This tragedy took place right above Priestess Miriam's Temple!!!
Obviously she was not involved, but what a shock to see her name in this
story!
--cat
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NEW ORLEANS — A note found on the body of a suicide jumper led police to
a French Quarter apartment where they found his girlfriend's charred
head in a pot on the stove, her arms and legs in the oven and her torso
in the
refrigerator, a law enforcement officer said Wednesday.
New Orleans Police spokesmen confirmed that a 26-year-old woman was
found
dismembered Tuesday night in her apartment above a voodoo shop.
Details from the kitchen were released by a law enforcement officer
close to the investigation who spoke with The Associated Press on
condition of
anonymity and unidentified officials who spoke to the Times-Picayune
newspaper and WWL-TV.
A woman who identified herself as Priestess Miriam in the Voodoo
Spiritual Temple and Cultural Center below the apartment said Wednesday
that the couple had recently moved in.
"You see people and never know what's going on with them," the woman said.
Police said the 28-year-old man leaped from the seventh-floor of the
Omni
Royal Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter on Tuesday night. When
officers
checked his pockets, they found the note, which led them to the
apartment
and the woman's body.
Officer Garry Flot confirmed the body was dismembered but released no
other details. Police and the coroner's office declined to release the
identities of the couple, saying family members had not yet been notified.
The apartment's owner, Leo Watermeier, said he last saw the woman Oct.
5,
four days after the two put down a deposit on the one-bedroom, $750-a
month flat. Later that same day, Watermeier said, the boyfriend called
Watermeier, angrily saying the woman was kicking him out.
Watermeier said the woman told him she had caught the boyfriend cheating.
The couple didn't appear to be native New Orleanians, the landlord said.
He said the woman worked as a waitress and bartender.
Joy Spaulding, owner of the nearby Nawlin's Flava Cafe said the couple
frequented her restaurant. "To be honest, they seemed like a real nice
couple. They were good-looking people, young people trying to do
something with their lives."
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More details, this time not naming Priestess Miraim, just mentioning a
"voodoo shop"
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an dismembers girlfriend in Quarter; cooks body parts
By Walt Philbin
Staff Writer
A suicide note in the pocket of a man who jumped off the Omni Royal
Orleans Hotel late Tuesday led police to the grisly scene of his
girlfriend's murder, where they found her charred head in a pot on
the stove, her legs and feet baked in the oven and the rest of her
dismembered body in trash bag in the refrigerator, according to police
and the couple's landlord.
The man, Zackery Bowen, a tall man in his mid 20s with long blond hair,
claimed in the note to have killed his girlfriend, Adrian "Addie"
Hall, on Oct. 5, according to police. Hall was also in her mid 20s.
In the five-page note, Bowen claimed he strangled Hall in the bathtub,
then dismembered her body before taking it in pieces to the kitchen,
police said. An autopsy conducted today shows that Hall was in fact
manually strangled, police said. It also appears that Hall's body was
cut up after she died, police said.
"He appeared to clean up the bathroom a lot after he did it," one
officer said.
Police found the victim's head burned beyond recognition in a pot on
top of the stove, and her legs and feet in the same condition in pans
inside the oven, police said.
Bowen was from Los Angeles, but apparently had lived in the New Orleans
area for quite a while, police said. Friends said he served in the
military in Iraq and Afghanistan and displayed both pride and
bitterness over that experience.
Detectives said they were compiling a detailed profile of Bowen to
submit as soon as possible to the FBI's VICAP (Violent Criminal
Apprehension Program) center. VICAP is a nationwide data information
center designed to collect acts of violence that might be serial in
nature and recognized by other jurisdictions with access to VICAP as
similar to a crime that they investigated.
Shortly after Oct. 1, the couple had rented an apartment together at
826 N. Rampart Street above a voodoo shop, said their landlord, Leo
Watermeier, who recently ran a campaign for mayor.
The couple seemed happy at first, he said, though that would soon break
down.
"He may have in retrospect seemed a little troubled," Watermeier
said in an interview early Wednesday morning, shortly after he led
investigators to the gruesome scene inside the apartment.
Last Sunday, several days after he claimed in his suicide note to have
killed her, Bowen appeared "all jolly, talking about the trip he was
going to take," said Lisa Perilloux, a regular at Buffa's bar,
where Bowen worked a weekly bartending gig.
Bowen had told several co-workers and friends there he planned to take
a "much-needed vacation" to Cozumel or some other island resort,
said Donovan Kalabaza, a fellow bartender and friend.
