The Mysterious Disappearance of Zebb Quinn

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid. This is Morbid and man, there's a lot going on the last couple days. Do you know why? Because it's stupid daylight savings time. I fucking hate daylight savings time. I fucking hate it. is this a polarizing opinion i don't think so so i don't i don't think it's polarizing to not like it because of the whole like you lose an hour thing yeah but people love the longer days with more sunlight that's polarizing i just polarized the shit out of this i hate it yeah i much prefer darkness i want a longer night yeah give me a longer night when the sun sets at four i'm so happy well and i just i get used to one way and then it flips the other way and it's pissing me off i i was in such a good like routine of getting up super early and getting up way before the kids get up and now my body doesn't know what time it is so it keeps waking up later and then i don't get my time in the morning before everyone wakes up it's really fucking me up i actually weirdly like i'm in the opposite i've been waking up better with daylight savings but i'm like confused when I wake up because I'm like is it 5 30 is it 6 30 where am I I don't like it yeah I want to abolish it yeah I want to abolish it too I also every time that it happens the last couple years I'm like didn't we get rid of this I feel like we've been trying to for decades I swear courts across the nation have voted millions of times and we've all said nah I think we've all said we don't want this anymore but then the government was like I literally don't give a fuck I thought the government actually cared about this one but I was gonna say you thought the government actually cares this one about this one i said no they don't care about anything yeah no they don't but here we are dealing with daylight savings time still it's fucking brutal fucking a anything else you got you should tell people to buy your book yeah buy buy my pre-order my book the butcher legacies the third in the dr rin muller series and there's signed editions available there is i don't know if they're still available um i just said there's signed editions available and you said there is. I don't know if they're available. There was, I should say. Maybe there'll be more. I don't know, though. Not right. Not at this moment. If they're sold out right now. Okay. Well, you could still buy an unsigned edition. You can buy so many editions that you want. There's special editions. I was going to say special. There's regular editions that are still special in my heart. Yeah. You can pre-order them all. And you can do it at butcherlegacy.com. Anywhere you want to get it. Anywhere you feel connected to that you want to purchase this book purchase i support it that's really nice of you yeah i support you the interaction where you were like i said they're available and then you were like they are but they're not just reminded me of something before we actually get into this you'll love this i was watching watch what happens live the other night and andy said to tom sandoval uh he like tom sandoval was talking about how he met kristin and like her baby this is vanderpump rules in case you're interested yeah and in case you're interested in what i'm talking in case you're interested in what i have to say and so andy was like that must have been so strange and or like oh my god like that was crazy and tom was like yeah it was so strange and then he kind of trailed off and andy was like yeah that must have been strange and then tom goes it wasn't strange though and it was just like what the fuck are you guys talking about you're both right it was like yeah it was so strange and it must have been strange but it wasn't even strange what we've determined is that it was strange but it wasn't it was crazy so there was that it was something yeah so you know what they're available but they're not that's just the way it is i think that's what i've heard recently is that they might be out of the signed look at you selling shit out but you know what if you have demand let me know because one thing i will do is make my life harder and continue signing things till the end of time one of your favorite pastimes on this planet capricorn yeah i'm speaking to all the capricorns worldwide is to make your fucking lives harder i've got a whole stack of uh tippins right next to me that i'm signing to i don't know sure you guys have them i'm not trying to like toot your horn like excessively but i don't know how you do it thank you i don't want to do a lot of things yeah i bet i'm tired and i don't even do much so i like i said to drew this morning i was like i gotta stop saying i don't feel like it I say I don't feel like it. I don't feel like it. So frequently. Really? And I'm like, you've never noticed. I don't know if I have clocked that. Well, now you won't because I'm not saying it anymore. Oh, shit. I'm switching it with I get to. I get to. I get to. Oh, okay. Like, oh, I don't feel like going to work today. I get to go to work today. Yeah. I'm gainfully employed. Oh. I feel like it. There's a nice way to bring some goodness into your life. Oh, I don't feel like driving home today. I have a car. And I get to drive to my home. And I get a home to drive to. a shelter over my head oh i don't feel like taking the dog out i have a fucking dog and i can go walk i can walk yeah you know you get i like that yeah actually i really like that i'm trying it's um at first you feel a little silly but you know zany it's okay there needs to be more silly but i have to stop saying i don't feel like it because i'm i'm creating a bad world yeah well you can just you make yourself feel like this yeah exactly all the time but yeah i mean the the moral of the story is if you really want more signed copies keep yelling at me about it because it'll work yeah and she won't say i don't feel like it she'll say i get to sign these copies because that's essentially what i say i like i will sign a million copies for you guys so it's a cool thing if you want them i'll do it i have i have always wanted to sign copies of a book i wrote and here you are forever i also just read something pretty cool that she's working on i'm really excited i can't say anything else but it's really cool hang tight everybody all right so let's get into the case today this one dave found dave our researcher david and i hadn't heard of this before which makes sense because it was like in the 90s but it carries on into a time when i was alive oh or and like you know conscious yeah but and you were saying you weren't sure if you had heard of this case yeah i wonder if when i i have i don't know what it's about i've only seen the title of this yeah um so maybe when you're talking about it it might ring a bell i wonder if it will ring your bell. But it's crazy. Like I'm excited to get into this one. And thankfully, I will tell you it is solved. But there is still a lot of mystery surrounding the case. It's strange. Interesting. So in the late fall of 1999, 18 year old Zeb Quinn was in the market for a new car. For two years, he was working at the local Walmart after school. And on weekends, he was always working. And he managed to save a solid amount of money. So on January 2nd, 2000, one of his former co-workers, Jason Owens, visited Zeb at Walmart and said, hey, I know this guy who's selling a car. I think you might like the car. Do you want to check it out? We can go tonight after you get off work. Yeah. So Zeb was like, hell yeah, I've been looking for a car. Let's go. So a short time later, they were seen walking out of the store together. Out in the parking lot, they both got into their respective cars and Jason led the way to the