New Orleans police responded to a disturbing call from the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel on October 17, 2006. They found a man’s body on the roof of the hotel’s parking garage. In his pocket was a note that read, “This is not accidental. I had to take my own life to pay for the one I took.”
Detective Tom Morovich was dispatched to the scene and found the body on the roof of the parking garage. He searched the man’s pockets for identification and found dog tags with the name Zachary Bowen.
Tom also found the note. It continued saying:
“If you send a patrol to 826 N. Rampart, you will find the dismembered corpse of my girlfriend, Addie, in the oven, on the stove, and in the fridge, along with full documentation on both of us and a full, signed confession from me…
Zack Bowen.”
Police rushed to the address, which was located above the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. Tom later stated the body and the note were shocking, but what awaited them inside the apartment was the stuff of nightmares.
The apartment was in disarray. Moving boxes were stacked everywhere, and beer cans were on most surfaces. Then they saw the walls. The walls were covered with messages written in black spray paint. They read “I’m a failure,” “I loved her”, and “Please stop the pain”.
One of the messages directed the officers to the stove. In a pot, on one of the burners, was a human head, burned beyond recognition. There was another pot on a different burner, containing a pair of hands and feet.
In the oven, in the roasting pan, were arms and legs. All of these were charred, as if they had been cooked. Investigators also found what appeared to be seasoning on the body parts. Potatoes and carrots were placed on the counter next to the stove as well. Police then proceeded to find a human torso in a plastic bag in the refrigerator.
Addie Hall and Zachary Bowen
Addie Hall was remembered as a free-spirited, but feisty artist who moved to New Orleans after a rough go in the Northeast. She was also ironically wary of relationships because of the abuse she experienced in the past. Life as a poet and artist was not easy, so she took a job as a bartender. That is how she met her boyfriend and future murderer.
Zack Bowen was a charming young man who grew up in California. His parents were separated, so he divided his time between them. For some of his teenage years, Zack lived with his mother, but later moved in with his father before turning 18. They moved to New Orleans and decided to settle there.
Zack met Lana Shupack, and they instantly fell in love, though she was 10 years his senior. They had two children. Feeling the need to be responsible, Zack got his GED and enlisted in the army. He had dropped out of high school and followed his brother’s advice on how to get benefits for his family.
Unfortunately, he joined the military at a time when the United States would soon be involved in various conflicts. Zack was deployed as a peacekeeper in Kosovo before going to serve as an infantryman in Iraq following the September 11 attacks.
His trips overseas were marked with significant trauma. In Kosovo, Zack’s job was to help uncover sites of mass graves. On this deployment, Zack claimed that, once, he gave a child candy. After a few days, he learned that she had been executed by opposing forces because the girl had interacted with American soldiers.
The experience in Iraq was no different. He also noted cases of war crimes being committed by fellow troops in the initial years in Iraq, which caused him to have a disdain for the Army. This is where most friends and family indicated a turning point in Zack’s personality. The outgoing, fun-loving guy was replaced by a quieter, more withdrawn demeanour.
Combat stress from the things he had seen and done caused severe posttraumatic issues. He also fell into a cycle of self-distraction and received a general discharge from the army rather than an honourable one. This precluded him from accessing any of his military benefits, including mental health assistance.
Lana took the children and separated from him soon after. Zack returned to the French Quarter soon after, where he found work as a bartender thanks to his good looks. Shortly after, he met Addie Hall.
The Toxic Relationship
Both Addie and Zack had been dating for weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit the mainland. They decided to wait out the storm together at her apartment. The experience helped them form a trauma bond amid the destruction in the French Quarter.
From that time, they were inseparable and thrived on the stardom that remaining in the Quarter after Katrina brought them. Addie frequently flashed her breasts at passing police vehicles, ensuring they regularly patrolled the area. This, in turn, increased police presence and improved traffic flow in the area.
During Hurricane Katrina, the world for them was in a state of limbo. No bills, no responsibilities, and a heightened sense of everything. This created the perfect environment for them to let loose and party all the time. Afterwards, the return to normalcy brought resentment that they could not escape reality forever.
They were also oblivious, it seemed, of what was happening just blocks away at the Superdome. Once the lights came back on, Zack and Addie watched as their neighbours tried to salvage their property with a push broom.
