Monsters walk with us contains, explicit language, adult themes, violence, and may not be suitable for listeners under 18. Listener discretion is strongly advised. Welcome everyone. And welcome back if you're returning. Thanks so much for coming back this week. I'm your host, Mary O. This week, my guest is the lovely Maura Quint. Why don't you tell everyone a bit about yourself?
Hi. Yeah, I am on Twitter. That is my primary place. I'm @behindyourback on Twitter, where I primarily write comedy and comedy writing is one of the main things I do, but I'm also the executive director of Tax March, which is an organization that fights for tax fairness across the country.
A very needed reform across the country and the States for sure.
Yeah, it's, it's a very niche sort of thing to be doing. And I didn't expect to end up here, but. I absolutely love it.
I love stories like that. If you are new or returning to the podcast, I just want to shout out our patrons. You can find us over on Patreon. There is exclusive content that goes up. There there's early access to the episodes on Fridays instead of Mondays. And it's a good time. Feel free to check it out. We have a bunch of different tiers and different perks. The other way that you can support the podcast is through Instagram.
There's a link in the bio called buy me a red bull and you can choose how much to donate on a one-time basis there. When we hit the goal of a hundred dollars, I'll put out a bonus episode onto the main feed. This week's case is pretty dark. We are going to cover a lot of gruesome details and I pulled from so many articles that I actually don't think I can list them all. So there'll be listed in the episode description. I have a full page of just links.
So the content warning for this week's episode, suicide murder, cannibalism, alcohol abuse, and necrophilia.
That's a lot.
There's also talk about dismemberment. That's one that came up a bunch that I forgot to put in.
I feel like the moment you're at cannibalism. I feel like dismemberment is probably going to be in there in some way.
You know, some of the things are so bad that they just like, everything else is nothing in comparison. And now what for me was the necrophilia. I was like, Oh, okay.
It's all, it's all on the table at this point.
Straight down Hill from there, yeah.
Anything that could bother you. It's going to come up. So just be prepared for that.
Yeah.
Okay. Let's do it.
This week's case takes place in the big easy, New Orleans, Louisiana. I actually have been there. It was on my lifetime bucket list to go there. And I got to go for a work conference around equity and inclusion work with Zabrian, former guest on the podcast. So some of these areas I've actually been to. The first and most important thing to talk about to set the scene for this timeframe is hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in August, 2005. It caused over 1800 deaths and 125.
Billion dollars in damage. Massive flooding started after the levies, the flood protections systems around this city failed. This is the direct cause of most of the deaths, 80% of this city and the parishes or the surrounding towns around the city were flooded for weeks. It destroyed all major communication facilities. All ground transportation is completely stopped. Tens of thousands of people could not, or would not evacuate the city. Infamously.
The staff of the Orleans parish Sheriff's office walked out and abandoned their jail and prisoners. They left 650 prisoners trapped in their cells with no access to food, water, or ventilation for days on end. Eventually the deputies returned and started evacuating inmates to surrounding areas, including another jail and two highway overpasses. I cannot imagine walking out on someone in a cell. And just leaving.
That's incredible. That's horrifying.
The lack of humanity,
abolish prisons right there. That's unbelievable and disgusting, but I guess also fundamentally believable.
Absolutely. In a ACLU investigation after Katrina, they interviewed over 400 prisoners. They found across the board, these prisoners were exposed to flood water, racially charged abuse, physical abuse, experienced starvation, and were left, exposed to the elements. There is no official death count for the prisoners left behind, but later the human rights watch registered 517 prisoners as unaccounted for. So minimally that's confirmed.
Wow.
This is also the timeframe that Kanye West went on MTV with Mike Myers, which I distinctly remember watching. Cause that's the weirdest combination of people. And Kanye West said, George Bush doesn't care about black people.
Right.
I remember at this time, I did the morning announcements in my high school, and it was a video news show. This kid that I went to high school with, I'll withhold his name. We were presenting about a supply drive for Katrina, and this guy pulled his balls out under the table to try to distract me and get me to break while we were doing the news. I don't miss this time at all, where boys and guys would pull out their balls and make art, or do all this weird stuff with it.
Like the movie waiting very 2006. I will never forget this moment because it was terrible.
Yeah.
And I'm sure if that happened today and I had reported it, that would have been a huge problem. In 2006, I just moved on.
I think a lot of people still would just move on because there's such a you know, There's so much fundamentally to lose from reporting that I think people are still really feeling like they can't say anything, unfortunately, maybe a bit better than it was at that point, but we've not yet cleared that.
Especially when everyone around you is reacting, this is a joke. And why are you overreacting or making this an issue. Besides the prisoners and the hospitals and the other areas where people were abandoned or were not able to evacuate. There's also all the people who are just stranded in this. City with no basic necessities, there is a huge national and international response. So there's a lot of rescue operations planned and a lot of private organizations plant operations and get involved.
They do a lot of investigations in the aftermath of Katrina. It's determined that the U S army Corps of engineers, which had designed a built the levees a few decades earlier, was directly responsible for the failure of these flood control systems. They cut corners. They were just trying to rush through and get it done quick. The emergency response from federal state and local governments is widely criticized to this day.
