Killing of Zebb Quinn

Zebb Wayne Quinn (born May 12, 1981) was an 18-year-old enrolled in an ROTC program and working in the electronics department of a Walmart in Asheville, North Carolina, when he disappeared on the evening of January 2, 2000. After his shift ended around 9:00 p.m., Quinn had planned to travel with co-worker Robert Jason Owens to look at a car for sale. Surveillance footage showed the two at a nearby gas station around 9:15 p.m. According to Owens, Quinn received a page shortly after, used a payphone, returned "frantic," canceled their plans, and sped off, rear-ending Owens's truck. Owens was later treated at a hospital for a head injury and fractured ribs he attributed to a separate, unreported car accident that night.

Quinn's mother, Denise Vlahakis, filed a missing persons report the next day. Two days after his disappearance, someone impersonating Quinn called his workplace to say he was sick; the call was traced to a Volvo plant where Owens worked, and Owens admitted making the call, saying he was doing Quinn a favor.

On January 6, 2000, Quinn's Mazda Protegé was found in a restaurant parking lot near a hospital, with its headlights on, a live puppy inside, a lipstick drawing of lips and an exclamation point on the rear window, an unidentified jacket, drink bottles, and an untraceable hotel key card. Investigators interviewed Misty Taylor, a woman Quinn had been romantically interested in, and her boyfriend Wesley Smith, both of whom denied involvement; no ties between them and Owens were established. A page Quinn received the night he vanished was traced to the home of his aunt, Ina Ustich, who denied making the call and later reported an unexplained break-in at her home. A composite sketch produced from a witness sighting of Quinn's car being driven downtown was later noted by police to resemble Misty Taylor.

In March 2015, Owens was arrested in the unrelated killings of Cristie Schoen and J.T. Codd, later pleading guilty to charges including dismemberment of human remains and receiving a 60-to-75-year sentence. That June, investigators searched Owens's Leicester property and found fabric, leather, unidentified hard fragments, a white powder, and bags of possible pulverized lime under concrete; authorities did not confirm whether these were human remains.

On July 10, 2017, a Buncombe County grand jury indicted Owens for first-degree murder in Quinn's death. On July 25, 2022, Owens pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of accessory after-the-fact to first-degree murder. Through his attorneys, he claimed his late uncle, Walter "Gene" Owens, had been hired by Smith to kill Quinn over a love triangle involving Taylor, and that Gene shot, dismembered, and burned Quinn's body, with Owens assisting in the cover-up. Prosecutors expressed skepticism about the account but accepted the plea, citing insufficient physical evidence directly linking Owens to the killing. Owens received a sentence of 12.5 to 15.75 years, to run concurrently with his existing life sentence. No arrest of the alleged instigator has occurred, and Quinn's remains have not been recovered.