home of a person who was selling the car with Zeb close behind him. Now, along the way, they stopped at a convenience store and then they got back on the road but not long after leaving the store's parking lot zeb apparently got an urgent message on his pager pager you know crazy and he started flashing his headlights indicating to jason like pull over so jason said on the side of the road zeb ran over and explained he got a message and he needed to he returned that call immediately so like the plan was off now zeb apparently seemed uncharacteristically panicked about this call and he asked if he could use Jason's cell phone, but Jason didn't have a cell phone. Because it's 1999. Because it's the 90s. And he was like, maybe you can go back to the convenience store to use that phone. And apparently Zeb did. Okay. So about 10 minutes later, around 930 at night, Zeb returned to where Jason was waiting on the side of the road, just chilling. When he pulled up behind the other car, he was actually so frantic that he accidentally rear-ended Jason's car when he came to a stop. Like something big was going on. Yeah. He immediately apologized and said he would pay for everything but he was like i'm sorry we have to work out the details later because i actually have to go like right now what the fuck yeah so jason was like do you still want to go see the car but seb said it would have to wait and he got back in his car and sped off without giving any indication as to who called him and what was so urgent wow and that's hard because you want to be like what's going on like what's happening but you don't want to like pry right if he's not offering the information that's the thing and i don't think they were like super close they were just like probably felt like old co-workers yeah so he's not gonna be like what's going on in your personal life right exactly now that was the last time that anybody saw zeb quit what yeah so a little later that night around 10 p.m zeb's mother denise called her son's pager and left a message hoping and expecting that you know he would call her back at any minute he was always super super close with his mom like they were each other's best friend so when he didn't return her call as quickly as he usually did she thought it was strange but she was like okay maybe he went out to play pool with like somebody after work yeah she was like i'm not gonna think too much of this right now so as the evening wore on though denise started to get more and more nervous more time is going by he's not answering and she starts to get seriously worried she later said he never returned any of his pages i kept waking up and paging him i must have paged him four times not only was it out of character for him to ignore his mother's phone calls it was also really out of character for zeb to stay out all night especially without telling his mom or his sister where he would be his sister brandy said later pretty quickly i was worried he wasn't a normal teenage boy he wasn't rebellious it was just really out of character that must have been horrifying also if you look him up he is as cute as a button like oh he is i just looked him up he just seems like a sweetheart yeah like she had that kind of face that you're just like oh yeah and i just love her being like no like he's not a rebellious teenager like he's He literally seemed, he gave off like teddy bear energy. He's a good kid. You know? Yeah. So the next morning when Zeb still hadn't come home, his mother and sister at this point started to panic. It wasn't just worry anymore. Denise called Walmart where the supervisor informed her that Zeb had clocked out a little past nine the night before and a few of his co-workers saw him leave the store with Jason Owens, but nobody had seen him since. So Denise made a few more calls to some of Zeb's friends, some more co-workers, but nobody had seen him. that afternoon when she still hadn't heard from her son she had no choice but to go to the police department and she filed a missing persons report so his failure to return his mom's calls and his sister's calls and the fact that he didn't return home that night wasn't just unusual because of how close he was with his mom and how close he was with his sister but it was also unusual because there were very few other places that he would have gone except for home like he usually hung out at home he'd always been a stereotypical good kid who was well liked by teachers and other people in the community but unfortunately making friends was never easy for him he kind of struggled at that oh that breaks my heart it's really sad people are so mean people are so fucking mean like just be cool with with people man be gentle with people that's the thing like you're all you don't know what's going on in people's lives and we're all fucking doing this for the first time like jesus christ it's rough i haven't been in a skin suit before this i don't think that I remember? I think I have. If I have, I don't remember it. I don't remember it. I'm doing it for the first time consciously. This time. Yeah. This time and place is the first time. So when he was younger, his mom said he was a lot smaller and clumsier than the other kids his age. And he also had a learning disorder, which made him really self-conscious. And he was occasionally targeted by assholes at school, bullies. He struggled to fit in. That said, he did have people that he met through sports and Cub Scouts, but they were kind of more acquaintances than friends like they didn't hang out on the regular he wasn't like those weren't like deepening relationships yeah not where he would like go hang out after work or anything like that and even at work like i was just talking about where he was adored by his co-workers he was actually closer with a lot of the older women at the store than he was with anyone his own age oh my god he sounds adorable no he does and also you have to think he's being raised by women yeah so like he's growing up in a house with his sister his mom was like his primary parent for a long time his grandmother was also very involved in his life so like he's got a strong line of ladies behind him so he's that's that's a that's a guy right there right that's a guy you want around exactly now if he did have a best friend at all it was said to be his sister brandy oh my god which i love i love this a lot so in his mid-teens zeb got involved with the junior reserve officers training corps which is rotc this was the first thing that he had ever expressed any strong interest in as far as his mom could remember. And once he joined the program, he really started to come out of his shell there. Now, all of that said, Zeb Quinn was the last person anybody would expect to disappear without telling anybody. And no one in his life could think of anywhere that he could have gone or anyone he would have run off with. They were at a loss. He kept a small circle. Nobody could think why he would be so upset that he just took off and anything like that. To those who knew him best. He was a laid back person. He really didn't get rattled by anything. So the fact that he had been so upset by the page he received on the night he went missing. Yeah, that's what's shocking. That was as unusual as the disappearance itself. Yeah. Because you're like, what the fuck was that? Right. Now days passed and there was still no word from Zeb. Then on the Sunday after he disappeared, his boss at Walmart, Patty King, got a really weird call. She said, the person on the other end said this is zeb quinn i will not be into work today and i'm thinking okay this is not zeb so patty had been his boss for the last two years and she knew him fairly like fairly well enough to know his voice yeah so