Zack also became increasingly triggered by all of the uniforms around. It brought him back to his time in the army and initiated post-traumatic stress. He was almost inconsolable as military vehicles moved about. This made the couple go deeper into their drug dependency.
Addie also had a dark side because of past traumas. She suffered from bipolar disorder and took her medication irregularly, which caused uncontrolled outbursts from time to time. Apparently, when she got drunk enough, she would hurl homophobic insults at her gay friends.
Many of their friends remember witnessing the couple having huge fights fueled by drugs and alcohol. In one case, her friends remember Addie giving her a hard time just to test how far she could go. They said she would often become violent when drunk with them and with her boyfriend, Zack.
When his estranged wife, Lana, found out that Zack had survived the hurricane, she demanded child support and assistance in caring for the children. This highly irritated Addie, who did not want the children at her apartment.
However, the two did not stop going out together, and their substance use intensified, which further escalated their fights. Zack identified as bisexual at the time, but Addie did not know at first. He began seeing another man, and Addie was enraged when she found out.
They got into a big fight, during which she unleashed homophobic insults at him. She also conducted a smear campaign against Zack, taking his phone, calling people, and telling them he had AIDS. However, they would regularly break up and reconcile the very same day, so it was par for the course by then.
However, Addie did want to get out of the relationship. So she devised a plan that involved them moving in together. They walked down Rampart Street and found a ‘for rent’ sign. The apartment was above a Voodoo temple. The couple liked it and had a verbal agreement with the landlord, Leo Watermeier. Zack also handed Leo a $ 1,500 deposit to book the apartment.
Two days later, Addie visited Leo’s office and asked for a written lease that had only her name on it. She told Leo that she had found Zack cheating and planned to kick him out. Leo obliged and initiated the paperwork.
Murder and Suicide
On October 5, 2006, after he got home from work, Addie told Zack what she had done. It became clear to Zack that Addie had only used him to get into the new apartment. They had a big fight, and Addie started to throw out his things, calling him homophobic names.
It was at this point that Zack snapped and strangled Addie to death. Appalled by what he had just done, Zack took her journal and began to describe what had happened and the events that followed.
He elaborated how Addie used false pretence and said to confirm with Leo Watermeier. He went on to say that she would not shut up, so he ‘calmly’ strangled her. “It was quick”.
In the next entry, he said that after sexually defiling the corpse a few times, he was posed the question of how to dispose of the body.
The next morning, Zack prepared and left for work. His co-workers did note that he looked very off. He told one of his co-workers that Addie had left him and gone back to North Carolina. Her friends, at first, felt something was wrong, but ignored it because of her reputation.
In another entry, Zack wrote that he would be off from work the entire weekend, so he would have enough time to figure out what to do with the body. But because of laziness, he spent most of the time getting high on cocaine.
That week, Zack spent his time in different bars with various women. It was as if he had resigned to his fate and wanted to go on a bender before ultimately taking his own life. He also turned the air conditioning down in the apartment as low as possible to slow the decomposition of Addie’s body.
It was probably at this time that he set about cutting the body into pieces and cooking some of the parts to slow decomposition and perhaps mask the smell. Zack also began spray-painting the messages that would lead police to the designated areas.
In one of the notes, he explains his plan. He had decided to quit his job and spend the $1,500 in cash he had. He would seek good food, strippers, friends, and drugs. Zack determined he would not contact any members of his family because it might derail him.
A Goodbye after the Final Bender
On the 17th, Zack went to the rooftop bar in the French Quarter and ordered a few drinks. A waiter spotted him that night and became suspicious because he was pacing back and forth. He thought Zack might run without paying for his drinks, so they kept a light eye on him.
After looking away for a second, they could not see him. Zack had jumped over the rooftop when they were not looking.
When Detective Tom Morovich arrived at the scene, he indicated that the manner of suicide was abnormal, considering his experiences with people who had taken their own lives.
This is why they searched his pockets and were more intrigued when they found the note. It was the journal, though, at the apartment, which gave answers to most of the questions at the macabre scene.
Police also notified Lana Shupack of the death of her ex-husband and what he had done. But she struggled to come to terms with it. The couple’s friends were also shocked and concluded that Zack may have bottled up a lot of things from his past.
The drug intake, abusive relationship, and previous posttraumatic stress probably had a cascading effect that eventually led to this highly violent murder-suicide.