A lot of the top heads of FEMA resigned as a result of all the controversy around the response in the aftermath of Katrina, NOLA retains its strong culture, uniqueness, nerve, and talent, distinct music, Creole cuisine. Unique dialects and all of the big celebrations and festivals, the heart of the city, the French quarter is known for its French and Spanish Creole architecture and the nightlife, especially along bourbon street.
There's a lot of cemeteries, voodoo shops, museums, art, and it's very sweaty and smelly, but also amazing. I had a really great time when I was there and I got to do this haunted bar crawl. The company was haunted history. It was really a good time, but there's also a seedy kind of side to the city. Since Katrina, a lot of redevelopment efforts have led to growth in the city's population. What this really means is that gentrification is happening.
New residents with disposable income can move in. They can buy property in these former lead close-knit communities, people who had been there for years and they're displacing longtime residents. So sure the city's improving, but it's also at the cost of the people who've lived there for years and who lived through Katrina. A lot of people who stayed through Katrina were really invested in their lives, in new Orleans. And that's the story of the couple that we're going to talk about today.
Zach Bowen and Addie hall, Zach Bowen was born May 15th, 1978, in Bakersfield, California. He's a very typical looking middle-class white dude. He's a lanky kind of Barfly. Type he's the guy you would see at the end of every bar, drinking beer. He grew up in California and he lived with his mom in Sacramento. After his parents got divorced, he ended up moving to new Orleans to live with his dad. And he graduates from high school there at 18.
He starts working as a bartender and he meets 28 year old Lana Schupak who worked as a stripper. After they dated for a little Lana found out that she was pregnant. They get married and they have a son, Jackson. In order to support his family, zach signs up with the army and is in the 709th military police battalion. Zack isn't necessarily the most ideal fit for the army, but he still serves in Kosovo and in Iraq.
Early in his time, serving overseas, a female soldier in his unit was killed in combat. She was well known as the most. Patriotic and the most energetic, she had a really positive attitude. It sounds like she kind of kept their unit together a bit. Zach took her death extremely hard. Not too long after this, there was an attack by insurgents on a local family shop and a child that Zach had become close with was killed.
Allegedly, this attack happened because the boy had become friendly with an American. This impacts him even worse. He becomes deeply depressed. It sounds like he really struggled with survivor's guilt. Zach is discharged a general discharge. This is different than a straight up honorable discharge. It's a level below.
Okay.
Zach returns to new Orleans and he finds work again as a bartender. He Atlanta have one more child, but finally they separate Londa says that Zach has completely changed due to his experiences overseas. And I can imagine that he's having a really hard time. He starts delivering groceries on the side just to make some extra cash and kind of keep himself going. And also he has kids that he needs to pay and be responsible for.
Right.
Zach is the kind of person who can have just a drop too much of liquor and all of a sudden the storm clouds roll in. And it's a really bad time. He will go on these long terrors about how the government did him so dirty. They have just destroyed him and they're ripping him off because he gets less money from the general honorable discharge than the straight up honorable discharge would get. So he's really got this kind of persecution they're out to get me everybody's against me.
Well, sure. Yeah. There's nothing like feeling like you have no other option, but to join the military and then seeing what the military actually does to people.
Right. Abandoned with no resources. Struggling to support yourself. A lot of people, Zach's bar friends or other people who were around drinking, they would just try to Oh, sure. You know. Okay. Yeah, I understand. And just try to change the subject.
Are you telling me that random people were not readily prepared to deal with? Someone's tremendous trauma that they had just been through and in fact, just tried to kind of brush it away and change the topic?
That one round didn't cover the emotional labor that I was demanding from you.
Okay. All right. I mean, you know, that's the story you're telling me, I guess I'll buy into it. We don't set up a lot of other options for people. So yeah, just going to the bar and just somehow I'm going to drink this away, is sort of a path in life that we culturally have deemed appropriate. You know, that's not a problem.
And in most bars there's your regulars or barflies, right?
I'm familiar. I've been to a bar or two myself.
I feel like I know this guy, right. I've seen him around. I know his type. I know when the red flags are coming from my intuition Oh, this one drink is too much. I'm going to excuse myself out of this situation before things get weird.
I have worked in bars for some time. So I've, I've met that guy.
Yup. Adrianne, Addie hall is the definition of someone who dances to their own rhythm. She's very petite and she's blonde. She grew up in Pennsylvania before she ended up in New Orleans. She's got a very sunny disposition. Everyone describes her as cheerful and easygoing. She's kind of this free spirit she loves to sew she writes poetry and she'll have these long philosophical conversations at the bar, into the wee wee hours of the morning. She really loves to dance.
And she spends a lot of her time just hanging out in bars. She's also known for riding her bike everywhere. She could turn really nasty and aggressive sometimes when she got drunk and she would lash out really badly at the people, closest to her. Everyone is being told to evacuate for Katrina, immediately. Lana wants Zach to come shelter in place with her in the kids. Addie and Zach had been flirting off and on for a little bit at this point. Instead of leaving, Zach wants to stay in the city.
The night Katrina hits Addie invites Zach to come stay at her apartment. This immediately becomes a very intense relationship. They drink a lot. It's one of those really volatile. I love you. I hate you relationships where they'll get in really bad fights and then they'll make up and they'll get back together.
Yeah. We call that passion.
Yeah.
Because we don't know what else to call it.
Right, right. We just love each other a lot.
We romanticize it as this sort of wonderful thing.
