'll say. "Tell me the point! In two words: What is the point?" When you try to answer, he cuts you off and yells it again.

Money woes are only adding to the strain on the family. The Zimmermans are broke and deeply in debt. George owes his attorneys $2.5 million. Bob and Gladys spent $6,900 on hotel rooms, $7,700 on living expenses, and more than $20,000 so far to rent their secret-location house. They are still paying the mortgage, even a lawn guy, on the home they've left empty. A pair of lawsuits—one against NBC for selectively editing the tape of George's 911 call after the shooting, one against actress Roseanne Barr for tweeting the address of Bob's house—have gone nowhere. For most of the past two years, all three of the family's adult children were unemployed. George still is.

Bob understands George's reluctance to look for a job. "When your name, Social Security number, and everything is out on the Internet, it's hard to do anything," he says. "So he may never be able to work. He may never be able to get Social Security. He may never get Medicare. If he buys a house, then people can go on the Internet and find out exactly where he lives."

He was tougher on Robert, who he thought should just get a job as a busboy. After all, he would remind Robert, he spoke Spanish. Robert was trying to find work; it just wasn't going very well. He applied for jobs as a prep chef, an emergency dispatcher, and a disability-benefits evaluator, but he didn't get any of them. Late this past summer, he finally found work as a deliveryman.

George has had some chances to cash in on his notoriety, but they've all fallen through somehow. A couple of "get beaten up for money" opportunities, in which George would get pummeled by some famous black guy for a pay-per-view audience—the first time, it was supposed to be DMX—never got off the ground. On a lark, he gave painting a try, and the first canvas he ever put up for sale, a blue-toned American flag, scored $100,099.99 on eBay. His second painting, though—a portrait of the prosecutor in the Martin case, Angela Corey, that he might have copied from an Associated Press photograph—earned him a cease-and-desist letter. That seems to have soured him on his budding art career. He and Robert have talked about possible subjects for his next painting—Robert proposed killer whales; George suggested Anne Frank, because, according to Robert, he identifies with her—but he hasn't gotten around to it yet.

Ever since Robert appeared on Bill Maher's show, George has had an open invitation to take a turn himself. But he was afraid of Maher. An adviser suggested Univision instead. The boys had grown up watching the Spanish-language network with their mother and grandmother. It wouldn't pay, but George could seem multicultural by doing a TV appearance in Spanish. Maybe it would open some doors. George said okay.

It was his first interview since his trial. Univision put up George, Gladys, and Robert in Miami and provided constant security. Still, Robert prepped for the trip by studying videos of the assassination attempt on President Reagan."[George] is the liability," he said, walking me through what he'd gleaned. "[I am] the eyes, you know, the Secret Service guy to see if someone is on a balcony taking a picture. Where are these people's hands? Why are they coming here? What's wrapped up in that towel? Can I see your hands?"

Throughout their stay in Miami, Robert carried a backpack filled with handguns, which he called "the babies." "You never say, 'Get a gun,' " he said, explaining the nomenclature. "That alerts bad guys. You say, 'Get the baby!' "

The Univision appearance went smoothly enough—no gotcha questions, no need for a baby—so, emboldened, George agreed to another media stop, this time on CNN. It would tape at the Ritz-Carlton in Miami. The network agreed to pay for two hotel rooms for three nights and, according to Robert, "everything" they wanted during their stay. (For this article, George refused to speak with me on the record unless GQ provided a similar hotel room—he asked for a week's stay—but the magazine declined.)

The Zimmermans seized on their brief stint of subsidized luxury. They ran up a big room-service bill, cleaned out the minibars, got their clothes laundered, made several trips to the spa, treated a party of ten to dinner at the hotel restaurant, and bought swag—from bracelets to bath fizzies—at the gift shop.

Toward the end of their stay, according to Robert, a manager presented him with a bill for $3,600. He says he called CNN, outraged, only to have the producer accuse them of splurging shamelessly on CNN's dime. "You and your brother are evil!" he remembers her screaming. The hotel manager threatened to call the police. Alone in his room, Robert started shaking. He wrapped all the blankets around him, ordered shrimp, chain-smoked cigarettes, got roaring drunk. Nothing helped. He called his mother in a panic. "I can't get warm," he sobbed. "I just can't get warm."

Unconsoled, Robert called the only person he could think of: Dr. Drew, who'd been kind to him when he went on Drew's TV show shortly before George's trial. He reached a producer, who told him Dr. Drew wasn't available. But the guy was nice, at least. He stayed on the phone awhile and talked Robert down. Eventually CNN agreed to pay the bill, and the next morning Robert returned the only purchases he could: a bottle of Mercedes-Benz cologne and a Ritz-Carlton wallet that George had bought him to say thanks.

Over the summer, I visit Robert in the apartment his parents are currently renting for him in suburban Washington, D.C. His family-spokesman gig has been making him feel especially torn lately. On the one hand, he enjoys the attention. (At one point he tells me a long, hilarious story about a surreal night of drinking recently in New York City with a female cable-news talking head and the Navy Seal who allegedly shot Osama bin Laden. Robert says he wound up in bed with the cable-news commentator and, even though his sexuality seems to be pointed in the wrong direction, they began hooking up, until his bracelet got caught in her hair.)

On the other hand, Robert keeps discovering that life in semi-public isn't easy for a Zimmerman. He and a date recently watched the movie Diana, about the late British princess. "It made him get who I am now," Robert says. "And he couldn't take it." It dawned on Robert that he'll "never be able to fuck somebody without thinking, What's going to happen? Are they recording me? Did they leave their laptop open? Is this being broadcast live? Is this person two weeks later going to find out who my brother is and then sell something? Are they going to say you raped them?"

Robert has his "go-bag" with him, and he offers to show it to me. He zips open a gray messenger bag sitting on a musty comforter in the bedroom. Inside are tax forms, pay stubs, and a car registration, plus some documents that seem useless. There are several birthday cards, a neat stack of receipts from Disney's Wilderness Lodge, a thank-you note for singing at a funeral, and his ninth-grade standardized test scores, as well as DVDs of his media appearances and a video of George's birthday party two years before the incident.

Robert wants to watch that one. A grinning George sits on a chair and opens gifts. Polo shirts, kitchen appliances, a laptop computer. Kids wander around. Guests chat and laugh—a few African-Americans among them. Occasionally, Bob steps into frame. He rubs his son's close-shaved head, hugs and kisses him. He looks youthful, vibrant. Not at all like Walter White on Breaking Bad.

Before I leave, we Skype with the rest of the family, minus George, who are all at home in Florida. The connection is choppy. Bob, Gladys, and Grace are in the kitchen, and all three of them look tired. Both of the family's lawsuits—their best hope at financial salvation—are going nowhere fast. A federal magistrate bounced the case against Roseanne Barr back to a state court. And a circuit-court judge just tossed out George's case against NBC.

But that's not what they want to talk about today. They want me to understand that the world is aligned against them and that what sustains them is their closeness as a family. George texts all the time. He even called recently. He wanted to know the name of a recent pop song, one with a chorus that goes la la la.

Bob tells me that George's big fear right now is that he'll be charged with federal civil rights violations for the Martin shooting.

"He's worried," Bob says, "that if FBI agents come and kick in his door, he's probably gonna shoot a few of them."