she actually this was really smart of her she played dumb and she tried to get more information asking what asking the caller what department he worked in and what shift he was supposed to work but the other the person on the other end of the phone said they didn't know and just hung up. Oh, that's spooky as hell. Spooky. That's really ominous. Now, our girl Patty is not done yet. Thinking fast, Patty dialed star 69. Oh, which was the thing. You remember those days. I remember that even from when we were like prank calling when we were younger. So, and for anybody that doesn't know, that's when you dial star 69, it connects you with the last person who called you. So she discovered that the person who had just called pretending to be Zeb had called from Volvo Construction. Oh. But the person on the other end explained that there were a lot of phones at that company and they didn't know who contacted from that number but it's like how many phones apparently 700 because you should go check because this person is missing not only is this person missing somebody is literally impersonating yeah this person is missing and now somebody is calling out of work for them right ding ding ding go look at every fucking phone in that place Also I don know how all that works but wouldn you think they would all have like slightly different numbers Yeah, you would think. I don't know. Unless it's like one dispatch that sends out to other phones. Oh, that's a good point. So like you star 69 and it goes right back to the dispatch. So they can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good call. Well, nonetheless, Patty reported the strange call to the police and they followed up immediately. In discussions with some of Zeb's co-workers, investigators learned that while he himself had no connection to volvo construction some people recalled that it was where his former co-worker jason owens worked oh aka the last person he was seen with so detectives spoke with owens who admitted to making the call to walmart but he said he had only done so after he got a call from zeb who asked if he could call in sick for him no which like if zeb is calling you why wouldn't he just call walmart himself and say like I can't come in today. Exactly. That makes no sense. And also, why wouldn't you just say to the person, hey, like, Zeb is unable to call, but he wanted me to call in for him. Right. Instead of pretending to be him. Exactly. No. Yeah. Well, I don't like that. It's fucking weird. Jason told the police he didn't know why Zeb couldn't call in sick for himself, and that other than the call, he hadn't seen or heard from Zeb since he left him on the side of the road a few nights earlier after abandoning their plans to go look at the car. Now, to us and investigators, Jason Owen's story was highly suspicious. Yeah. Especially because as far as anybody knew, they weren't that close. I think I said it earlier. They were just co-workers really. And when police dug into Jason's whereabouts in the days immediately after Zeb's disappearance, they learned from his boss at Volvo that Jason had called in the day after to say he'd be late to work that day because he'd been in a minor car accident. According to Jason, he had been on his way to work that morning and got in a car accident where he got a cracked rib and a minor head injury. Considering that Jason also said that Zeb had rear-ended his truck the night he went missing, investigators were like, yeah, it's highly unlikely that you would get into two car accidents in less than 24 hours. Like, you're really that unlucky? Yeah, exactly. And in fact, while Jason did appear to have some minor injuries, when they checked his truck, there was very minimal damage, which definitely indicated that he probably hadn't been involved in a second car accident. So what the fuck are you talking about? And are you maybe trying to explain away some injuries? Because he went to the hospital and had those injuries treated, by the way, the day after Zeb went missing. Yeah. Now, Jason Owen's strange behavior and questionable explanation for his involvement in the case obviously made him a person of interest. But the main problem was that investigators couldn't find anything to say he was directly involved and he passed a polygraph which is so it's so interesting to me that polygraphs aren't admissible in court evidence but they are still something that we do and like i know we'll like dismiss people if they pass one it almost feels like yeah it feels like it's doing way more harm than good yeah because it's just like tainting real evidence right because it's like well they passed a polygraph and it's like okay yeah like you can if but it's like if i don't if i have this piece of actual tangible proof that's somehow putting in someone's head that it could not be tangible right exactly and the other way around like if they don't pass it then it's like they're obviously guilty exactly it works both ways i think just the fact that it's not admissible in court is like maybe we should take it out of practice i don't i don't know it's just weird to me it doesn't feel like it should be used anymore yeah it does it seems dated now now even though it was strange and out of character for zeb to have suddenly gone missing. Within a few days of that disappearance, of his disappearance, detectives still had yet to find any evidence that an actual crime had occurred. That was the problem. Yeah. So frustrated and feeling like they were headed for a dead end, they went back to the missing persons report filed by Denise. Going over the names of his friends and potential contacts, they came across Misty Taylor, a girl whose name had actually come up a few times in the investigation, but to whom they hadn't spoken to in any detail. Now, according to Denise Quinn, misty was one of zeb's newer friends who he had become infatuated with a month or so before he disappeared they spent hours talking on the phone and it was very clear to denise and like anybody close to zeb that he had developed feelings for her okay his sister brandy said i got the feeling that he probably grew to love her yeah now a few weeks after a few weeks of getting to know each other zeb unfortunately learned that not only was misty already in a relationship but she also had a small child oh wow yeah upon learning this his family and friends assumed you know maybe that's going to be the end of the relationship here but zeb wasn't ready to let it go they kept talking on the phone regularly but from that point on zeb made sure to block his number so that misty's boyfriend wesley smith wouldn't know who was calling messy okay yeah that is messy now listen to this one evening the day before zeb disappeared he forgot to block his number when he called and Misty's boyfriend Wesley answered the phone. And when that happened, Zeb panicked and hung up. But seconds later, the phone rang and when Zeb answered it, it was Wesley on the other end. And he threatened Zeb, telling him to stay away from Misty and then just hung up. Now, despite the repeated warnings from those close to him that he was being unrealistic and pursuing this girl, Zeb was convinced that things would just work themselves out. When you're 18, you think everything's going to work itself out. You don't think it's going to get bad. And also, like, this seems like one of the first girls that he was, like, really interested in and who seemed interested back in him. So it's exciting. Yeah, of course. Now, when detectives questioned Misty Taylor about her relationship with Zeb, she had a different take on the friendship entirely. as far as misty was concerned she said her and zeb were just friends i never intended for it to be anything more investigators