DOCUMENTARY | A Good Kid: The 22-year Murder Mystery of Zebb Quinn

For the past year, News 13 has worked on an independent investigation into the Zebb Quinn murder case.

In July of 2022, the 22-year mystery of Zebb Quinn’s disappearances ended in a Buncombe County Courtroom.

On January 2, 2000, 18-year-old Zebb Wayne Quinn vanished after leaving work at the Hendersonville Road Walmart.

A circus would surround the missing teens’ disappearance from a person calling into the electronics department impersonating Quinn to the discovery of his vehicle to rumors of a lover’s triangle. As the case would go on, rumors would multiply as investigators worked to close this case without ever finding Zebb.

However, 15 years after Quinn vanished, the main suspect in the case, Robert Jason Owens confessed to the murder of the Codd family. In March of 2015, Robert Jason Owens ran over, dismembered, and burned the remains of J.T., Cristie, and their unborn baby, Skylar.

Owens then wrote a five-page letter detailing what he says happened to Zebb Quinn after leaving Walmart.

Owens told a narrative that wouldn’t become public information until 2022 when Owens would take a plea deal of accessory after the fact of first-degree murder.

Owens implicated his uncle, Walter Eugene (Gene) Owens as the killer. Gene Owens died in 2017. The district attorney would originally charge Robert Jason Owens with First Degree murder of Zebb Quinn two days after Gene’s death. Five years later, in 2022, Robert Jason Owens would be guilty to accessory after the fact of First-Degree murder, in return the first-degree murder charge was dropped.

Jason’s story outlines a combination of rumors that had plagued the case from the beginning of Quinn’s alleged involvement with a girl in a relationship with an abusive boyfriend.

Jason claimed a friend of the boyfriend hired Gene as a hitman. Police were never able to interview this friend, according to records, because he died over a decade prior to this letter.

Despite the court’s acceptance of the plea deal, the ending of this decade’s mystery left many with the thought “how could this be the end”?

The ending didn’t have much of a payoff for a case that garnered national attention and public concern.

Following the hearing, we were left wondering ‘was justice served’?

If you think back to 2015, was this justice for Crisite Codd, J.T. Codd, and their unborn child, Skylar?

If Jason was imprisoned for the Quinn matter, would the Codds still be alive?

In seeking answers to these questions, News 13 obtained interrogation videos, police records, and a one-on-one prison interview with Robert Jason Owens.

We started to track down the players involved in the case – those who could provide insight into the case.

For months, News 13’s Samiar Nefzi made calls, sent emails and letters to names brought up in the case from detectives, community members, and family members.

Investigators close to the case declined to participate, as well as district attorney Todd Williams.

With our haunting question, we decided to take the case outside of the mountains. We tracked down Brett Forrest, a print journalist who covered the case. He agreed to meet with us in Washington, DC.

We found further assistance in reviewing the case, from former NYPD homicide detective and hostage negotiator Dr. Alfred S Titus, Jr of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Locally, we spoke to Owen’s attorney, Victoria Jayne.

After interviewing our experts, we looked through the WLOS archive – 22 years of interviews, documenting the case as it unfolded in real-time.

The most intriguing part of reviewing the archive was noticing, as the investigation was ongoing, and our reporters were tracking where police were in their investigation. We heard time and time again while making A Good Kid, police had no more evidence in 2017 than they had in 2000. The difference was their main suspect laid out what happened.

We have compiled all our work now into “A Good Kid: The 22-year Murder Mystery of Zebb Quinn”. We re-examine the Quinn case and murder of the Codds’.

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