Their friends say that Zach often would flirt with other women or use his good looks to try to make Addie jealous. The good looks are not there for me. I'm very shallow. I'm the first person to admit this. Zach's not doing it for me. Zach and Addie also dabble in drugs together, real drugs, not pot. Addie gets jealous and they fight and they make up it's, sarcastically very healthy.
They both sound like they're doing very well with their trauma, that they have not dealt with, and they're uh figuring it out together through substances. That sounds great. Like a really good mix. I can't wait to see where this goes.
Later, they ended up moving in together above a voodoo shop that was owned by Priestess Miriam Chamani, who lived in the apartment next door to them. They lived this social butterfly booze soaked lifestyle. Addie bartends at a bar called the spotted cat in Faubourg Marigny which is a suburb of the French quarter that I walked around in and got drunk in. Zach worked at a bar called Buffa's.
The French quarter is well-known for attracting people from the fringes of society and for being especially hard to navigate for people who have substance abuse issues. Amy O'Neill a fellow bartender in the French quarter, says that everybody knew Zach and Addie Everybody knows your business in this scene. The French quarter is a really small place. Zach and Addie get interviewed a lot in the media coverage after Katrina.
Their picture is actually running in the New York times and the associated press and quite a few other news organizations interview them. They thrive after Katrina. They really enjoy this kind of camping, DIY dystopian lifestyle, where they're living in this abandoned city, they'd go to bars and get booze and set up outdoor bars and barter with their neighbors, for drinks and for supplies.
A lot of the articles mentioned that Addie would always flash the cops and emergency services trucks so they would keep driving by their area and keep patrolling the neighborhood.
This honestly sounds like an HBO prestige drama at this point, right?
Yeah. Slowly, the city starts to rebuild. The gentrification that I described before more resources are coming back into the city and routine is coming back as well as the people, Zack and Addie aren't happy about this. They've really fallen into this kind of pirate lifestyle and they love it. They are making the city like a summer camp, basically. They have no bills. Zach doesn't have to worry about child support, helping financially support his kids. They don't have work.
They don't have a schedule. None of that sounds great either ,listed out like that, right.
Frankly, I'm not against them at this point. Capitalism sucks so like, okay. Fair.
Addie also does not want anything to do with Zach's kids or Zach's responsibilities as a father.
Okay. I don't love that, but alright.
That's his business. I want nothing to do with that. That's not sexy to me.
Sure.
They also are using a lot of cocaine.
Where are they getting it? Okay.
Things are spinning out of control really quickly. As the city is readjusting, they are breaking up and getting back together faster than ever. It's almost every day.
Cocaine will do that. You know, that speeds everything up. Yeah. All right.
Very unpredictable situation. Addie really doesn't like Zach wanting to bring his kids to their apartment. He's not divorced from Lana, they're just separated. He's still as part of his kids' lives. Zach and Addie start complaining about each other to anyone who will listen, which is definitely the way to handle relationship issues.
Incredibly healthy.
Do not take it to the source. Let's just talk to everyone else that we know while they are also drunk and maybe high, and then we'll figure this out.
Definitely a situation you want to bring kids into. Absolutely.
Exactly. Exactly.
Okay.
They also start having physical altercations. Lisa Perrilloux, a regular at Buffa's, said that she never once heard Zach say a single nice thing about Addie the whole time that they were together.
Okay. That's not good.
That's not a good sign.
No. Okay. Not good. Not good.
At the end of August, Addie gets arrested for pulling a gun on a guy and when the cops go to the apartment, they find the gun there along with some weed and some pipes.
She wasn't able to flash that away.
I think maybe when you pull out the gun, that's when they're like, your nipples are not going to do it hon.
I mean, if she had held back on the nipples, maybe that would have still been a possibility, but at this point it's like, okay. We've seen that.
In September. Zach is arrested. The cops respond to a reported disturbance at the apartment. Someone had reported one of their loud fights. When the cops pull up, Zach is sitting on the front stoop. He stands up and a large baggie of weed that was on his lap, drops to the ground. They get evicted from Addie's apartment around this time and need to find a new place to stay. So they decide to move in together. On October 1st, 2006 into a one-bedroom apartment at eight 26 North Rampart.
That's how all good relationships start. Just when things have gotten really, really bad, let's move in together.
This is the apartment above the voodoo shop that I mentioned before.
I feel so bad for the voodoo priestess there.
Zach paid the first two months rent for this apartment and they signed the lease and they move in. At this point, the relationship has completely deteriorated. Addie's landlord. Leo Watermeier, says that he ran into Zach on October 4th in the hallway. And Zach said that Addie was kicking him out. Zach found out that just a few days after they had moved in, Addie, met with Leo and changed the lease, so it was an Addie's name only.
Right after this, Leo speaks with Addie and Addie says I caught Zach cheating on me and yes, indeedy. I am kicking his ass to the curb. So we're going to skip ahead a bit and then we'll go back.
Okay.
On October 17th, 2006, new Orleans police get a nine 11 call from the Omni Royal Orleans hotel. A guest has reported seeing someone jump off the rooftop bar. The person died on impact when they hit a parking garage below. Police respond to the scene and they find 28 year old Zack Bowen's body. They search his body and find a plastic baggie containing a short suicide note, his dog tags, and a key to the apartment.