still felt like there was something misty wasn't telling them though but they couldn't put their finger on what it was now wesley smith her boyfriend was similarly evasive when he was interviewed about zeb's relationship with misty he said that on the night zeb disappeared he and misty were at his mom's house watching tv and that alibi was confirmed so things got even murkier a few days later when investigators got the call logs from zeb's pager according to the logs the urgent phone calls zeb received the night that he disappeared came from the home of ida ustich i hope i said that correctly that was zeb's aunt on his father's side okay so denise quinn had divorced her husband when zeb and his sister were still very little and for most of their lives their father jerry quinn's relationship with them was inconsistent at best when zeb turned 16 and he got his driver's license though he started visiting his dad at his bar more often which was the Biltmore Tavern and they spent hours there just shooting pool catching up kind of bonding yeah when Zeb reconnected with his dad his mom was concerned about how Jerry's quote rough country ways would rub off on her son she said I always saw Zeb as a backward geek kind of guy oh I know Jerry on the other hand was like what somebody would call a man's man a man's man he was a hard drinking tough walking working class guy oh man and he struggled to understand zeb's more sensitive nature still denise wasn't going to stop her son from getting to know his father though or his father's side of the family so zeb started to get to know them including his aunt who was the one who paged him which was very good of her i know denise sounds like she was a fucking rock star mom is a rock star mom now and yet another strange twist when investigators spoke to ida the aunt about the pager records, she denied having made the call. Huh. And she said that she was actually at Misty Taylor's house. Oh. Apparently, it ended up that Ida was close friends with Misty's mom, and they were actually planning on going into business together. Oh, wow. As for who placed the call, though, from Ida's house, she said she had no idea. But the evidence was clear. Phone records from her landline showed the outgoing call to Zeb's pager. interesting now strangely enough not long after that the denial of the phone call she reported to the police that on that evening that zeb went missing and like her landline allegedly called him or did call him she said while she was at misty's mom's house somebody broke into her home oh she said nothing was taken only a few picture frames were moved around but she said it must have been the intruder who placed the call did she call the police no okay so i guess i wonder if she just i wonder like if she was like are the did these pictures move or did they not like yeah and also like i mean like i would probably call the police but also like you have to think of it as like you're sitting there being like okay a couple picture frames are moved yeah i mean i guess if you don't know for sure i guess but like yeah i mean feel free to overreact overreact it's always better so investigators had a very hard time believing that somebody had broken into her house just to place a phone call and move a few pictures around that would be weird it'd be super weird probably the first time whatever but they didn't have any way of disproving the claim so they couldn't make any accusations later after the story made its way to the national news circuit ida actually denied reporting any break-in to the police she was like i never told them that what the fuck yeah when i told you this also this is not as weird as it gets everybody like this case is weird all right there's all it already is and there's answers but there's kind of like not answers at the same time which is really unfortunate for anybody close to zeb so two weeks into their investigation ashville detectives had a number of suspicious people on their hands obviously some with very interesting connections to each other but they still had no evidence of a crime and the case was in danger of going cold at this point then in mid-january they got a break in the case when Zeb's car was discovered abandoned in a parking lot and inside they found some of the strangest evidence that we'll probably ever talk about oh no so on the evening of January 16th two weeks after Zeb went missing Denise had just got home from a nursing shift at the hospital when her phone rang the person on the other end was calling from the medical records department at the hospital she was a co-worker they were a co-worker that Denise knew by sight but like didn't really know personally too much but the woman said she had just arrived for her shift at the hospital and as she was driving into work she thought that she saw zeb's car in the parking lot of a nearby shopping plaza this parking this shopping plaza was like right near the hospital like couldn't have missed it so denise jumped in her car and raced to the plaza where she was stunned to find her son's car parked at the edge of the lot imagine this too as a mother well and the car was parked like diagonally too like we'll get into it like haphazard yeah yeah definitely so the headlights were on and the windows were cracked but like smart and luckily before touching anything denise called the discovery into the investigators who got there a few minutes later to process everything now to sergeant chuck sams who arrived at the scene the scene it seemed that whoever left the car there like i was just saying positioned it in a way that would almost certainly be discovered quickly yeah not only were the headlights on but the way that it was parked was strange it was like diagonal like i said and the location of the car was as conspicuous as it could have been without genuinely being parked at like the middle of the street like the middle of the road and not only did denise work at this hospital where the car was like found right near her daughter did and her mother did so zeb's mom zeb's sister and zeb's grandmother all work at this hospital shit so like clearly they knew that they would all see it yeah now it turned out though that that was just the first of many strange aspects of this particular scene. Sam's said, on the back windshield of the car, there were a set of lips drawn in what appeared to be a lipstick type material. What? And then there was two exclamation marks. There were a number of things that were unusual about it. He said, one of which was that there was a live puppy inside of the car. what so this car is parked right near where his family works basically diagonal headlights on windows cracked puppy inside the car also inside the car was a jacket that didn't belong to zeb but let's let's sit with the puppy for a second i was just gonna say we can't just go away from the puppy why is there a puppy in the car we never find out alina oh my god we never listeners weirdos rewatcher we never find out holy shit why the fuck is there a puppy in the car i have gone down every fucking deep dark hole to try to figure out why the fuck there's a puppy in the car and i don't know and the puppy's okay puppy's totally fine okay so to everybody's astonishment sitting on the passenger seat of the car happy as a fucking like happier than ever just wagging her tail and excited to see new people was a little black lab no more than a month or two old oh my god i would literally scream now desperate for answers and this will break your heart she later realizes that this is not the case but desperate for answers denise zeb's mother interpreted the discovery of the car and the weird clues bizarre clues as messages from her son Brandy later told a reporter, my mom