After months in hiding, rarely leaving home, George Zimmerman and his brother, Robert, took advantage of three comped nights at a Ritz-Carlton in Miami.
Lounging across two hotel rooms, the siblings racked up $3,600 in expenses by buying dinner for 10 at the hotel restaurant, getting pampered several times at the spa and buying Mercedes-Benz cologne at the gift shop as they filmed an interview with CNN in February, a profile in GQ Magazine reveals.
The company initially refused to pay the bloated tab, which also included several room service charges, cleaned-out minibars and laundry service.
“You and your brother are evil!” a CNN producer screamed at Robert Zimmerman, according to the profile.
Once the hotel threatened to call police, Robert retreated to his room, shaking, and proceeded to get wasted, smoke cigarettes and chow on shrimp as he cowered under blankets.
“I can’t get warm,” he sobbed to his mother, according to the profile in GQ’s October issue. “I just can’t get warm.”
CNN eventually paid the tab – after Robert was consoled by a producer for Dr. Drew, whose show Robert went on before George went to trial.
George wouldn’t speak to GQ unless the magazine comped him a week at a hotel, the writer revealed.
The wide-ranging profile on the Zimmermans shows their descent into debt and paranoia after George shot dead unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, 17, on Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida.
That day is like “9/11 for my family,” Robert explained to a Fox News producer, who wanted an interview on the second anniversary of the shooting earlier this year.
“We can’t travel together that day — it’s like having the whole royal family travel together!” he told the cable network of the anniversary.
The family — brothers George and Robert, sister Grace, and parents Bob and Gladys — consider themselves victims of the shooting, according to the profile. Robert said he believed his brother suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that George has remained unemployed since the shooting.
George has $2.5 million in debt and legal fees, while his parents, who were forced to leave their suburban Orlando home, have racked up thousands in hotel costs and rent at a safe house somewhere near Lake Mary, Fla.
Robert only recently got a job as a deliveryman, while George raised some $100,000 selling a painting he created.
George’s next painting subject, according to Robert, may be Anne Frank, the Jewish teen who detailed in a diary her time during World War II hiding in an Amsterdam attic.
George identifies with the girl, who died at 15 in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, Robert told GQ.
Even 30 months after the shooting, the family remains on their toes about a possible assassination, father Bob told the magazine.
“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 told GQ. “And that’s what worries me.”
The family, which owned a total of 10 guns combined before the shooting, was on edge right after Trayvon was killed. When Grace saw the news, though George had yet to be named, she yelled out, “We need more guns!” and bought another pistol, GQ reported.
And now, the family has escape routes planned and “go bags” packed with essential electronics and documents in the event of a threat. Robert sleeps with a gun nearby and has not had to have a normal relationship since the shooting.
He realized he’ll “never be able to f— 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 told GQ.
Robert now lives in suburban Washington, while Grace and the parents live at the safe house. George lives elsewhere, and despite his best efforts, has not stayed out of the public eye.
He divorced his wife of six years shortly after the trial, and was arrested for assaulting his new girlfriend.
Just three weeks ago, George was investigated for allegedly threatening to kill another driver during a Florida road rage incident.
