Mystery endures in Codd slayings, Quinn disappearance

For a time, at least, the Leicester man at the center of two of the region's most well-known murder cases was talking to law officers.

When Robert Jason Owens was charged with the murders of Cristie Schoen Codd and Joseph "J.T." Codd, he waived his right to remain silent and his right to an attorney, authorities said.

"He talked with us and that's really all I can talk about as far as demeanor," Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan said in a March press conference, held days after the murders. "But he sat down and he was forthcoming."

At that same press conference, an Asheville police sergeant called Owens' arrest a "significant event" in a well-known cold case, the disappearance of Zebb Quinn.

But seven months gone, the arrest of the man who long has been considered a key to unlocking the Quinn investigation has yielded no visible breakthroughs.

Police have named Owens and at least two others as persons of interest in the case. Instead, the passing months raise new questions in both investigations regarding forensics and a search of a popular recreation area.

Remains believed to be those of the Codds have yet to be publicly identified. The cause of a suspicious fire on Owens' property after his arrest remains under investigation.

And at least two property searches linked to the Quinn investigation — including one in the popular National Forest destination — have left unanswered that enduring question: What happened to Zebb?

An attorney appointed for Owens, Sean Devereux, declined comment regarding his client.

In September, Quinn's mother, Denise Vlahakis, took to the Internet to tell supporters that she had no new answers. In a Facebook group dedicated to her son, she thanked people for keeping a young man who vanished at age 18 in their thoughts.

"As of right now, we have nothing new to report," she wrote. "Several things have been investigated, but as of now, have not led to any new information. Please continue to pray for resolution to this. We are so thankful for all of you."

A pair of Quinn searches

At the end of March, the since-retired Asheville police detective in the Quinn case, Kevin Taylor, applied for a search warrant that allowed excavation on the Owens' property, off Hookers Gap Road in Leicester.

That request was prompted by an unnamed relative of Owens who told police on March 27 that Owens was digging a fish pond near his home sometime after Quinn's disappearance and later poured concrete on the area, according to the search warrant.

The document offers no hint if investigators also received that tip around January 2000, when Quinn's missing person case was soon tagged as suspicious or why the family member came forward only after Owens' arrest.

That search was not the first on the Owens property. In 2007, Asheville police used ground-piercing radar, but officers at the time declined to say what prompted them to use the technology seven years after Quinn went missing.

The March dig used students from a Western Carolina University anthropology class, and relied on searchers who sifted through dirt in a grid pattern. The excavation unearthed fabric, leather materials and "unknown hard fragments," though investigators have not said if the items are significant.

But the Quinn investigation has more recently included a search in the Bent Creek Experimental Forest, one that was spurred by a tipster who has not been publicly disclosed.

When law officers took to Bent Creek and blocked access to an oft-traveled forest road, Owens — the last known person to see Quinn alive — had been in jail for about 11 weeks, charged with the murders of the Codds and their unborn child.

Officials will not say if the Bent Creek tip came from Owens or if he has spoken with investigators about any knowledge he may have of Quinn's disappearance. The information, however, was credible enough to draw officers from the Asheville Police and the Buncombe County Sheriff's departments to the popular forest, just southwest of Asheville.

On the last Saturday in May, hikers and bikers arrived in the Bent Creek area to find law officers had blocked a forest road. At the time, a police spokeswoman said the department takes tips it receives seriously. A U.S. Forest Service official called the area an active crime scene.

Unlike the fish pond information from a family member, the Bent Creek tip — one that prompted a response and at least a cursory search five months ago — has not led to an excavation request by the Asheville Police Department, which is charged with the Quinn investigation.

To dig on Forest Service land requires that a permit be issued, according to that agency, and none has been sought or granted.

Christina Hallingse, spokeswoman for the Asheville Police Department, declined to comment on the case.

"The Zebb Quinn case is an ongoing investigation and no additional information will be provided at this time," she wrote in an email. She added that with Taylor's retirement, Sgt. Sean Aardema is now the lead investigator in the Quinn case.

Through the years, Asheville Police have periodically turned to the public to shake loose new leads in a perplexing case that has garnered both local and national attention.

In 2004, officers released a convenience store videotape showing Quinn and Owens purchasing soft drinks about 9:14 p.m., and soon after, Owens' truck passed the gas station pumps followed by Quinn's Madza Protege.

The pair — former coworkers at a Hendersonville Road Walmart — were going to look at a car Quinn was thinking about buying, Owens told police in 2000. As they drove, Quinn flashed his lights, signaling Owens to stop, and seemed distressed about a page he has received, according to Owens, who later refused to cooperate with officers.

When Quinn and Owens stopped, the men pulled off alongside Long Shoals Road, only a few miles from the Bent Creek main entrance.