Surveillance footage shows that Zach had approached and backed away from the ledge quite a few times before he finally jumped. When cops read the note, it says, quote, this is not accidental. I had to take my own life to pay for the one I took. If you send a patrol car to 826 North Rampart, you will find the dismembered corpse of my girlfriend, Addie in the oven, on the stove and in the fridge. And there is a full signed confession from myself there. That's so many places!
It's. We're about to get into it, okay?
Okay. Here we go.
So, on October 4th, we know Zach and Addie were arguing worse than ever. Zach's eight page confession found in the apartment contains all of the details of Addie's murder. It opens with today is Monday, October 16th at 2:00 AM. I killed her at 1:00 AM on October 5th. I very calmly strangled her. And it was very quick.
First of all. That's not a quick thing.
It is not, it takes a lot more time than people think to strangle someone to death manually.
No, that's like, yeah. I've read enough to know that that's not quick.
It's not a two-minute process. He then talks about being posed with the question of what to do with the body.
Sure.
What we're about to get into these details are truly gruesome. It's awful. First, Zach gets drunk. He describes committing necrophilia repeatedly with Addie's body.
Wow.
And then proceeding to get good and wasted.
Wait wait he was... having sex with a corpse prior to getting wasted?
He was drinking and then he just continues to drink.
That's already not easy to do. So it seems as though that was a particular interest to him.
The train is not on the tracks. The rails are nowhere in sight. Immediately we're gone.
Okay. All right. Sure. You know, there's some forms of strangulation that can be a erotic thing. To a point, but no, no strangling someone to death and then repeatedly having sex with their corpse is a whole other level.
That's not a kink.
No, that's not a kink.
I got it to Instagram beef with another podcast because they were joking about victims and posting memes glorifying serial killers. And I couldn't resist and I got into it with them back and forth. And then they kind of doubled down and started talking about a -philia I can't remember the name of this -philia, whatever it is, but.
Ok, yeah it's terrible
It was being sexually attracted to serial killers or people who commit violent crimes. And that's not a fucking kink you really, really, really should seek some help.
I mean, I don't know what we call a kink or not.
I had a whole two-hour thing about this. By myself. I was like, am I kink shaming? But I don't think this is a kink, right? Necrophilia is not a kink.
I mean, that's just it if a kink is just something that turns you on, I suppose, give me a kink. But then we have to then differentiate between kinks that are like reasonable and healthy and in the world of okay and kinks that are like, no, no, no.
What's totally taboo. Right? Like beastiality, incest.
They're kinks in which a person needs to seek some sort of psychological help for because they don't exist in the world of okay. Where we can allow that to exist.
It's built on victimization and harm and not consensual fun, sexy times. I think that's the difference, right?
It seems like a very reasonable difference. I'm fully on board with that, yeah. Geez.
I did ask my husband, am I kink shaming by having such a viscerally bad reaction?
I think you're allowed to say no, very troubling, very troubling. Now I'm all on board with people who just want to pee on each other. It's just yeah. Great. Go for it.
Have fun. Everybody have fun with that. Yeah.
Okay.
When Zach wakes up and sobers up a little bit, He sees Addie's body. He gets dressed and leaves the house to go about his day, putting on the AC before leaving.
Well, I guess that's thoughtful Okay.
It's very self-serving in that. Like, let me try to cover this up.
I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want that to get warm. That's an unpleasant thing to come back to.
Yeah and New Orleans. Very hot. I came up with a term when I was there. The humiditiddies. It was unbelievable. Putting the AC on to me really shows that he knew what he was doing enough that he needed to cover it up.
I mean, the other possibility is you're so incredibly removed from reality, that you just think a human being is in the space and you're, you're mindful of their comfort, I suppose?
We are not going to be able to understand his thought process whatsoever. Luckily we will not be able to ride the same logic train. Quite pleased. that yeah, that'll be the truth. When Zach returns to the apartment, he decides that the best course of action is to dismember Addie's body.
Sure. Yeah. Natural, natural thing to think. Yeah. What in the world?
I don't get it either. I don't understand.
Unless you have a specific space where you're like this needs to fit into this. And my Tetris isn't working, I don't know why that would ever be the case. yes, obviously I need to dismember. What??
So last week I covered the party monster case, Michael Alig. They dismember someone's body to fit it into boxes. They knew that this is the space that they had to fit into. And so it doesn't make any sense, but you can see why they would, Oh, this isn't going to work. We have to change our plan. This makes no sense to me what we're about to talk about.
obviously we're already off the rails into like a whole other thing, but I don't understand why anyone would yes, no, that's a natural conclusion I need to make.
I can't physically imagine being close to a dead body. Let alone, now I am going to cut up this dead body and it's not anyone. This is someone I've been in a romantic relationship with.
Exactly. unless your job was a butcher, you just spent your life looking at physical forms and thinking how you could break it down,
or hunters, some killers were hunters. I barely like cutting raw chicken.
Oh, I can't stand it.
Zach moves Addie's body to the bathtub and cuts her hair.
I like that he thought enough at least to just be like, ah, this will be a mess. I shall contain it in the book.
There's the questionable logic for me in some cases it's really obvious to see that people did not have a plan or things were very disorganized or it was this mental break that they were having. I'm not saying that mental illness was not a factor in us because it absolutely was.
It makes me want to think about what he did in the army. I'm just like, what did this guy get conditioned to do? Cause this seems very systematic.