"Just think, tomorrow night, you'll be in paradise," Kalabaza
recalled telling him.
Sunday afternoon, Bowen came in briefly in the afternoon, drinking with
two other guys.
"He was a great mood, best mood I've ever seen him in."
Bowen jumped to his death two nights later.
Though they appeared happy when they rented the Rampart Street
apartment - telling Watermeier they had fallen in love on the night
Hurricane Katrina struck and Hall gave Bowen shelter - they soon had
a bitter falling out, Watermeier said. After the storm, the couple
lived a vagabond existence in the shattered city, becoming feature
fodder for the swarm of national media eager to profile post-flood
diehards.
But on Oct. 5, during a dispute over which of their names would appear
on the lease, Hall told Watermeier she intended to kick Bowen out of
the apartment, after finding out that he had cheated on her, Watermeier
said.
Bowen did not take the news well, Watermeier said.
"He said, 'Did you just let her sign a lease alone? Because I'm
screwed. I'm totally messed up now. She's trying to kick me out of
our apartment," Watermeier said.
Hall admitted she was trying to throw Bowen out, he said.
"I caught him cheating on me, and I am kicking him out of this
apartment," she told Watermeier.
Watermeier told the couple to work through their differences and get
back to him. He never saw Hall again, and assumed they'd worked it
out.
Police came to Watermeier's door about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, shortly
after Bowen committed suicide, asking if he knew a tall man with long
blonde hair, and if he had a connection with the apartment at 826 N.
Rampart St.
He took them to the apartment, he said, where they warned him he might
not want to enter. Investigators told Watermeier what they found,
however: charred body parts strewn about the kitchen.
Hall was also not from New Orleans, Watermeier said, but both she and
Bowen seemed "hard core" about the city and proud that they had
stayed here through Katrina.
Bowen's suicide was first discovered Tuesday when his body was
spotted below by someone in an upper floor lounge. It was soon
determined that Bowen had jumped from an outside terrace near a
swimming pool on an upper floor to the roof of the Chartres Street
garage on the second floor, police said.
A surveillance camera showed him walking several times to the edge of a
ledge on the upper floor, then retreating, then returning again, until
he finally plunged, police said.
Police found the five-page suicide note in his pocket, which not only
led him to the scene of the murder, but included information on an
out-of-state person who should be contacted after he was found, police
said.
As the news began to filter through the French Quarter and Faubourg
Marigny - where the couple worked, drank and at times argued -
friends and co-workers relayed details of their personalities, their
demons, and the tumultuous last weeks in their lives. Some offered
****traits of a loving couple that sometimes fought; others painted a
darker ****trait of a dysfunctional couple at perpetual war.
Perilloux said she never heard Bowen speak anything but ill of Hall.
"He was getting rid of her," she said, meaning he was trying to
break up with her. "He used to complain about her to me. It was
revolving door."
She also relayed an recent incident where Hall screamed expletives at
Bowen through the front door of Buffa's, in front of a crowd of
regulars. Associates of Bowen described him as a strapping,
smooth-talking man who flirted with other women, often making Hall
often jealous. Karen Lott, owner of Buffa's bar on Esplanade, where
Hall worked one bartending ****ft a week, said she had hired him as
"eye candy for the ladies" after meeting him when he made
deliveries to her from Matassa's.
"The customers loved him. Everyone loved him," she said, still
reeling from the news of his suicide and her gruesome murder.
They knew Hall well at Buffa's, too, where she often sat at the other
end of the bar, often staring admiringly at Bowen as he either served
drinks or ordered his own, almost always a Miller High Life and a shot
of Jameson Irish Whiskey. When loud music drowned out their
conversation, she would pass him notes, often to tell him she loved
him, said Donovan Kalabaza, 34, a fellow bartender at Buffa's and
friend of both Hall and Bowen.
Ed Parrish, co-owner of the Spotted Cat bar on Frenchman Street, where
Hall worked up until a month ago, said he could tell something had gone
awry in her life. She started missing work, then coming back to
apologize and seek to save her job.
"I had a feeling something was seriously wrong," he said.
She had worked there for about a year, he said, before becoming
unreliable. After not showing up for ****fts three times, Parrish never
saw her again.
Eura Jones, who cleans the bar in the mornings, had not heard about the
gruesome killings until told by a re****ter early Wednesday. She
described Hall a "real friendly" and "a real pretty girl" who
was smitten with Bowen.
"She loved that guy. She really loved him," Jones said, though she
added the couple squabbled often.
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