automatically thought that the drawing on the windows means he's sending kisses and the live puppy means he's alive and well. I mean, that's his mom. Like, of course you're going to grasp that straws. Yeah. Investigators, on the other hand, believed that the puppy was just left in the car to attract attention, ensuring that it would be found quickly. Yeah. That actually makes a lot of sense. But like, what? You could also just park it weird and it'll be found quickly. The puppies were cracked too, so they wanted that puppy to be alive and barking. Now, luckily, the dog appeared healthy. She didn't seem agitated at all. So it was unlikely that the puppy had even been in the car very long. But they also found a hotel key card in the car as well. What the fuck? In a statement to the press, Captain Ted Lambert cautioned anybody about interpreting the discovery as the car is a positive or a negative. He said, there's no indication so far of foul play. No indication that he's run away. we're still receiving information and leads daily and we're following up on that information and will continue to do so what a way to hedge your bets truly there's no indication of foul play there's no indication that he left willingly what does that leave nothing he's like there's no indication he said period there's no that could have been a quick press conference no indication and no comment the end bye like because that essentially what he just said it like We don know Yeah No idea Got nothing for you Which is true Yeah I mean what the fuck This is bizarre What do you say Yeah Now in the days after the discovery of Zeb car officers fanned out across Asheville and the surrounding area, visiting every hotel and motel to find the establishment that had issued the key card. But after days of searching, they came up with nothing. So they literally can't even figure out where this key card, like what hotel it belongs to. and without having access to the scanner that created it there was no way of learning what data was on the card like possibly who had the room or anything they also have like the potential to do that now i know well because i almost said i was like in the year 2026 we can't do that and then i was like this isn't 20 you were like this is 1999 i was like do we know i mean like would you be able to get the data off of a key card i wonder i think you'd need the scanner that created the card but i wonder maybe not now maybe maybe you're not a way to do it but i i mean realistically like the data on the card is like who has the room yeah so i feel like that would only really be with the hotel database well you would think that but who knows i don't come up with like further reaching databases now or maybe even just to get to the hotel because they don't even know what hotel so i see what you're saying so unfortunately they came to a similar dead end with their search to determine where the fuck this sweet little puppy had come from after visiting every shelter and breeder in the region they were still no closer to knowing of the dog's origin or what if anything she had to do with the case yeah now in a 2012 interview sam said it's always been such a great mystery where this dog came from but from the moment that she was discovered in the car chuck sam's was taken with this little lab and he ended up adopting her from the shelter that she was placed in and he named her katie oh i love that so much katie the pup i love that yeah so you know at least you know the dog's safe hell yeah but where did she come from that's the thing where and what does she mean what does she mean i don't you could there's so many holes you can go down uh so the discovery of zeb's car and the evidence contained within it were an exciting development in the case after like nothing for a couple weeks but as strange as it all was it also suggested that something bad could have happened to Zeb. Yeah. Even Denise, who desperately wanted her son to be alive, started to accept that it was probably somebody other than Zeb who had left the car in the parking lot. Yeah. Later in 2012, she said, somebody knew that his sister and I worked at the hospital. I mean, we just felt that it was parked there to be found. Yeah, it absolutely was. It was. After the car was discovered, investigators released a statement to the press urging anybody who had seen that car in the previous two weeks to come forward, regardless of whether they thought they could help at all. Like just, if you saw the car, tell us. Within a week, a local couple contacted Asheville police to say, hey, we saw somebody driving that car downtown a few days before it was discovered. They'd been following the case in the papers and they had read the description of the car several times over. So when they saw that it seemed to be a matching vehicle a short time later, they wrote down the plate number and they called the police. What badasses. Good job. Good job, local couple. Good job being observant. Hell yeah. You saw something and you said something. That's what you do. The plate number turned out to be a close match for Zeb's car, indicating that the couple had in fact seen the car after Zeb went missing. But when they were asked if they could describe who was driving at the time, they reported it was not a teenage boy who was driving. It was a young woman. Oh. When they sat down with a sketch artist to create a composite sketch of the person they saw driving, the result was an image that looked a lot like Misty Taylor. Oh. Which is weird. what the fuck investigators took the sketch and the information to misty who strongly and repeatedly denied having driven zeb's car or to have known anything about the disappearance and they had no cause to keep her or charge her with any kind of crime so they had to let her go damn now by the end it's going on it's wild so by the end of january the case had gone from baffling to outright fucking bizarre yeah like what what indeed but investigators were no closer to finding zeb quinn or learning what happened than they were on january 3rd when his mom reported him missing i want to know what happened they had all these weird things but nothing was really evidence aside from like what was found in the car yeah now with the case going cold and the story now fading from the headlines because unfortunately awful things continue to happen it seemed like the mystery of zeb's disappearance was bound to go unsolved but in yet another bizarre turn of events, a series of unrelated crimes finally led to new leads and a familiar suspect emerged. A year passed and there was still no sign of Zeb. While the family started to lose hope, investigators kept searching for answers. Investigator Ted Lambert told reporters, we take each and every lead seriously and run it into the ground. At times it's frustrating that there isn't closure for Zeb and his family. A month later, Asheville police managed to get a warrant to collect hair, saliva, and blood samples from Jason Owens based on the fact that DNA evidence was found inside both vehicles. And they wanted to determine whether Zeb had been in Jason's car before or after he had disappeared. Unfortunately, like so many other leads in this case, the DNA samples led them nowhere. But it did seem though, no matter where the case seemed to lead them, Jason Owens was always there. Yeah. Then in October of 2002, Jason Owens showed up in the news again, this time for reasons unrelated to Zeb Quinn and that whole case. In the early morning hours of October 30th, an Asheville police officer was driving on Interstate 240 when she spotted a car that was driving somewhat erratically, suspecting that the driver was probably impaired. The officer attempted to pull the car over, but rather than