Really dark.
Oof, okay.
Zack takes a Hacksaw and a knife and cuts her body into pieces. Over several days he cuts her body up into pieces.
Oof, Okay.
Some of Addie's remains go in the fridge. Some are cooked in the oven and some are cooked on the stove top.
They're cooked. Oh my God. Okay.
There was also chopped up potatoes and carrots next to the stove and some articles said there was seasoning.
Wow. I mean, you have to think this through to have those things on hand too.
I just, I literally it made me never want to eat potatoes and carrots again. I truly can't imagine. The person that I love I've killed. I've lived in the house with their body. I've desecrated their body in every way imaginable.
Sure.
And now I'm going to take the time to chop up veggies. The physicality of it, again. Ugh. Ugh.
I guess if you're at the point where you've just completely remove this person's humanity entirely, and you're just looking at them fully as meat, then it's just like sure. Meat goes with potatoes and carrots, right?
Very obviously cannibalism is implied just from our reaction alone. I think most people immediately go there, especially with the food.
No, you add potatoes and you're just figuring you're eating that.
Yeah. Police say there are no signs of human remains in Zack system when his autopsy was completed. Allegedly Zach's plan was to make, this is so bad. To make the meat easier to separate from the bones for disposal.
So he was just going to make a nice little stew and then be able to throw away the stew thinking no one will question what's in the stew. If it's got potatoes and carrots in it.
That's the only thing that I can think of. if you're doing this, not to eat, someone's remains the thought that you could be in a room and cook someone. Yeah, I can't, I can't, I just. I will never be able to make that work in my brain.
No, that's good. That makes me happy, I'm happy to be in a room with you now. I feel a little bit more comfortable.
It really is just chilling. It goes above and beyond. I thought the worst part would be him having sex with her dead body.
Yeah.
And then it just gets worse from there.
It really does. It does a nice job of escalation there. It's it's fantastic.
Yeah. Zach's confession says halfway through the task. I stopped and thought about what I was doing.
Oh, halfway through. Good. Okay.
The decision to halt the first idea and move to plan B. The crime scene you are now in, came after a while. I scared myself, not by the action of calmly strangling, the woman I loved for one and a half years, and then desecrated her body. But by my entire lack of remorse.
Yeah, that's the time to be nervous.
It scares me too, bud. Let's be totally honest. That's horrifying.
Every so often you just do something incredibly terrible and horrifying. And it's just like, whatever, I just did it, but then halfway through, Oh, I don't feel bad. You know, once my kids had some candy and then they went to school and I just ate the candy and I didn't even think about it. And then once I'd eaten the candy, I was like, Oh, they're going to be sad that I ate that candy. So it's basically the same thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It really does take a specific type of mind or a specific set of circumstances for someone to be able to completely shut down and disconnect from this basic part of humanity.
I feel like the more scary thing in general, and the reason that we all get so kind of fixated on all of these types of stories is the fear of can we do that? Like, are we all capable of being that, that completely removed from our own humanity? could that happen to any of us at any time? I think that's sort of part of the fascination because of course it feels like, Oh my God. Yeah. There's no way.
And you're being victimized in the worst way. By the person that you love, that's supposed to protect you and be your partner and ride this bus till the wheels come off.
Yeah.
Zach's autopsy also shows signs of self-harm. Zach in his confession says that he burned himself with cigarettes 28 times, one for each year of his life as a failure. And then he lists all the different ways that he failed or was a failure over the years.
I feel like there's a big one right at the end. Maybe that should just take up a lot of the focus. The time you failed, you got a D in the third grade spelling test should be just maybe brushed aside to the time that you dismembered the person that you were living with.
I think the worst part of it besides the actions and everything that happened is that you woke up the next day and had an opportunity to say, I really, really fucked up. And I need to call for help. I need to call the cops and deal with this and you for two weeks did everything except that. We're going to talk about what happened in that two weeks.
Oh boy.
In the weeks leading up to Zach suicide, he decides to party his tits off until he runs out of money and then he is going to kill himself.
Okay.
He tells people that he and Addie have split up for good, and she left town. Because they have friends, people are wondering what happened to her. Nobody is really that worried about Addie though. She would often forget to buy minutes for her phone, PS, throwback, buy minutes for your phone. So Addie would often be unreachable. In the French Quarter, people drift in and out all of the time. It's that kind of environment where people come and go.
People say that Zach was in a great mood at the bars during this timeframe. Some of the best moods he's had in a while. He told some people that he was getting ready to take a much needed vacation.
Okay. Yeah.
One friend remembers telling Zach in the nights leading up to his suicide just think, soon you're going to be in paradise. Living with that memory has to be so haunting.
yeah. Yeah. That's a weird thing to look back on.
Yeah. Another quote from Zach's note, I've known forever how horrible of a person I am just ask anyone. And I decided to quit my jobs and spend the $1,500 cash I had being happy until I killed myself. So that's what I did. Good food, good drugs, good strippers, good friends. And any loose ends I may have had, I had a fantastic time living out my days. I didn't tell my family, so that will explain the shock.
I feel so bad for this guy's kids. My God.
I cannot imagine being Lana or his kids and having to see all of this in the news and hear all of this stuff.
Yeah, that $1,500 you could have just given to your children.
Literally!
Good drugs and good strippers. That's great.
