By Chuck Hustmyre
Ocotber 20, 2006
NEW ORLEANS, La. (Crime Library) — New Orleans has often been called the most haunted city in America. It's certainly one of the strangest. Home to above ground cemeteries, voodoo, and vampires. Former home to explorers, slave traders, and pirates. And it is, without doubt, one of the most dangerous cities in America, with a murder rate reported to stand at a staggering 10 times the national average.
But in New Orleans crime is often as strange as the city itself. New Orleanians are used to it. They're a hardy lot. They've survived plagues, wars, hurricanes, and floods. They've also played witness to quintuple street corner killings, murderous rampaging cops, and blood-soaked restaurant massacres.
Yet, this week, police in New Orleans uncovered a crime so shocking, so gruesome, so...bizarre, it's hard to believe it really happened. It's hard to believe it's not just some ghost story dreamed up to frighten the out-of-town patrons of the city's ghost tours.
But it really did happen. And it is a crime destined to become a legend.
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Zackery Bowen |
Tuesday night, Oct. 17, Zackery Bowen, a 28-year-old part-time bartender and part-time grocery delivery man, leapt from the eighth floor of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter and plummeted to his death. |
Omni Royal Hotel |
Inside one of his pants pockets detectives found a plastic bag holding a suicide note. After reading the note, the detectives knew that what they were dealing with was no ordinary suicide.
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