Jacob Zieben and Jacob Paulson were fast friends when they met in 2013. Aside from their shared name, the pair were both young gay men fresh out of college who recently moved to New York City.
After two years spent glued at the hip, Paulson said their dynamic quickly changed after his friend, a personal trainer from Texas, started dating model Donald Hood.
“He just vanished,” Paulson said this week in a phone interview, choking up. “I had no contact with him, and I just wanted him to be happy, and that’s all I really cared about. And I was hoping that he was.”
Although the loss of the friendship stung, Paulson said he moved on years ago. He didn’t attend his former friend’s 2020 wedding and was only aware from social media that Jacob and Donald both changed their last names to Zieben-Hood.
But Paulson was shocked and flooded with memories when, just two weeks ago, he saw his former friend’s name in the headlines after police found the 34-year-old dead inside his Harlem apartment.
When authorities entered the apartment on July 31 after Donald called for help, they found Jacob slumped over his toilet with a gash on his head and multiple stab wounds to the back of his leg, one deep enough to penetrate muscle, according to charging documents.
His death came after years of alleged abuse dating to 2022, detailed in a series of charging documents against Donald on felony counts including strangulation and menacing. Those charges remain pending.
Donald, a 40-year-old model with over 67,000 Instagram followers, was arrested on July 31 and charged with several crimes, including burglary. He is currently being held at Rikers Island without bail. Prosecutors have not charged anyone with murder or named a suspect for Jacob’s death, citing his pending autopsy, but said they are investigating the case as a homicide.
In the days since his death, Paulson and seven others who knew Jacob spoke with NBC News as they slowly learned about the personal trainer’s life over the last decade. And while his fatal stabbing comes as a shock, those who knew Jacob believe Donald cut out his friends — and potential lifelines — years before he truly needed them.
“I wish I had done more, but, in hindsight, what would you do?” said one of Jacob’s old friends, Marti G. Cummings.
Donald’s attorney declined to comment.
After studying biomedical sciences at Texas A&M University, Jacob moved to New York City in 2013 and quickly met Paulson and Joshua Baker.
Paulson and Baker said that the trio never went “anywhere without each other” and spent endless days cooped up in Jacob’s Hell’s Kitchen apartment, which they say overlooked Central Park, playing video games, eating fried food, and daydreaming about their futures.
“We were these cute little misfits that were trying to figure out where we fit in New York society,” Baker said.
Cummings met Jacob around the same time and gravitated toward his selflessness and desire for community. A prominent New York City drag queen who uses they/them pronouns, Cummings said Jacob would frequently walk them between gigs late at night to make sure they got there safely.
“He was a protector, which is why I think it makes this whole thing sadder,” Cummings said. “He didn’t get to be protected from this.”
Lauren Foster, a friend of Donald’s since 2000, described him as “a good guy” and said that she was never under the impression that his relationship was troubled. She did, however, acknowledge that the roles Jacob and Donald played were clear.
“I don’t think he had a ton of friends,” Foster said of Jacob. “Don was kind of the alpha in the relationship.”
“There’s always one person that’s dominant in the relationship, and that was definitely Don,” she added. “I think Don would be the alpha in any relationship. He’s larger than life.”
Baker said that shortly after Jacob met Donald in the spring of 2015, Jacob began dodging invitations, declining phone calls, and ignoring text messages. Soon, Baker noted, Jacob started to even block his friends’ phone numbers.
Jonathan Starkey, a friend from Texas, recalled that in one conversation around that time, Jacob said that “a lot had changed, and that Donald was a little possessive and jealous and kind of restricted who he was in touch with.”
“Jacob wasn’t really someone who let people tell him what to do, which is why it’s so strange,” Starkey said.
Jacob’s abrupt silence prompted Baker to reach out to Donald.
“Jacob is doing very well,” Donald wrote to Baker in a November 5, 2015, direct message on Facebook, according to screenshots of the conversation provided to NBC News. “He’s decided to break away from his past, which unfortunately included his closest friends, in order to move forward with a healthy life.”
“He’s been very focused and is back on the right track in his life and in order to remain focused he will remain out of contact for the moment,” Donald added.
For years, the only updates Jacob’s friends received about their friend came through social media, where images from the couple’s Instagrams showed what appeared to be a happy couple who traveled the world and lived a glamorous New York life. The pair posted loving selfies, pictures from their wedding in 2020, and snapshots with their families.
But court documents paint a prolonged pattern of alleged abuse in the relationship that authorities say started in 2022.
Prosecutors said in the charging documents filed after Jacob’s death that Donald had nine domestic incident reports filed against him since 2022, but did not provide more details about the nature of the incidents or who filed them. In November 2024, an order of protection was issued in New York County Criminal Court that directed Donald to cease communication and stay away from Jacob, according to charging documents associated with Donald’s arrest in February.
In February, Donald was arrested and charged with strangulation, among several other charges, for allegedly attacking Jacob inside the Harlem apartment. Jacob “almost lost consciousness, and sustained swelling, substantial pain, and redness to his neck” from the incident, according to the charging documents. Donald pleaded not guilty to the charges in the case that is still pending.
A second court order of protection was issued in criminal court in April, which once again prevented Donald from seeing or communicating with Jacob.
Donald was arrested again in June and charged with criminal contempt and menacing, according to court documents. The court records allege that Donald held a knife in Jacob’s direction and said, “I will attack you.” He pleaded not guilty to the charges, and the case is still pending.
Paulson said that earlier this year, Jacob followed him on Instagram and gave him hope that the friends might reconnect after a brief exchange in March.
“I was so excited to have that prospect of him coming back into my life after I’d kind of let him go as a friend,” Paulson said. “And then to have it really just permanently end, it’s just devastated me. It’s really wrecked me.”
Donald called 911 on July 31 from Jacob’s one-bedroom apartment at West 138th Street and told them he found his husband dead on the toilet.
When police arrived, they found Donald sitting on their couch with three cuts to his arm that later required stitches, a black eye, and bite marks, according to a criminal complaint. He told authorities that Jacob had attacked him.
However, prosecutors say that Jacob called his father from the bathroom before the attack and allegedly told him that Donald “was coming at him with knives and preventing him from leaving the apartment,” according to the criminal complaint. During the call, Jacob’s father allegedly heard Donald screaming derogatory names at Jacob in the background, the complaint added.
Donald was arrested later that day and charged with burglary, aggravated criminal contempt, criminal contempt in the first degree and possession of a weapon. On Thursday, he was scheduled to appear in court, but a judge waived his appearance at the request of his attorney.
He is now set to appear on September 12, almost a month after Jacob’s funeral, scheduled for this weekend in San Antonio.
As authorities continue to investigate the case, Jacob’s friends have been connecting and sharing old memories of their late friend.
“Years can go by, but he was our family till’ the end,” Baker said.