I'm glad knowing that that's something that you in some way felt proud enough about or wanted at least to be fully open about.
Right.
I don't have words. Before completing suicide, zack had spray painted Lana's phone number on the walls of the apartment. He also started writing out a lot of his thoughts in spray paint on the walls. Things like I love her. I'm a failure. Look in the oven.
Oh.
Bit of a different theme on that last one.
Yeah. You know, not easy to necessarily do in spray paint that's not an easy medium, but okay. You probably have a pen on hand.
He takes his shorter suicide note, puts it inside the Ziploc baggie and goes to the Omni for his last drink. I have actually been in the Omni when I went to this conference in New Orleans that's where we would stop for coffee on the way to the Hilton. Just super eerie. It is a really gorgeous hotel. And I cannot imagine ever wanting to go back there if I was there when this happened.
Yeah, yeah, no, that'll do it.
A documentary is filmed about Zach and Addie narrated by a friend of theirs, margaret Sanchez. The trailer is up on YouTube, but this documentary is not publicly available because in June, 2012, Margaret is involved in the murder and dismemberment of a local stripper Jaren Lockhart, who went by Riot.
More dismemberment.
Just, this is the weirdest twist so far that I've had in a case. On June 6th, 2012, Jaren is working in the strip club when she meets Margaret and her boyfriend, a guy Margaret knows as Allen Rice, but who is actually named Terry Speaks. Margaret and Terry have been dating for about four months. Jaren agrees to leave the strip club with them to go to their home for a private party. Jaren tells a friend I'm going to go with them so I can make rent.
Yeah. Reasonable.
Jaren is 22 and has a three-year-old. She's engaged, and when she doesn't come home right after her shift, her fiance reports her missing. It's discovered that Margaret and Terry had stabbed her at their home and dismembered her body. They attempt to dispose of Jaren's remains in the Gulf of Mexico and not long after Jaren's body parts began to wash up on shore.
Jesus.
Cops release surveillance footage from the club showing Margaret, Terry and Jaron leaving altogether at the same time. Margaret's brother sees this on the news and calls the cops to turn her.
Ok, good job brother.
Right. If your relative is a piece of shit and did a murder, turn them in, don't cover that up.
No, I feel like that's definitely the point at which it's just like, no, we don't need to hang out for Thanksgiving anymore.
They did it. Let them get what they deserve. Turn them in.
The murder is the line there. Yeah.
Margaret when arrested, is also charged with harboring a fugitive because Terry Speaks is a registered sex offender in violation of his parole in North Carolina, home of the Krispy Kreme donut.
Thanks for the donut news.
The most important thing for me. Also, people call North Carolina North Cacalacky. I learned that over the last year and it cracks me up to no end. When Margaret is interviewed by police. She says, Oh yeah, I did hear about that murder and it sounds just like my friend Addie Hall's murder. She also says she doesn't know Jaron at all, which is proved to be a lie when several other strippers in the area said they absolutely knew each other. And then Margaret's story changes.
So now it's that she did meet Jaren over drinks and then takes her to meet the girlfriend of a local meth dealer. Margaret says, quote, I don't even remember what the girl I was with. Looked like. I couldn't tell you if she had short hair. I couldn't tell you if she had long hair. I couldn't tell you if she was tall or short or fat or skinny. I couldn't tell you any of that. That's pretty fucking alarming. Margaret, you should know, at least one of those things, I think.
Probably, yeah, just any, any random detail would be good. Yeah.
Even just one of those things to narrow it down.
Yeah. No, I'm not good with faces, but eventually I can hit one small thing. Yeah.
Margaret also says that she got really sick that night from some bad shrimps. So she had to go home and have diarrhea and vomit all night with Terry taking care of her.
Look, there are a lot of times when like, Oh, I just had diarrhea. that's you learn that? That's a thing that's mostly going to shut down conversation.
It's a foolproof excuse. Right. Nobody wants to argue with stomach stuff, especially if you get gory with your details.
Yeah. No, you start with like, oh, I wasn't feeling well, what kind of, what? Oh, it was a stomach thing. they keep pushing until you have to be like, no, no. I was spewing black liquid out of my ass. Right. You know, that usually does work so I can understand why she thought that that might be her way out.
Right? Like I'm spewing pure consecrated evil out of both ends. Maybe this will make these cops just shut up and let me go.
One step away from like 'oh, my period was really bad.'
I couldn't have done this murder. I had cramps. Yeah.
Aw, they'll just stop asking because you're embarrassed. Yeah.
Margaret, it says that she left in the morning to go to work and then she and Terry had to give their dog away because they were getting evicted. But this timeline doesn't work out with the evidence or the person that took the dog from them. Margaret Sanchez, pleads, guilty to manslaughter, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice.
When she's 32 years old, she is sentenced to 40 years for manslaughter, 40 years for obstruction of justice and another 20 years for the conspiracy to obstruct justice.
So like 132. She'll be fine. She'll be walking out the door. Okay. All right. Terry Speaks was convicted on June 20th, 2015 at the age of 43 of second degree murder, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. He is currently serving two life sentences at the Louisiana state penitentiary in Angola. The first of those life sentences was handed down for the second degree murder of Jaron. Priestess, Miriam Chemani Our girl.