In releasing the convenience store video, an Asheville police captain at the time explained that investigators had no further leads in a case they were treating as a homicide and hoped for new information.

In a case where leads have long been thin and sometimes nonexistent, Asheville police will not comment on the validity of the Bent Creek tip and why it has not merited excavation, while the "fish pond" tip sparked a dig within days of that information.

Both DNA and dental record information regarding Quinn have been entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, better known as NamUs.

In an August court hearing, Buncombe County District Attorney Todd Williams said he intended to seek the death penalty against Owens if he is convicted in the Codd slayings.

He has declined to discuss the nature of the information that led officers to Bent Creek, but said police are continuing work on the Quinn case.

"It's been my experience that the Asheville Police Department has been very responsive to new leads in the Zebb Quinn case and I'm sure that APD continues to be open to investigate any and all new leads as they come in," Williams wrote in an email. "The Asheville Police Department appears to be dedicated to solving the case and bringing closure to the victim's family after all the years."

The challenge of fire

Search warrants in the Codd case show Buncombe County sheriff's detectives have sought evidence typical of a homicide investigation, including cellphone records, items at the Leicester homes of the Codds and Owens and vehicles belonging to those individuals.

But the case also includes a difficult forensic challenge: evidence destroyed by fire.

In public documents and in a press conference, law officers charged with investigating the Codd case have carefully worded their discussion of evidence, with Sheriff Duncan saying Owens told investigators he "stored and destroyed" remains and that evidence believed to have been human remains had been recovered from a wood stove.

Owens was later indicted on two dismemberment counts. In the Asheville police "fish pond" search warrant of Owens' property, Detective Taylor wrote that "suspects intending to conceal human remains utilize various methods, to include but not limited to burial, dismemberment and incineration."

The remains believed to be those of the Codds were sent to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem in March.

In North Carolina, autopsy reports are publicly available, but that documentation has yet to be returned in the Codd case.

The lead defense attorney for Owens, Victoria Jayne of the Buncombe County Office of the Capital Defender, confirmed that she also had not received autopsy reports. She declined further comment on the case.

In short, the remains suspected to be those of Cristie and J.T. Codd remain unidentified. Officials with the medical examiner's office have refused to release their investigative report, a public document that would have been completed by the Buncombe County medical examiner before any remains were sent for a more substantial analysis.

"Please keep in mind that every death investigation conducted by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has its own unique set of facts and circumstances, and the length of time to complete a case can vary based on a number of factors," spokeswoman Olivia James wrote in an email.

That office has declined to discuss what those factors might be in the Codd case, though DNA availability and analysis is likely a critical issue.

In house or car fires, charred bones typically do still hold the genetic material, allowing scientists a means to identify victims, said Dr. Michael Warren, associate professor & director at C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida.

Warren, a forensic anthropologist, said his lab is often called upon to examine cremains, usually requested when a family suspects the ash given to them might not be those of their loved one. The lab evaluates several factors, including the weight of the material, medical evidence such as staples left behind from a surgery and metal items that might have been included in the cremation, he said.

DNA is not among the evidence he can turn to in those cases, he said. Commercial cremation, with temperatures upward of 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, destroys that option.

"I would say in a wood stove sort of an environment, you could probably get it almost hot enough and if you maintained the fire long enough, you would calcinate the remains and calcination means just what I am saying: all of the organic parts of those remains goes up the flu and what you have left is literally bone ash and remnants of teeth," said Warren, who is not familiar with the Codd case.

Investigators with the sheriff's department suspect the Codds died about March 12. Owens told his wife, Samantha Owens, that he had struck J.T. Codd with Codd's truck, killing him, according to search warrants filed by Buncombe County sheriff's deputies. That paperwork also indicates Owens admitted to stealing items from the Codd home.

Samantha Owens has visited her husband weekly at the jail since he was taken into custody, according to logs.

Days after Owens was arrested, an unoccupied doublewide mobile home near Owens' primary residence caught fire in a blaze that was ruled suspicious.

That building was the former home of Owens' grandmother, Bertha Owens. Her daughter, Betsy Owens, was the biological mother of Robert Jason Owens and, often beset by drug addiction, left the boy to be raised by his grandmother. Both women are deceased and Owens' father is not listed on a birth certificate.

Individuals familiar with the property have said that mobile home, which was destroyed in the blaze, contained a wood stove.

No charges have been filed. The investigation into that case is ongoing, according to Buncombe County deputy fire marshal Terry Gentry.

The Codds had purchased their home, which sits on about 27 acres on Hookers Gap Road in Leicester, just months before their deaths. In September, the house and property was sold by the Codd estate and purchased by two married couples.