pull off to the side of the road like you're supposed to the driver who turned out to be jason owens attempted to flee ah while driving at high speeds on the interstate and then on residential roads as well owens stuck a fucking handgun out the driver's side window and fired four or five shots at the pursuing officer while going down residential roads as well but luckily none hit their intended target jesus the chase finally ended when he struck a mailbox and flipped his car and he suffered serious injuries in the process obviously oh and spent a little over a week in the hospital before he was stable enough to be arrested on nine charges holy shit including uh alluding arrest assault on a law enforcement officer with a firearm and a myriad of others he eventually was found guilty of the charges and he only spent two years in prison are you kidding me it's i'm always just like what what the fuck like he shot five times at an officer what if that person died what the fuck like hello was he white yes okay period that sounds about white it does so when he was released he kind of just faded back into private life for like a minute but in the years that followed he became a familiar face to the Asheville police not just because of his link to the Zeb Quinn case but also because of his tendency to get arrested for various petty crimes like I mean I wouldn't call drunk driving petty but he got pulled over many more times and he also was a thief so years passed and the case grew colder and colder and colder and in the hope of eliciting some new leads police released the surveillance camera footage from the convenience store where zeb stopped just before he went missing so captain tom um ardima hopefully i said that right said we have put a lot of hours into this case and we have no further leads on it but we will not close this case until we bring it to a conclusion i hope so i know when the tape failed to get a response from the public investigators released a second tape the next year where they recreated the circumstances leading up to the disappearance and that concluded with the discovery of zeb's car in the parking lot investigator daryl fisher said somebody knows where zeb is we just need for that person or persons who know what happened to come forward and tell us what they know yeah we do but sadly the video failed to produce any useful clues and the case was shelved as detectives shifted their attention back to active cases so zeb's case sat on the shelf for another decade wow as his family and friends had to come to terms that he was most likely no longer alive holy shit it was also looking like they might never have answers for all their questions that's the worst part yeah for all that time to go by and you probably wake up every single day with a new question about where your brother is and they're just not being answered and and you have we say it all the time like your mind fills in the holes oh yeah makes it much worse so but all of a sudden a seemingly unrelated case brought zeb's disappearance back to the front pages all over north carolina not just in ashville on march 15th 2015 christy cod's father became worried when he hadn't heard from his daughter and couldn't get a hold of her husband jt either he called christy's neighbor cecilia owens who he knew had a key to their house and he said can you just check on christy she's five months pregnant I want to make sure she's okay. Cecilia said, As soon as I walked in, I knew something was wrong. Just the look of the place. And she had left the dogs. She would never leave the dogs. Those were her babies. Now concerned that something happened to Christy and to JT, Cecilia called the police and reported them both missing. Now, three years before Christy and JT's disappearance, Christy actually appeared as a contestant on the Food Network for Food Network Star. Oh my God. Which Ma and I used to watch all the time. We used to watch that constantly. Yeah, so I'm sure we saw her season. Now, obviously that gave her a certain amount of notoriety around this area, and that led to her disappearance gaining maybe more attention than it otherwise might have. A day after the story appeared in papers, police got an anonymous call where it was reported that somebody had been setting fires around the house next to the Cod's home. What the fuck? And that they'd left a lot of suspicious debris in a dumpster. What? Now, when police arrived at the address provided by the caller, Do you want to guess who the homeowner was? Oh, no. It was Jason Owens. Are you kidding me? And the suspicious debris left in the dumpster were items known to have belonged to Christy Codd. What the fuck? Among other things, Owens was in possession of Christy's jewelry, the couple's laptop, and a handgun registered to JT Codd. What is going on right now? So based on the evidence, investigators were able to get an arrest warrant and Owens was taken into custody and considered the primary suspect in the Cod's disappearance. Now, a week after Christie and JT Cod were reported missing, Jason Owens now confessed. And he said he stored and destroyed the bodies of the couple at his house. What? Just simple as that. He said he stored and destroyed them. What the fuck is this dude? He's a lot of things. investigators got a search warrant for his home now that he confessed and they did in fact find human remains inside a large wood stove on the property it seemed that he had killed them and dismembered their bodies and then tried to destroy the remains to hide any evidence wow this man is diabolical in an interview with his wife detectives learned that he confessed the murders to her but was apparently vague about the details yeah no comment according to his wife jason had agreed to do some work for the cods and he was driving let me before i get into this let me just tell you this explanation in this like quote-unquote confession makes no fucking sense there are many pieces of this puzzle also missing jason said that he was doing some work for the family and he was driving jt's truck when he just struck and killed jt with the vehicle you know that so often happens when you're driving you just strike somebody once jt was incapacitated he said jason decided to rob christy at knife point and he killed her in the process so okay so is he saying he accidentally hit jt or he did it on purpose he just said that he hit him he just said as he was driving he hit him motivations none yeah but while while i was doing it i decided why not try to rob his wife yeah apparently this what obviously he had a plan obviously this entire time and he intentionally hit jt and then robbed his wife but the way he made it sound and the way his wife said his confession was bizarre so owen's wife she said i don't know what much beyond those basic details and jason wouldn't say much more so The motive for the crime now really still remains mostly a mystery. What? I think he just wanted to rob them. That's so fucked up. By the way, don't forget, Christy was five months pregnant. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. Oh, shit. So a few days after his confession to dismembering the bodies and attempting to destroy the remains, Jason was indicted on three counts of first-degree murder. For the deaths of Christy, JT, and their unborn baby. Oh, I'm glad he got three. Three. Yeah, three. For facing the death penalty, he accepted a plea deal in 2017 and was sentenced to a minimum of 60 years in prison. Now, the plea obviously brought the Cod case to a close, but for Zeb's family and the investigators who worked the case over the previous 15 years, it sparked a renewed hope that with his arrest for this latest horrible crime, they actually might finally get some answers to their questions about where Zeb was and what had happened to him. The renewed interest in the case prompted some new leads from the public, including an unnamed relative of Jason Owens, who told investigators that, quote, Before and after January 2000, Owens dug a pit on his Owens Cove Road property to burn items. And sometime after January 2000, he poured concrete over the area and said he was going to make a fish pond. Oh. Yeah. Interesting. That's fucking weird, everybody, right? Yep. Now investigators searched the area and they found what they described as unknown hard fragments buried underneath the area that Owens had dug out for the pond. But they have never revealed whether or not those fragments are related to the Zeb Quinn case. Guys, come on. I don't know if they can't say for certain what they, I have no idea. Can we get under that pond? Can we do like ground penetrating radar or something? I mean, they found fragments. Can you just figure out what they are? So whether or not the fragments had anything to do with Zeb's disappearance, though, District Attorney Todd Williams felt that there was enough evidence to take to a grand jury at this point. And on July 10, 2017, Jason Owens was indicted on one count of first-degree murder and the death of Zeb Quinn. Six months later court records filed by his own attorneys Jason indicated that in interviews with investigators Jason Owens quote said a family member killed Zeb Quinn and then dismembered him and burned the remains Oh, my God. He went on to provide a, quote, detailed account of Quinn's death, which included that evidence of the murder might be found in the Bent Creek Experimental Forest. Bent Creek Experimental Forest? What the fuck is that? Like, what's an experimental forest? Wait a minute. that's a thing it was established in 1927 to study rehabilitation of cut over degraded forests i've never heard of an experimental i've never heard of that in my life i need to go down such a fucking rabbit hole please guys tell us if you have heard of experimental forest before because for a second i was like did i read that wrong did i do something wrong here it's an experimental forest and he's saying that evidence of quinn's of zeb quinn's death would be could be found there yeah evidence of his murder interesting so despite the bombshell admission years passed without any involvement in the case what the fuck then in 2022 more details of jason owens interview with detectives were made public so according to jason his uncle walter better known as gene owens shot and killed zeb the night that he went missing and then he dismembered the body and burned the remains why uncle gene now by that time gene owens had died so he wasn't there to refute those claims or offer any kind of counter narrative and actually according to owens attorneys the person who called in the anonymous tip about jason's fish pond which literally got him like you know involved in the zeb quinn case in the first place yeah or you know more involved like brought him back was gene owens who had called but jason's attorney said that that was in an attempt to misdirect detectives i mean sure you're the lawyer so you're gonna say that but yeah like i don't know or and this is just me like you know speculation speculation here it's like it could be that yep or the other possibility is that he really was calling to report that. Jason knows that. So now he's like, well, he's dead now. So I'm going to put this on him because he was about to help me. Yeah. That's the widely held belief. That feels like that. That's the widely held belief. Like it's more like, okay, well now it's going to get put on you because you can't do anything about it. Exactly. Yeah. Who knows? And again, that's just me speculating. Yeah. That's pure speculation, but that's speculation you share with many and I do too. Yeah. Now Jason's accusations left everybody familiar with the case somewhat conflicted like we're talking you actually led me right into this on one hand people were eager to finally resolve the case after more than two decades of mystery and unanswered questions and bizarre happenings but on the other hand it all seemed a little too convenient jason had recently been convicted of another crime where the details matched exactly what he was now claiming his uncle had done to zeb quinn yeah because that's the thing he's literally sitting there saying like oh my uncle did that to jason and i just so happened to also just do that to this couple yeah that doesn't make any like what how does that make sense is that that's like a trait you guys share so a lot of people felt that jason couldn't be trusted to tell the truth in any situation amy carson a former friend and neighbors neighbor said in a letter me and my husband received he's basically blaming his uncle i really have a hard time believing that he's blaming someone who's dead who can't defend himself yeah which is what you were just exactly jason's story had put the district attorney's office in a pretty tough position they lacked the evidence to prosecute jason for a murder but at the same time it also felt like the one chance they could finally get some justice for zeb and his family so on july 25th 2022 jason owens accepted a plea deal where he pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder and he was given a sentence to 13 to 16 years in addition to the life sentence that he was already serving oh now according to the defense jason's defense gene owens had quote duped his nephew into luring zeb quinn to the pisgah national forest to meet a woman with whom quinn was smitten who we can assume is misty taylor yeah however when zeb arrived misty was nowhere to be seen and it was gene owens who had allegedly been hired by misty's boyfriend to kill zeb who was there waiting to meet him wow gene then shot and killed zeb and enlisted jason's help to get rid of the body that's the defense's argument okay that's very hard to follow i understand so basically yeah they're saying jason lured zeb out into the woods because misty's boyfriend who zeb was involved with misty remember okay misty's boyfriend had hired gene jason's uncle to kill zeb okay that's simply put okay sort of there's so many people that i can follow that now so the defense went out of their way to insist that this was not a compromise plea, but an accurate reflection of the facts and a sentence that fit the crime committed by Jason. But the assistant district attorney, Jeremy Ingle, on the other hand, remained skeptical that Jason wasn't just the real killer. Yeah. Ingle said, based on the evidence available, the lack of evidence of a motive, cause of death, spoiliation of evidence based on the decades-long pause and critical leads in the case, a conviction of first-degree murder at trial, though never a certainty, would present a steep challenge considering all these factors. Yeah. so in this case they agreed to the plea rather than let the case continue to go unsolved that makes sense they publicly said we don't really agree that that's what happened here like that's not the truth in our opinion but at least he'll serve some time yeah like we can't let him just walk out of here right exactly else and i i really like that they went through with it because yeah he was already serving a life sentence so they definitely didn't have to especially where they didn't agree with the facts i didn't think about that but they were like no you need to be held responsible in some capacity justice needs to be served in some the family deserves that at the very least no i do like that you know so after the judge accepted the plea friends and family were given the opportunity to speak and share their victim impact statements which is another