Is often mentioned in the articles and stories about this case. The media really latched on to the voodoo, supernatural elements, people are really wanting to make that the focal point of the story because it's new Orleans. The word priestess is yeah,
and even though that didn't exist, people are reporting the cooking of Addie's remains or maybe that was part of our ritual. It's really gross the way that people are talking about that, because it doesn't exist. That's not what this was about.
She's just a woman who had a business nearby that's unfortunate. Yeah.
The story of Addie and Zach is that they had a really volatile relationship with a lot of intimate partner abuse and substance abuse. And that ended in tragedy, not that there was some curse on the apartment.
It could have been like a nutritionist. It can just easily have could have been Gwenyth Paltrow living below them. Basically.
I have full respect for the closed practices of voodoo. I think it's a really gross and appropriative for white people to be like, Oh, it was a voodoo murder. Let's not do that. Unfortunately, we're going to talk about some people who do that. Priestess, Miriam moved out in 2016 after having an electrical fire in the shop.
She says, People in new Orleans might be gearing up to make this another ghost story and make a dollar and I could do that, but I'm not eager at all to try to make a dollar off of this. Yes. Priestess, Miriam. Thank you. That is exactly the attitude we need people to have. Unfortunately, we have to buckle in for some more ghoulish shit seems inevitable. In 2018 bloody Mary haunted museum and tour company opened in priestess. Miriam's former space downstairs displayed.
They have images of Marie Laveau, who is a famous foodie, priestess, and Delphine LaLaurie who was a slave owner who horrifically, tortured and murdered her slaves in new Orleans. She was portrayed by Kathy Bates in the coven season of American horror story. So that plot line was based on a true story. I actually went to LaLaurie's mansion at 1:00 AM when I was in new Orleans, because I was just dead set that I had to see it. It felt really spooky. I would not have wanted to go in there.
I just really wanted to see the location and see the corner because the building is still standing. Also inside the bloody Mary haunted museum location. They have a series of bloody hand prints on the wall that lead to a staircase because they have also rented out the apartments upstairs so they can give tours of the location of Addie Hall's murder. This tour company very much pushes the idea that voodoo was involved, which is fucking hugely problematic and just wrong. Exploitative as fuck.
You're a vulture. Mary Mellon, owner of this company and an utter shame to the Mary name, says that this isn't at all disrespectful. In her opinion, she's honoring Zach and Addie and she's educating people about Katrina. She claims that all proceeds of the tours go to local domestic violence organizations. I'd like to see the receipts. Mary Mellon is a self-described Catholic raised voodoo priestess. No, you are fucking not.
Who can communicate with and heal the spirits of the dead, including the many who haunt the grounds that she leases. Didn't even need to look at her picture to confirm. Yes, this is indeed a white woman. Her Facebook bio says she is a voodoo queen, author, storyteller, historian, and psychic medium at bloody Mary's tours. She insists that she is honoring the spirits living in the building and educating the public, but she also has a blood spattered picture of Zach and Addie hanging up.
Next to the pictures of Marie Laveau and Delphine LaLaurie, she says, this is an homage to the city's oldest and newest spirits. Quote. It'd be stupid to pretend Zach and Addie weren't here. My critics are jealous they didn't do this first.
All right.
I think that shows your intentions right there. Mary Mellon. Most of the tour guides, including the tour that I went on, either do not talk about this case at all, or are very respectful in their discussion of the case. If people ask, because there are surviving family members in the area, one man went on this tour, he and his girlfriend, and a couple of friends had signed up sight unseen, just picked a random place to go. His name is Jonathan Bailey.
He is disgusted when they are in the middle of the tour and realized that they're actually in Zach and Addie's apartment, the tour guide starts talking about how everyone ever, who takes pictures there sees orbs all over the place, the spirits of Zach and Addie worse than that is a pair of Chucky and bride of Chucky dolls that were posed in the apartment.
Eww.
Very unfortunately, Mary Miller and bloody Mary tours are still in operation to this day in the same location. I, that last part, the Margaret Sanchez stuff is very weird. Creating a tour and you are going to charge money and decorate A murder scene with blood. Is the lowest of low.
Yeah. Although that's what a lot of these tours are doing in general everywhere. I mean, they may not have as much time between them from the horrors, but there's a lot of money to be made in assuming that people want to experience human terror and the worst elements of humanity. And so, I mean, I'm not particularly surprised and it's kind of hard to separate that from people who do it, but horrors are 30 or 40 or 50 years past.
One of the tour guides in one of these articles that was interviewed, talked about Delphine Lalaurie happened hundreds of years ago. The concept that there could be a direct descendant or a relative or somebody in this tour or who is going to be personally very impacted by hearing about their family's history, those odds feel slim for most of the tour guides out there, but Zach's children, Lana's in the areas Zach's father, extended family is in the area.
Yeah. It sounds like they try to be really, really conscious of that. And that's why it's kind of a sore spot for some people. Sure. I can't imagine finding out that somebody was charging to go look at where my loved one was killed. Yeah, no, it's terrific. Like I said, it's hard for me to sort of H just so omnipresent from city to city, but I'm not surprised, especially in NOLA, there's a ton of these ghost tours, cemetery tours, this supernatural aspect is a huge part of their tourism.
It's just this one in particular really sticks in my craw as just nasty.
Yeah. No, it sounds pretty vile. I'm certainly not arguing that. It definitely does.
So, yeah, just a horrible twists and turns. There's not really a high point here. And for Terry and Margaret, they went to jail ultimately, but yeah, it's a pretty rough one this week. Yeah.
There's a lot. There's a lot. They're all really awful way too much dismemberment for a single story.
Just for life.
Yeah, absolutely, but you know, okay. All right.
Having done this quite a few times at this point, I have incorporated trying to close things out on a high note. So...
What do you got, what do you got for a high note here?
Like a song that you like or something that's made you happy this week. That's usually how I close it out. For me this week, I'm really, really looking forward to getting my second COVID shot soon.
Oh, congratulations.,
it's next weekend. So I'm really looking forward to that.
Yeah.
And I had my first nasty comments on TikTok. I really just go on there and post what I want. And I post a lot on there about my mental health and my struggles with depression, which had been off and on pretty heavy because I'd been out of work for a year and we're still in the pandy and you know, it's a time. I had made some posts on there recently about my job search stuff that was not going so great, and somebody completely random came to my page and left a really nasty comment.
Like why do you keep posting on here for no likes and no views, which is like, I could give a fuck about that. I'm making memes of my dog. I don't care what you think.
Why would anyone bother commenting?
I handled it in a way that I think my childhood very bullied self would have been really proud of, which is just I don't give a fuck. I'm going to post whatever I want. And also I'm not sure why you thought you could come on here and call me out. They doubled down and we're like, get a job and treat your depression, which really, I was like, Oh, okay. But yeah, I addressed it. I blocked them. I moved on, it was no skin off my nose. And I'm really proud of that.
I feel like that would have been really devastating to me even just a year ago. I would have taken that really hard. I really don't give a shit anymore. Tik TOK is not about a place for me to get famous or have people follow me or care about what I'm doing. It's just a place for me to have a blog. I don't care.
No. That's huge.
So yeah, that was cool. It felt very empowering and nice.
Yeah, it does. I'm very familiar with that. I mean, I have a fairly large following on Twitter and when I first started getting larger there, I was very, very scared because I also have a history of being bullied as a kid and a lot of insecurity. And I definitely had this feeling of Oh gosh, can I emotionally handle that? And so hitting the point of just like, wow, I don't give a fuck. I don't care. What any of these fucking random assholes say.
They do not emotionally impact me absolutely feels incredibly empowering because you definitely feel like Oh wow. I'm in charge of my own emotional wellbeing. That's new. Hadn't felt that before!
The funniest part is, I had been expecting this. Because I've been posting fat friendly content. I am at a place now where I'm happy with my body and working on flexibility and strength, but I don't really care how much I weigh. And I'm okay with how I look this is my body. I had COVID and made it through. I can't ask for more. I can do the things that I want to do with my body right now. Not having any big problems with my mobility or anything like that.
I was expecting that's where it was going to come from because the second you say, I'm happy being fat on TikTok, it's over. And so I had prepared myself for you're a fatty. You're not breaking news to me, my friend. Kind of funny that it felt like the timing was good. That I was like, I don't give a fuck about this either, even though I hadn't prepared for this one.
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, again, as someone who exists online as a woman and who feels very physically insecure, I was absolutely braced for you're going to be told you're fat and ugly and That was the worst thing I could possibly hear for most of my life.
Right. Oh my God. Someone's saying I'm fat. That means I'm a terrible person and huge piece of shit. It's so ingrained in our culture, that fat is bad. And it's the worst thing that you can say to a woman. Yeah.
That's right! And then I was also so aware that I was so controlling the image that I was putting out online. I know I'm only posting photos that where I'm comfortable with how I look in this photo. So. It was interesting to me when I did start getting the you're fat and ugly responses, I was just like, Oh, but from that photo, I'm not I'm none of those things.
So if you're throwing that at me, it's entirely just because you know that that's a weapon that you can use towards any woman and you think it's going to be harmful. And so entirely eliminated that power of those types of insults, because they were so incredibly based in nothing. Now they've been walking down the street and said that to me, it would have had a more meaningful impact, but from photos that I posted online, like, no, no, it means nothing.
I found it really funny because when I first started TikTok I had this built up in my brain that I have to have my makeup on, or it has to be these cute transitions or I have to do what, all, what the kids are doing and stay hip. I want to be cool. And then I kind of decided, I don't need to care about that. And I'm going to post what I want to post, whether I've makeup on or whether I look like crap or whether I just woke up. And that's that.
It's helpful for me to talk about if I'm depressed or if I'm struggling mentally. And if someone is going to try to be shitty and weaponize that against me, That is a huge indictment on their character and not something I need to be concerned about.
That's a very healthy place to get to.
Thank you. That's been my nice high point this week. What's yours? What's something good. We can leave off on?
Boy. You know what? I had a very, very nice surprise. I came to my house a couple of days ago and some people that I had met months ago and had had the fortunate encounter to be able to help had left some flowers in my door. Yeah, which I was not expecting and which absolutely made me weak, but it was so incredibly sweet. That was a high point in my week.
I love that. I also want to mention, I got a really sweet listener email, and I really came at the most needed time and I totally teared up reading it, so thank you so much. Everybody, thanks for coming back if you came back, thanks for tuning in. If it's your first time, I hope you stick around and enjoy, check out some of the older episodes and we'll see you next week. Thank you again, Maura, so much for coming on. This was really a blast.
Absolutely, thanks for having me on!
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