reason yeah they they should always be afforded that yeah well everybody had wonderful things to say about zeb obviously it was his mother's statement that will hopefully remain with jason owens forever denise said and i actually have goosebumps already she said i'd grown up learning to trust people and believe in their goodness until they showed you otherwise. I passed that on to Zeb, who took it to heart. When I was not really happy with a couple of his friends in high school and told him he would be judged by the company he kept, he looked back at me and said, they have done nothing wrong to me and have done nothing wrong around me, and I will continue to be their friend. This is the young man that was taken from his family, friends, community, and the world. This is a young man that never would have seen his end coming. This is a young man who trusted his friend jason oh that's gut-wrenching like truly gut-wrenching it really is oh it's just this was a trusting person and you preyed on that and he's so much better person than you ever fucking were that's so sad it is now jason owens is currently serving a sentence of 59 to 74 years to life uh with without parole in north carolina good yeah it's always confusing when it's like this year to this year to life. I know, it's like to life. I'm like, what? You're like, huh? Wow. What a... I don't think we've really come across many cases like that. No, that... I don't know even what... I'm so... There's so many unanswered questions. Yeah, like the idea of the puppy makes sense for like their theory of like they wanted the car to be found. So I guess a puppy... But why? Barking makes sense. The lips on the back? Why did you want the car to be found? Right. Because why? Just make it disappear if you want to make it disappear. Right. Why the lips? The lips. Where's the hotel key card from? Whose jacket is that? Whose jacket is that? Like, what is going on? And you can look it up. You can see the picture of the lips drawn. It's bizarre. It's bizarre. It's big, too. Like, it's like the whole windshield. And like the exclamation points. I'm like, what does all this mean? I don't know if you just it's like does it all mean nothing and you guys and just it's like to fuck with people maybe it's just to like make people go down all these different roads and like distract from what was actually happening I'm like did people involved just think that they were like masterminds and is that lipstick and if so whose lipstick is that right it seemed like lipstick that looks like lipstick like I don't know this is just weird it's so and where did the dog come from that's the thing where did the dog come from like where did you just travel to another fucking like where did that key card come from right and it didn't match anywhere right it's all very bizarre so weird it's sad it's really really sad and the fact that they don't know where zeb is exactly like i want them to have zeb i know and they absolutely should and i'm like where is he i don't tell someone i i wonder and again this is speculation where jason apparently had a whole thing for burning people's remains yeah maybe that's what the hard fragments are that got buried underneath that fish pond. I want to know what's under that fish pond. But wouldn't you at least say like I don't know if I don't know what happens here but it's like wouldn't you say hard fragments that we believe to be human? That's the thing. Well and it's like isn't there. Because it doesn't say human it just says hard fragments. Isn't there a way to try to get some kind of warrant to like drain that pond and be able to crack through the bottom and like see what's under there i don't even know if he even even built the fish pond he was just planning to oh i don't even know if the fish pond ever came to fruition okay i think that's why they were able to kind of like figure out that they were i'm like did you dig up hard fragments or did you use ground penetrating radar and see something and also why are we not figuring out what that is like i are they just too but and and that's the thing like we've covered cases before where charred remains are found yeah and they're never i mean i don't want to say never but like they're very rarely too charred to determine if they're animal at least or human that's a thing you know i'm just really curious about that part yeah it's very strange yeah very very strange very sad i feel so bad for his family i do too because because obviously they loved each other a lot they did and it's like even though there was a conviction that they're still like we're just sitting here asking so many questions or so many questions so many answers not given exactly oh Damn. It's a strange one. It is. Oh, I need to look up a fun fact. Yeah, got us a fun fact. And please look up Zeb Quinn because man, what an adorable. I know. I'm telling you like teddy bear energy. Yeah. This is fun. Tell me. It also is kind of horrifying. Oh. There's a statue of Jason Voorhees chained on the bottom of a Minnesota lake. Oh, I did. I knew that actually. Did you? yeah isn't that really that's really fun isn't it that's horrifying that's such a fun fact imagine you're just like i would never be swimming around and you bump into jason fucking vorhees yeah i would never be swimming in a lake so i don't have to worry about it but i i would watch you bump into it yeah i would swim in a lake yeah you love a lake i love a lake i love sitting by a lake you do you're looking at it elena's never been caught dead in a lake she's crazy you're such an earth sign you're like i'm not in the water i'm on the ground you're crazy i'll look at water though yeah water is so love to look at it i would not like to look at water where jason vorhees is damn what minnesota lake is he in i think also like whoever did that just like did it for the joke of it all just did it for the walls i saw that recently actually it's so funny because for a second when you said jason vorhees i was like jason vorhees jason vorhees is that a political figure and then i was like oh no jason vorhees oh okay so submerged at the bottom of louise mine pit often referred to as crystal lake in crosby minnesota there it is uh it happened in 2013 by diver doug klein it's a surprise 120 foot deep damn damn that's really really scary oh and there's pictures of it underwater do you see it guys it's very realistic guys look that up and it will ruin your life. He's literally looking up. Talk about shart week. He's looking up. That is shart week right there. Oh my god. Imagine you're just diving and you have no idea and then you just... That could give somebody a heart attack, my guy. I have to say that is literally genius, but one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen in my life. I'd cry for sure. I don't like things submerged in water. That really gets me. I don't either. That's a specific fear. Yeah, takes me to a place and a place of panic submerged in water phobia is called oh that's hard sub mecha phobia yeah you have that you're also afraid of really big things yeah especially big things that are submerged in water oh man yeah i wonder if that's another one we gotta we gotta end it somewhere yeah a lot of things give me anxiety yeah that's spooky that's fair enough the world is insane it's insane insane all right well we hope that you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird maybe keep it so weird that you submerge like a horror figure in a random lake somewhere yeah because that is fun it is a little bit fun and i won't have to see it just make sure it's like environmentally friendly yeah i think that one is as long as that's cool okay and be nice to sharks yeah Thank you. Thank you. guide the любовь to your child.